Creating the Body Beautiful Cosplay: Crossdressing, Cosplay, and Hyper Femininity/Hyper Masculinity

Abstract

In dressing up and performing cosplay (costume play), practitioners will often change their appearance using wigs, makeup, layered shoes, and fantastic costumes. Increasingly, cosplay practitioners of all genders will use various means to alter the way their bodies look, adding curves or muscles with padding and binding or tucking away unwanted bulges. In addition to scholarly sources, this chapter will also make use of the commentary on gender, race, and body type posted by cosplay practitioners on public, global social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter in order to understand what constitutes the “perfect” or ideal cosplay body—if, indeed, such a thing exists. Rather than asking why these cosplayers dress up as their favorite characters from popular culture, the focus here will be on examining the ways in which cosplayers create their costumes. While many cosplay practitioners buy or commission their garments from online stores, the focus here is on cosplayers who create their own costumes for the purpose of taking part in competitions. This chapter will explore how cosplay practitioners sculpt the body beautiful cosplay and what the challenges may be in portraying in 2D superheroes and magical girls in a 2.5D or 3D reality.

Keep your eye on the beautiful magical girl as they sashay through the crowd, their sparkly platform heels and towering mauve wig making them stand heads taller above a sea of colored hair. Note how their frothy white skirts bob along in the crowd like the jelly fish they are modeled on. A similarly dressed brunette floats along behind them, pink skirts in motion. Both of their diamante studded dresses glisten in the scorching Nagoya sun as they walk from the searing heat of a photo shoot to the shade offered by the historical buildings of the Meiji-Mura architectural park.¹ The two hyper feminine figures are the United States representatives at the 2019 World Cosplay Summit (WCS) held in Japan. Joshua Hart and Garnet Runestar (Garnet Hart Designs) would win the Bioré makeup award and second place overall at the 2019 WCS finals—the last to be held in person before COVID-19. On this particular day, at the Meiji-Mura photo shooting² event, the pair were dressed as Kuranosuke “Kurako” Koibuchi and Kurashita Tsukimi from Princess Jellyfish (Kuragehime, manga 2007–2017). Although we might talk about Hart’s frilly white Kurako outfit in terms of crossdressing or “crossplay,” this chapter will, instead, focus on the processes that cosplay practitioners, regardless of their gender, undergo to create hyper feminine and hyper masculine cosplay costumes.

Drawing on cosplay studies and theories of 2.5D, I will explore how cosplayers create hyper feminine and/or hyper masculine silhouettes. In addition to scholarly sources, this chapter will also make use of the commentary on gender, race, and body type posted by cosplay practitioners on public, global social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter in order to understand what constitutes the “perfect” or ideal cosplay body—if, indeed, such a thing exists. Most Anglophone articles on cosplay give a definition of “cosplay” as a portmanteau of “costume” and “play.” A. Luxx Mishou (2021, p. 1) notes that many scholars focus on the PLAY part of cosplay.³ This chapter, instead, focuses on the COS-tumes made and worn by cosplay practitioners around the world. In addition to the sources mentioned above, this discussion is also informed by personal observations as a volunteer Japanese to English translator and interpreter at the WCS finals in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021. Rather than asking why these cosplayers dress up as their favorite characters from popular culture, the focus here will be on examining the ways in which cosplayers create their costumes. While many cosplay practitioners buy or commission their garments from online stores, the focus here is on cosplayers who create their own costumes for the purpose of taking part in competitions. This chapter will explore how cosplay practitioners sculpt the body beautiful cosplay and what the challenges may be in portraying in 2D superheroes and magical girls in a 2.5D or 3D reality.

1 Terms and Conditions

Before we begin, I would like to outline my use of terms such as “cosplay” and “crossplay,” as well as “hyper femininity” and “hyper masculinity.” The definition of cosplay that I use in my work focuses chiefly on costumes constructed by their wearers for the purpose of cosplay competitions. These hand-constructed, fan-made costumes are based on pre-existing anime, game, manga, film, or literary characters, often of Japanese origin rather than original (OC) designs or Japanese street fashions such as lolita and other kawaii (cute) styles (note the use of a lower case “l” for lolita. This is the preferred spelling by Anglophone followers of lolita fashion to differentiate from Lolita-fetish and Nabakov’s novel). This narrow definition of cosplay is somewhat artificial and, by current usage within global fandom communities, almost obsolete given that most current English language usage of “cosplay” covers any fancy dress costume, including original characters and Western origin comics, while current Japanese language usage of the term also covers Halloween style costumes and erotic lingerie style costumes. It should be noted that as in any field, there is a delay between what is happening in the global world of cosplay and what is being published by cosplay scholars. Several of the terms that are being used by academics are no longer used by cosplayers themselves or have meanings that have shifted. For example, rather than refer to a “cosplayer,” I often use “cosplay practitioners” throughout my work—a term that has never been adopted by cosplayers themselves.

