@akbogert: I think you've misread into what that movement is about.
I don't think there is a cosplayer out there who doesn't appreciate the human body & human sexuality. The word "sexy" isn't and shouldn't be a taboo term to describe someone, as it's not necessarily a term to describe the physical appearance of a human but to describe their confidence in displaying themselves (in often incredibly revealing outfits) for the world to see. For a woman in today's society (where mags like US Weekly chastise actresses for not being model thin, where shows like Bridalplasty exist) to stand before the world, expressing her love of comic book culture in front of people who will judge her top to bottom, through cosplay, is in fact incredibly sexy.
But there's a difference between admiring & respecting a person cosplaying as a character and reducing them to a stimulatory object by making crude jokes & slandering them with offensive terms, whether online or in person. The "cosplay is not consent" movement wants to get rid of the latter practice entirely.
(cc @judge_dredd )
If you look at my original post (prior to the conversation that followed) what I originally said was that I was glad to see that this was a gallery of cosplayers, presented as such: the requirement for getting into this gallery was merely that a person was cosplaying.
I haven't missed the point of the movement. I'm simply emphasizing one of the angles of it, and one of the points I have firsthand seen does matter to many cosplayers. I'm not saying it's impossible to respectfully call someone sexy. I'm also not saying that sexiness is always a physical trait. But looking over some of the comments here, I think it's clear that some people are only using the physical body component of it. Someone said "Gambitch." Really? The fact that that's something someone would consider acceptable to say -- and that we have a safe enough community for someone to say it without expecting to be called out -- is precisely the issue.
I follow a lot of cosplayers on various social media. I think most of them would qualify as attractive to most people. And some of them have done relatively revealing projects. But the thing is, all of them pour their heart and soul into the craft itself. They spend months buying materials and working hard to create an outfit which is as accurate as possible. They'll go through countless attempts at certain patterns or materials until they've gotten the right look and feel. Sometimes they'll wear something which is extremely uncomfortable and be willing to suffer for a few days out of sheer love for the character.
And then one of two things typically happens. Either they end up on a list, and no one cares about how accurate or difficult their costume is because they're too busy commenting on their body. Or, because it's not that kind of costume, they don't end up on the list at all, because the list isn't actually a celebration of cosplay, it's a celebration of hot girls with the thinly-veiled justification that because the girls are wearing something geeky, they belong on a geek site.
I have read blogs specifically addressing this: from girls who have made it onto the sexy lists, and wish they hadn't.
One girl, for example, who has done a skimpy outfit and a very much covered-up one, the latter of which is more accurate (as it came a couple years into the hobby and she had more experience) and of which she is prouder. And she never sees the latter in roundups, but the skimpy one shows up all the time. And she looks at the comments, and she sees a clear message: she's not appreciated for her dedication to cosplay. She's appreciated for being something guys like to look at. If they actually cared about the cosplay, then they'd all be talking about the other outfit.
So it's that mindset of emphasizing the wrong aspects of what makes for a good or news-worthy cosplay that I'm trying to draw attention to. And again, I applauded CV for having not gone down that road -- and was actually called out on it, as if even suggesting that there was something wrong with making a "sexiest" list made me infantile. That level of defensiveness is the sort of thing the movement takes issue with, even if the groping and call-outs at conventions are the bigger ticket problems. But those happen because of a mindset that's already in place. It's great when people keep their lewd comments to themselves. It'd be even better if they made an effort not to have the lewd thoughts in the first place. No, not everyone who says "sexy" is being lewd. But some people definitely are, and a headline about sexy cosplayers is most certainly directed at that. Have you ever seen a "sexiest cosplay" list that actually was about the confidence and dedication of the cosplayers and not their bodies and amount of skin shown? And if you did, wouldn't you think "oh, I see, this is a parody?" rather than "that's right, they finally nailed what sexy ought to mean."
At the end of the day there's a reason the main photo on this gallery -- the one which accompanies it on the homepage and when you share the link -- is of the genderbent Gambit and not of the Mole Man. And it has nothing to do with the quality of cosplay. Both are great, and justifiably praised, but only one of them will garner the extra clicks. I don't think acknowledging that reality requires one being a "white knight;" just honesty.
Log in to comment