Speakers of International or European English will often use “coser.” In Japan, “reiya” (a pun on the “layers” of a costume as well as a short form of cosplayer) has become widespread among cosplayers (see, e.g., Hoff 2012, pp. 149–161). It is interesting to note that both of these terms place emphasis on the importance of “costume” to the identity of “cosplayer.” Further, it should be noted that just as cosplay differs from place to place, the meaning of the word itself differs from UK English to US English to Australian English to international English. As Amalia Andini points out, most cosplay studies focus on Western societies (Andini 2018, p. 3) opening the door for assumptions that cosplay and its practitioners are universal (see also Yamato 2020). However, this is not the case—Chinese cosplay focuses on long form skits and bought costumes (Ruan 2018, p. 210; Jacobs 2013, p. 27); cosplay in America seems to embrace “OC” or Original Character as well as published or licensed characters, while this is vanishingly rare in Australia. By focusing on an event such as the World Cosplay Summit, which brings together cosplay practitioners from over forty countries,⁴ intermixing forty-plus languages and cultures, it is possible to view what cosplay is at a global and international level. This can be seen in the shift that took place in 2015 when participants were encouraged to perform the championship skits in their native language (with simultaneous or pre-recorded translation and interpretation into English and Japanese) in order to illustrate the global nature of cosplay.⁵

In the same way that cosplay practitioners have developed words such as “coser” or “reiya” from “cosplayer,” terms such as “crossplay” to describe crossdressing while in cosplay has fallen out of favor. While these terms are still used, it is becoming more evident that many cosplay practitioners view crossplay or crossdressing as just another part of cosplay. As early as 2009, a survey of Australian cosplay practitioners showed that crossdressing was seen as a skillset to be learned and perfected, akin to wig styling, armor making, or pattern drafting (see, e.g., King 2019a, pp. 279–288). As the Australian cosplayer Wirru who was one half of the 2019 WCS championship winning team noted in response to a question about who his favorite crossplayer was via Instagram stories in 2019: “[to be honest] they’re all just cosplayers.”⁶

Cosplay studies scholars working on “crossplay” often speak of their research participants in terms of F2M or M2F (female to male or male to female) cosplay (see, e.g., Mishou 2021, and Andini 2018, pp. 89–110). Abbreviations such as FTM and MTF have been used by transgender individuals since at least the 1990s to help denote or define their transition.⁷ While some cosplay practitioners are trans, not all are. Similarly, not all trans-cosplayers are out to their family and friends (and indeed it might not be safe for them to be “out” outside of a cosplay environment). As a result, I would prefer to avoid such terms. Rather, I use Japanese terms such as josō (wearing women’s clothes) and dansō (wearing men’s clothes). As my cosplay research is heavily focused on Japanese cosplay (by which I mean costumes based on Japanese source materials such as anime, manga, and computer games; cosplay performed in Japan; and cosplay done by Japanese reiya), this usage of terms feels appropriate.

Throughout this chapter, crossdressing is used to critique theatrical and performance modes of dressing rather than to interrogate lifestyle choices or cultural modes of dress. Further, while sexuality and queerness in cosplay is an area that needs further work,⁸ I am less interested in the gender and sexuality of the cosplay practitioners than I am in hyper-real genders they portray in costume. Gender is, as Judith Butler (1999, p. 179) suggests, something that one does rather than something that one is. Gender is “constructed and never static,” meaning that crossdressing can provide a platform for temporary liberation from pre-established orders (Loke 2016, p. 13). Cosplay spaces then become a site of play and experimentation where gender identities can be tried on and experienced, or perfected and later utilized in everyday life. It would also be possible here to include terms such as “genderbending” or “Rule 63,” where cosplay practitioners swap the gender of a character to one that aligns with their own gender identity. As The CON-fidential, an online magazine written by US cosplayers, points out, much of the discussion around crossplay focuses on binary genders rather than including non-binary and a-gender cosplayers.⁹ While this chapter will also focus on cosplaying the binary, I will talk about female and femme presenting cosplayers and male and masculine presenting cosplayers in an attempt, however flawed, to be inclusive. Where terms such as “crossplay” are useful, however, is in emphasizing that the act is only a temporary swap—a moment of “play” (King 2019b, pp. 233–260).

Cosplay can further be defined in terms of 2.5-dimensional fandom (2.5D) and space. As Akiko Sugawa-Shimida (2020, pp. 124–139) points out:

In recent years, the term “2.5-dimension (ni-ten-go jigen)” has gained much attention within popular culture studies. The term “2.5 jigen” roughly means the space between the two-dimensional (fictional space where our imaginations and fantasy work) and the three-dimensional (reality where we physically exist).

Sugawa-Shimida (2020, pp. 41–47) further defines 2.5D as “cultural practices which reproduce the fictional space of contemporary popular cultural products (such as manga, anime, and videogames) along with the fans’ interplay between the real and fictional spaces.” Cosplay can be located as part of the 2.5D in that it usually only takes place in a certain zone or space—a liminal moment between the 2D page and the real world.

In 2013, Katrien Jacobs proposed that cosplay and related activities take place within a set “zone”:

As a theory of liminality suggests, the Cosplay zone is a space of fan-driven entertainment and identity transgression that involves strict boundary-policing by authorities and by peer groups themselves. […] At the same time, the Cosplay zone offers access to fringe venues, as well as support and tolerance between these ‘misfits’ and queer activism, which is where the potential for social change is located. (Jacobs 2013, pp. 22–24)

In my own work, I have written on the links between shȏjo (“girlhood”) space, as theorized by Honda Masuko, and cosplay (see King 2016, 2019b). Honda speaks of girlhood as taking place in a liminal “bower” where delicate hot house flowers are able to bloom freely among “ribbons, frills or even, lyrical word chains [which] flutter in the breeze as symbols of girlhood” (Masuko 2010, pp. 19–37). Within this space, girlhood is allowed to bloom and develop unrestrained by societal restrictions or demands, until the girl is ready to emerge into adulthood. The shȏjo space can subsequently be revisited or remembered, even after leaving. While shȏjo can be translated as “girl” in this context, it is most often used to refer to fiction products such as shȏjo manga, anime, literature, and games with a specific intended girl audience and consumer base. Shȏjo scholars such as Helen Kilpatrick (2013) pair the work of Honda with Eiri Takahara’s (1999) concept of “girl consciousness.” Takahara proposes that having the consciousness of a girl while consuming and indulging in shȏjo fiction inspires a freedom where “desires and wishes in the actual world can be satisfied through the subject’s imaginative process” (1999, p. 17; Kilpatrick’s translation 2013, p. 2). Most importantly for our purposes, Takahara’s feeling of a girl is not restricted to ciswomen and girls, rather, such girlishness is open to anyone who seeks escape from “socially imposed chains such as daughterhood, wifehood, motherhood, boyhood, manhood and so on” (Takahara 1999, p. 10).

Cosplayers in various communities around the world and online create and negotiate spaces where they are able to cosplay the characters that they love, regardless of age, skin color, and, perhaps most importantly, gender. It should be noted, however, that issues of race, skin color and black/yellow/white face in cosplay are too complex to be discussed in depth here but require further study. This notwithstanding, for the majority of cosplayers, dressing as the favorite character is more important than questions of gender. As Jacobs notes, “the liminal zone of Cosplayers is indeed also a by-product of capitalism which offers a type of gender play that can be easily cast aside and forgotten” (Jacobs 2013, p. 31).

In Sugawa’s 2.5-dimension, Jacobs’s “zone,” and the shȏjo space, cosplay only occurs safely and successfully in a set, negotiated, and clearly defined location: the frame of a camera lens, the set of a photography shoot, the masquerade floor of a popular culture convention, the cosplay competition stage, and select social media platforms such as Cure World Cosplay, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and DeviantArt. Such control is also evident in real world cosplay spaces: conventions and popular events police where and how cosplay practitioners are allowed to wear their costumes,¹⁰ and these are clearly indicated in the rules of cosplay competitions and the gatekee** deployed by users in online fandom spaces. Cosplay spaces then become a site of play and experimentation where gender identities can be tried on and experienced or perfected and later utilized in everyday life.

The costumes worn in these spaces often enhance and exaggerate the femininity and masculinity of the character that is being portrayed. In this way, cosplay silhouettes become hyper feminized and hyper masculinized. I will use the terms hyper femininity and hyper masculinity to indicate stereotypical expectations of “idealized” masculinity and femininity such as muscles, curves, and jawlines as per the character designs of cartoons and comic books. While speech and gesture are also a factor in the performance of masculinity or femininity the focus here is on costuming and makeup. In 1984, Donald L. Mosher and Mark Sirkin developed the Hypermasculinity Inventory to measure men’s adoption of a “macho” personality style (McKelvie and Gold 1994).This index measures three factors: a callous sexual attitude toward women, a belief that violence is manly, and the experience of danger as exciting (Mosher and Sirkin 1984). In 1991, Sarah K. Murnen and Donn Byrne designed the Hyperfemininity Scale to identify women who present an extreme version of the traditional female gender role. Murnen and Byrne described the hyperfeminine woman in terms of relationships with men, the use of sex to control relationships (romantic or otherwise), and the preference for “traditional” male behavior in partners (McKelvie and Gold 1994, pp. 219–228). These definitions locate hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity within predominately heteronormative relationships and sexual roles. However, I am interested not in sexual attitudes but in gender performance that does not necessarily hinge on any relationship to another individual but rather on an embodied shape or form. In other words, my interest lies in the exaggerated performance inherent in the word “hyper” rather than “femininity” or “masculinity.” Hyper femininity and hyper masculinity in cosplay should be thought of in terms of an idealized body type where, in most cases, hyper feminine bodies have slender limbs, small waists, and large breasts, and hyper masculine bodies have large muscles, square jawlines, and narrow hips (Figs. 1 and 2).

Fig. 1

(Costume by Emerald L. King; photography and editing by Nyxling Photography/Harley Bird)

The author dressed as Gladio from Final Fantasy XV

Fig. 2

(Costume by Emerald L. King; photography and editing by Fiathriel)

The author dressed as Tamamo no Mae from Warriors Orochi

2 2.5D En Travesti

En travesti is a theatrical term which denotes the performance of a character by a performer of the opposite gender. The term has its roots in opera, plays, and ballet and it builds on the long tradition of banning women from the stage in both European and Japanese theatrical productions including Jacobean theater, castrati opera, kabuki, noh, and bunraku puppetry. It could also be applied to drag or pantomime and by extension, cosplay. The term is most likely a bastardization of the French travistir, disguise (Speake and LaFlaur 1999), or perhaps of the Italian travestire, which has the same meaning, to disguise or rather to transform one’s appearance by dressing up. There are also links to the term “travesty”—a parody or imitation.

In 2009, Craig Norris and Jason Bainbridge proposed that “unlike other fannish dressing-up [such as wearing merchandise or pins], cosplay is closer to drag” (n.p). Frenchy Lunning (2011) and Nicolle Lamerichs (2011) also made similar suggestions in their early cosplay scholarship. I prefer to think of cosplay in terms of pantomime, particularly as pantomime has space for beautiful boys in the figure of the Principal Boy and humorous parody, satire, and drag in the form of the Dame. Shirley Ardener (2005, p. 120) provides two descriptions of British pantomime from the 1970s and the 1990s:

A romantically farcical fairy tale set to music, peopled with men dressed as women, women dressed as men, humans dressed as animals and packed with spectacle and slap stick, topical jokes and old chestnuts, community singing and audience participation.

A bewildering mix of comedy, “drag,” audience participation and topical jokes. In the panto, the man dressed as a woman is, of course, known as a Dame, while the young woman who dresses like a young man is The Principal Boy.

This description of pantomime could also be applied to cosplay competition skits such as those performed at the WCS finals. For WCS competitors perform (either on live on stage or, in 2021 and 2022, on film) a two minute and forty second skit usually with a vocal track, soundtrack, and video background. These skits may reference popular culture and fandom in-jokes and often include martial arts, tragic love stories, costume changes, and magic or illusion.

While there is some crossover with makeup techniques and parody between drag and cosplay, as Rachel Leng (2013, p. 89) asserts, “[many] cosplayers insist that crossplay is distinct from drag.” Further, as shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race has become more mainstream, there is a persistent notion that “drag queens […] typically connotes men crossdressing as an exhibition of self-identity” (Leng 2013, p. 90). This notion erases the performances of women, transmen, transwomen, a-gender, and non-binary individuals who also perform in drag as drag kings, faux-queens, and practitioners of bio-drag, not to mention non-binary and genderfluid queens and kings. Although drag queens have been embraced by a mainstream consciousness, the same cannot be said for their drag king brothers and other siblings. Further, numerous comments made by RuPaul’s Drag Race’s (2009 onwards) host RuPaul over the years have also led to trans and non-binary practitioners of drag being excluded from mainstream ideas of drag and crossdressing.¹¹ To make drag the “point from which all discussion of crossdressing follows simply reinstates the presumption of the male as universal” (Ferris 1993, p. 6).

Much of the focus of crossdressing, particularly in performance studies of stage and screen, is on men wearing dresses. Writing in 1993, Lesley Ferris (p. 6) noted that “much of the available material on crossdressing has a straightforward bias for male-to-female transformation.” Although statistically there are more female and femme presenting cosplay practitioners¹² than male and or masculine presenting practitioners, research into “crossplay” also seems to concentrate on masculine bodies in femme clothing. So too does mainstream media reporting, for example in 2014, when The Daily Mail covered Melbourne Oz Comic Con, focusing their report on three muscular men in the garb of petite, female characters (Lewis 2014) while more recently, the South China Morning Post reported on “the Singaporeans who crossdress as anime princesses to relieve boredom of their everyday lives” (Kang 2020). This is despite the fact that it has been noted repeatedly by scholars that most cosplayers who practice crossdressing are women or femme presenting individuals who dress as male or masculine characters (see, e.g., Okabe 2012).

This is not to say that cosplay and drag are completely incompatible. As pointed out by American cosplay practitioner Lizard Leigh, a “nonbinary cosplayer who cosplays the binary,” cosplay and drag borrow heavily from each other.¹³ Indeed for Leigh, thinking of cosplay as a style of drag helped them to come to terms with wearing hyper feminine gowns in spite of their non-binary identity.¹⁴ As Judith Butler (1993, p. 26) notes, “what is ‘performed’ in drag is, of course, the sign […] which is not the same as the body it figures.” In this way we are able to see that, just as cosplay is not universal, neither is drag. There is the lounge room tv stream on demand drag of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the “raw kind of drag that showcases the liminal space between tender and tough, pain and pleasure, masculine and feminine” (Hobson 2013, p. 36). As Nicolle Lamerichs (2018, p. 211) notes, “cosplay and crossplay give us a different view of drag, which here is not confined to gender or political interventions but involves a range of aesthetic practices.” This is where terms such as josō and dansō which focus on the gendering of clothing items rather than their wearers are useful. This may allow for a reading of cosplay as a system of dressing up that goes beyond gender binaries for both the practitioners and the characters they dress as it is not the cosplayer who is gendered, but their clothes.

While cosplay, and other outlandish and alternative modes of dress such as lolita, punk, goth, historical recreation, or fantasy live action role play (LARP), are now discussed in terms of drag, it might be just as easy to turn to other acts of crossdressing in performance including, as noted above, kabuki, or the Takarazuka Review. Crossdressing on the stage has a long history around the world and for remarkably similar reasons. In Shakespearian England, the roles of women were taken by boys and youths; in Tokugawa Japan a similar replacement of young women with young boys occurred on the kabuki stage to stop prostitution rings—however, it would become evident that beautiful young boys were as readily prostituted as their sisters (see Isaka 2016, p. 16).

In the early 1900s, the Takarazuka Review was opened as an attraction at the end of the newly built Hankyu rail line. Initially simply a novelty, the all-women review was set up in direct opposition to kabuki. In an interview from 2000, Takarazuka playwright Ogita Kōichi pointed out that Takarazuka’s success lay in the fact that it is ultimately a “fantasy, a fictional creation,” which is why it has existed for so many years (Nakamura and Matsuo, p. 136). In the same way that cosplay and 2.5D exist only in a set zone, Ogita notes that both the otoko-yaku (who portray the male roles) and the onna-yaku (who portray the female roles) are “constructs that exist within a particular fantasy [or fictional space]” (Nakamura and Matsuo, p. 136). In the 1900s, kabuki had moved from middleclass entertainment of the 1600s and 1700s to an entertainment for educated elite. The Takarazuka Review is now an established and respected institution with five different troupes (see, e.g., Robertson 1998). Where kabuki has only recently embraced anime into its repertoire—circa 2015 with One Piece and later in 2018 with Naruto¹⁵—the Takarazuka Review has long performed everything from classical Japanese texts such as Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji (circa 1000s) alongside anime and manga titles as disparate as The Rose of Versailles (1972–1973) and Ace Attorney (2016–2019) in addition to all singing all dancing productions of Shakespeare’s plays, and political intrigues including works based on JFK, Abraham Lincoln and Che Guevara.¹⁶

In kabuki, as in Drag Race drag, an all-male cast alters their appearance, stance, voice, and physiology to create hyper feminine characters. Indeed, there is a commonly held maxim that kabuki onnagata (actresses) are “more feminine than any woman” could possibly be.¹⁷ Interestingly, Ogita, when describing the appeal of the Takarazuka otoko-yaku, noted that they remain so popular because the otoko-yaku are “not men” (Nakamura and Matsuo, p. 136). Drag, kabuki, and the Takarazuka Review are a perfected fantasy, staging idealized performances of femininity and masculinity. It might be worth noting that a Takarazuka otoko-yaku takes on the role (yaku) of a man (otoko), while the kabuki onnagata performs or embodies the form (kata) of a woman (onna).

This comparison of masculinity and femininity performance can be extended to cosplayers who wear dansō and josō. Even though all cosplayers will wear some form of makeup, foundation garments, wigs, and costume, cosplayers who crossdress, particularly those who wear josō, are held to a higher standard (see, e.g., Leng and King). Even in a “poorly” executed cosplay, if the key elements (a moon tiara, a ninja head band, a pirate hat, etc.) are in place, the character will probably still be recognized and appreciated by the viewing public. In costumes that involve some kind of gender performance, these audience reactions are likely to be less accommodating. Indeed, it is widely acknowledged that many cosplayers have stopped dressing up as characters outside of their gender as a result of online bullying and harassment (see, e.g., Han 2020); as Leng reports “it takes a real man to dress like a 10-year-old girl” (Leng 2013, p. 89).

3 Creating the Body Cosplay

While dansō is commonplace among WCS representatives, josō is comparatively rare. In 2017 Team Spain’s Tobi Cosplay dressed as Xelloss from Slayers (1995), a crossdressing trickster priest wearing a qipao style dress for the Ohs Street parade (an optional event for WCS delegates). While there are no rules against josō in WCS, it has long been rumored that it was at the very least frowned upon. This unspoken rule seems to have been broken in 2018 when Team Mexico, Banana Cospboys, won the championship with their energetic, no holds barred, Street Fighter (circa 1987) skit which featured a fight between Chun Li and Dhalsim.¹⁸ However, in both 2017 and 2018, we are looking at one individual out of a field of 64 cosplayers and a possible 192 costumes worn over the ten-day event. In 2019, Hart was not the only cosplayer crossdressing in josō, nor did he restrict his crossdressing to the frilly skirts he wore alongside Garnet Runestar at the Meiji-Mura photo shooting even. Hart and Runestar’s championships costumes were from the 2015 fantasy game Bloodborne. In this skit, Hart took to the stage dressed as Yharnam, Pthumerian Queen, and the ghostly avatar of the city of Yharnam. At the same event at Meiji-Mura, a group of representatives and alumni (returning cosplay guests who had represented their countries in previous years) had prearranged to appear as figures from Naruto (manga 1999–2014). The group included Luis and Lalo from Banana Cospboys, attending as alumni, and team Australia 2019, K and Wirru.

Alisa Solomon posits that “men dressed as women often parody gender, women dressed as men, on the other hand, tend to perform gender” (Ferris 1993, p. 13). This is evident in the figures of K (wearing a stripped down version of Naruto’s orange ninja suit with a black, sleeveless shirt) and Wirru (wearing a handmade pair of silicon breasts and hip padding in order to portray Tsunade’s curves). The pair form a study in contrasts. Both K and Wirru are of a similar height and had the muscles of martial arts practitioners—something that they played up in their championship winning Monster Hunter: World (2018) costumes.¹⁹ Where K bound and shaped her chest into pecs, Wirru wore massive faux breasts. Where K’s makeup subtly reshaped her jaw for an angular appearance, Wirru’s painted lips and false eyelashes played up to a Barbie doll ideal of feminine beauty. Throughout the events of WCS 2019, K took on the classic comedy “straight man” role to Wirru’s “funny” guy as evidenced by the fact that Wirru’s large breasts were hollowed out and filled with snacks and a supply of cooling sheets to help combat the moist Nagoya heat.²⁰

Over the years, dansō practitioners have built up a knowledge base of how to crossdress, with online resources dating to at least 2002—universal advice includes: don’t bind with sports bandages; contour everything.²¹ More recently, cosplayers have drawn from drag king and trans-masc dressing practices including wearing medical binders and using packers to give a desired crotch bulge.²² As might be expected, josō increasingly borrows from drag. In 2018, as part of the WCS costume judging before a panel of judges made up of the organizers from each country, Luis from Banana Cospboys explained that he learned how to pad, tuck, apply makeup and use body shading to achieve Chun Li’s iconic curves (personal observation, Nagoya 2018). In the same year, Wirru constructed his first pair of false breasts and hip pads to achieve Shironui Mai’s (King of Fighters, circa 1994) B85-W54-H90 cm body.²³ Luis and Wirru were later guests at the same convention where, dressed as Chun Li and Mai, they staged a karate fight, highlighting each cosplayer’s physical ability and the durability of their costumes.

It is important to note that it is not just male cosplayers who use these techniques to achieve hyper feminine body shapes. For her 2020 Clara Cow’s Cosplay Cup (C4) UK qualifying skit, Nomes Cosplay also crafted a large pair of breasts which she labeled her “new breast friends.”²⁴ Nomes was dressed as Rebecca from One Piece (manga 1997~), wearing little more than a gold chainmail bikini.²⁵ Similarly, Svetlana, better known as Kamui Cosplay, has tutorials for padding her hips and thighs, and for magically increasing her bust size with bras and clever armor design.²⁶ In her bra hack video, Svetlana explains that she believes the reason for the hyper-feminine proportions of the characters that she portrays is that they are “actually designed by men because they’re often very sexy, and curvy,” and so she uses “all kinds of different tricks to turn [her] tiny, little, boobies into […] monsters!”²⁷ These techniques can be further enhanced through gesture. Svetlana comically strokes and plays with her new enhanced figure, playing into tropes of objectified female bodies in popular culture. In contrast, Nomes wears her fake breasts and gold bikini to go into battle with sword and shield, bodily throwing herself at her opponent in ways that both subvert expected feminine behavior and reinforce barbarian warrior woman stereotypes.

Given the movement that Luis and Wirru needed for their fighting girl characters and the skimpy nature of Nomes’ Rebecca cosplay, the hyper feminine silhouettes are made with various forms of padding hidden in bras, body suits, and skin color tights. For her stage performance with her partner Minnie Cosplay, Nomes wore a nude leotard for safety so that nothing would slip while she was being thrown around on stage. Although these are skimpy costumes, the wearers are often fully covered. In contrast, Hart’s Yharnam, Pthumerian Queen relies on corsetry to achieve the figure’s feminine curves—the illusion here is not of nudity but of constraint. In another contract, the Pthumerian Queen is not a stereotypical sexy game character, but a pregnant antagonist sporting motherly curves.²⁸ The Pthumerian Queen is clad in a long white gown with Victorian and Tudor elements. The many ruffles and layers of her dress drape to draw attention to her pregnant belly. Hart is known for his use and construction of corsetry, and detailed foundation and support garments which he uses to sculpt his body into Ken doll smooth masculine torsos and feminine bodies with impossible breast to waist to hip ratios. For his Pthumerian Queen Hart designed and constructed a waist cinching corset, a set of Victorian combination underwear, and a set of hoops and petticoats all died “vileblood” red.²⁹ Over this he wore a multi-layered white gown with full train, veil, and Elizabethan style ruff—all of which were distressed and aged. A further departure from the curves discussed above, the Pthumerian Queen is pregnant—Hart also constructed a “baby bump” in matching blood red satin. One of the key points of Hart and Garnet Runestar’s skit which won second place in the 2019 WCS was the shocking moment when a babe was torn from the Pthumerian Queen’s belly, revealing a fall of Swarovski crystal encrusted blood and gore.

While the figure of the mother in cosplay is outside of the scope of this piece, it is important to note that it is not just sexy curvy bodies that are being constructed and showcased by cosplay practitioners in cosplay communities worldwide as they create hyper feminine bodies that show multiple elements of womanhood and femininity. I noted above that studies on crossdressing often focus on male and masculine bodies in dresses, making this display of feminine tropes almost transgressive. I would also be curious to see further research and study done on pregnant bodies in cosplay and parents who cosplay, particularly when the cosplayer has been part of the hobby from a young age. As noted previously, cosplayers of all genders use padding and corsetry to construct and shape fantastic and hyper feminine curves. In this chapter, I have focused on costuming techniques rather than more permanent surgical options that some cosplay practitioners might choose to pursue, but these methods are just as valid.³⁰ Just as cosplay and motherhood/parenthood needs further examination, cosplay and cosmetic surgery also needs further exploration.

Readers familiar with American cosplayers such as Yaya Han or New Zealand cosplayer Jessica Nigri might ask why I have not mentioned their enhanced figures here. In 2020, Han was appointed as a Support Ambassador for the WCS and has assisted with judging for WCS spin off events such as the 2021 Cosplay de Umi Gomi Zero award. In her book Yaya Han’s World of Cosplay, Han spends three chapters discussing body issues, online harassment, and racism in cosplay. While Han does not address any surgery that she may or may not have, she should not have to. In 2012, at her wit’s end after years of receiving comments such as:

“Sorry but no. She ONLY got famous because of her chest”

“Man if it weren’t for the those tits I probably would’ve never followed you”

“She’s not a cosplayer, she’s an attention-whore”³¹

Han made a parody Facebook page dedicated to her breasts for an April Fool’s Day joke as a way to respond to her work being devalued because of her cup size.³²

4 Clothes Maketh the Man

Many of the techniques used for creating hyper feminine cosplay costumes can also be applied to create hyper masculine silhouettes. After all, as Lamerichs (2018, p. 214) points out, in cosplay “the body itself becomes a type of medium, a fleshy texture that can be molded.” In the same way that chests can be padded and lifted, genitals can be tucked, and waists can be clinched in shoulders can be broadened, breasts can be bound down, and trousers can be stuffed. Nomes’ busty warrior woman Rebecca may have helped her and her partner win their way to representing the UK at C4, but for WCS 2021, she dressed as Cloud from Final Fantasy VII: Remake (2020) alongside Minney’s Zack—two male soldiers.³³ By wearing bulky pauldrons on her shoulders, Nomes was able to create the illusion of broad shoulders and more narrow, masculine hips. Her hips were further narrowed through the use of belts and high-waisted pants. Although both Nomes and Minney are effectively wearing the same costume, which appear identical on screen, there are subtle differences in the placement and cut of elements such as the trousers which help to create this illusion.

Where Nomes achieved Rebecca’s curves with silicone and padding, she achieved Cloud’s masculine form with clever costume design and careful contouring. On the other hand, Minney, her partner, has spent the last ten years sculpting his muscular body with a careful regime of exercise. Indeed, Nomes and Minney’s third place winning skit was filled with references to the Final Fantasy game, including a real-life version of the squat mini-game that occurs in Chapter 9. On Minney’s Be More Shonen website, he explains how he went from skinny, drug taking “weeb” to the protagonist of his own anime, crediting Dragonball Z (1989–1996) for the inspiration to change his life.³⁴ In recent years, there has been a movement toward cosplay fitness accounts on social media such as Instagram and TikTok. These accounts showcase cosplayers of all ages and genders who spend as much time crafting and honing their physiques as they spend crafting and creating the costumes that they later adorn them with. The hyper masculine, muscular bodies favored by American comics produced by Marvel and DC can be difficult to achieve. Just as cosplay practitioners in josō costumes will create false breasts, those in dansō will create full body muscle suits to wear under their clothes. For those who do not wish to follow Minney’s call to be more shȏnen, it is possible to buy silicon masculine chests for those who can afford them, and novelty t-shirts printed with naked male torsos for those who cannot, which can also be worn as an “event safe” naked upper body.

However, what happens when a body is already deemed hyperfeminine, to use Murnen and Byrne’s term? In September 2021, cosplayer Mia Rios was banned from TikTok after she was accused of appropriating and sexualizing Japanese school girl characters such as Asuka Langley (a red haired German character) from Neon Genesis Evangellion (anime, 1995) (Montgomery 2021). Rios’ depiction did not add adult curves to her body—her Asuka is that of a young girl wearing a white, high necked school blouse, a pale blue almost teal school uniform with wide suspenders over her shoulders, and knee length black socks—her cosplay does not compare to any of the female and women characters mentioned so far. And yet, Rios TikTok was flooded with comments that stated that the way she was wearing the modest costume was akin to wearing sexy lingerie, not because of added padding or intended sexualization but because Rios is a Black woman (Rios cited in Montgomery). There is a long history in both Japan and the West of sexualizing Black women. Rios noted that “my race adds a sexual connotation to literally anything that I do” (Rios cited in Montgomery). This incident is not the first time that a Black cosplayer has been targeted, but it did spark a global response that bled into the world of Japanese kawaii street fashion which led to model, musician and activist Kurebayashi to make a statement that spread across TikTok, Instagram and Twitter before being picked up by sites such as Yahoo Japan.³⁵

We will see that there are few rules when it comes to the act of cosplay, but one that has increasingly widespread is “do not do Yellow or Blackface.” Unfortunately, there are numerous examples of white or light skinned cosplayers tanning or darkening their skin in a manner that is all too close to Minstrel show style black face. Indeed, when he first dressed as Dhalsim, Lalo of Banana Cospboys darkened his skin with makeup. In subsequent wearings, he has instead opted to color his skin blue as befitting a Hindi deity. Perhaps one of the most well-known incidents of Blackface in cosplay occurred in 2019 during the finals of the international Euro Cosplay Championships held at MCM Comic Con in London (see, e.g., Gerkin 2019). The French representative, Alice Livanart won the Coupe de France de cosplay with her cosplay of Pyke from League of Legends. Pyke is an undead “drowned one” who appears to be a muscled, Black man with heavy facial scarring and glowing dead eyes. Livanart is a slender white woman. Part of her transformation into Pyke’s muscular form was achieved with similar methods used by Nomes introduced above—a muscle suit under tight-fitting gray trousers. The face, arms, and torso were created from cast silicone to make a literal skin-suit. Euro Cosplay Championships and MCM ultimately decided to ban the Pyke costume, inviting Livanart to compete in a different outfit. However, in repeated statements Livanart claimed that she should be able to compete in the Pyke costume as she had made it from a place of love, claiming that it was not Blackface, and that it had cost her over €3000 (see, e.g., Martin 2019). The Pyke costume is well-made garment which succeeds in completely changing Livanart’s face and body shape. Indeed, unlike Lalo who has changed the makeup he wears with Dhalsim, Livanart still regularly guests at cosplay events and photo shoot events wearing the Pyke suit. While Livanart claimed that her costume came from a place of love and a desire to honor the character, Black cosplayers point out that this does not feel like an act of respect but rather one of parody or derision (see, e.g., Gaines 2020). A white person who changes their skin tone by Black-, Yellow-, or Red-face is able to wash off their makeup, but at the end of the day, a Black person or an Asian person or an Indigenous person cannot wash off the racism and prejudice that they experience purely as a result of their skin tone. Writing for Medium, Allison Gaines notes that:

The goal of cosplaying is to portray a character, but we do not need to change our skin color for our friends and family to recognize which persona we chose. When white people feel the need to wear Blackface, they participate in racism. In doing so, they also reveal they do not truly understand their selected persona. (Gaines 2020)

5 Following the Rules

While there may not be many rules attached to the act of cosplayer, there are often rules and regulations at the events where cosplay takes place. Regardless of where in the world they occur, cosplay and popular culture events will have restrictions as to what kind of costumes and props can be carried at the convention or on the event floor. These often include weight and length restrictions for props, or mandating that realistic looking prop firearms must not be used. More recently, events have placed restrictions on the wearing of uniforms belonging to existing military or armed forces and offensive symbols such as the swastika or the hinomaru flag.³⁶ In 2016, Tokyo Comic Con caused global fan outrage when they announced that josō cosplay would not be allowed at their fledgling event.³⁷ Early in 2021, Australian convention Supanova was blacklisted by many fans and previous attendees when they were slow to react to a stall selling white supremacist merchandise (Taylor 2021; Walker 2021). In the uproar that followed, many brought up Supanova’s rules for cosplay competitions in the early 2000s that prohibited crossdressing as Supanova was a “family event.”³⁸ It should be noted that at the time, it was illegal for men to wear women’s clothing after dark in some Australian states (Angle 2011). While this article is not concerned with legislation of crossdressing, it is of interest since what happens in the real world is reflected on stage and on the 2.D page. For instance, Jacobean priests were instructed to preach against crossdressing (Howard 1993, p. 29). The French law banning women from wearing men’s clothing that Marlene Dietrich was threatened with in 1933 was not overturned until 2013 (Bach 2013, p. 174). A similar law was also overturned in Turkey in that same year. While we may concentrate on ideals of a 2.5D realm, real world events have an effect on cosplay conventions and fan spaces—consider, for example, the changes made to New Zealand convention rules in the wake of the 2019 Christchurch shooting.³⁹

At the World Cosplay Summit, cosplay practitioners are governed by two sets of rules: the rules for each country competing in the WCS finals and those for event attendees. Event attendees are further governed by rules for press and photographers and for cosplay practitioners. Pre-COVID-19, WCS was a ten-day summit with public and private cosplay events, culminating in a skit competition between the representative nations. In 2020, a 24-hour online retrospective was held, and awards were given for the best skit, the best costume, and the best interpretation of an anime, manga, or game series in the event’s seventeen-year history. In 2021, a weekend event was held online, with small in-person events held live in Nagoya. Instead of live skits, the 2021 WCS featured videos and short films submitted by the thirty countries who opted to participate.

Tokyo Comic Con no longer has rulings on crossdressing for its attendees, but WCS does. These rules do not prohibit josō or dansō but ask that practitioners “do not harm the image of the corresponding character.”⁴⁰ Face and body hair should be “dealt with appropriately” and the use of wigs is recommended.⁴¹ All cosplay participants are asked to uphold “morals” by wearing, for example, tights and modesty-pants under short skirts or kimono, and to not show too much chest—regardless of gender.⁴² Those with masculine chests are allowed to be topless but are warned not to make a nuisance of themselves and to cover up in between photo shoots. WCS traditionally takes place in Nagoya in temperatures that often rise above 38°C with high humidity—punishing conditions for anyone, as viewers of the 2020/1 Tokyo Olympics will remember, but downright dangerous for someone who is wearing multiple layers or fabric that does not allow for air flow such as tight-fitting nylon or faux leather. The 2021 WCS attendee rules also include guidelines for preventing heat stroke and for mask wearing by photographers (at all times), and cosplay practitioners at all times apart from when posing for photos; and then social distancing should be maintained.⁴³

Conversely, the rules for the cosplay representatives taking part in the WCS do not have regulations regarding josō or dansō, although they do mandate that modesty should prevail.⁴⁴ Indeed, as skin colored stretch fabrics in different weights of nylon have become more available, it is increasingly easier to wear a full bodysuit in a nude tone to preserve modesty or to wear one in a fantasy skin tone (such as blue, purple or green) to avoid making a mess with body paint.⁴⁵ As part of the events of WCS, a smaller “Japan only” event called “Cosplayer of the Year” is held as part of the summit’s events. This event recognizes various skill types including performance, and josō and dansō. The 2021 winner of the dansō award noted in their acceptance speech that people who are afraid of trying dansō because they are small of stature should give it a try as it will make them feel powerful.⁴⁶

6 Final Curtain Call

This chapter has focused on “ideal” cosplay bodies rather than parodies such as the pantomime Dame style beardy-school-girl worn by, for example, Ladybeard, Richard Margary, an Australian entertainer and pro-wrestler based in Japan, or Japanese cosplayer Kobayashi Hideaki better known as Sailor Suit Ojiisan (Coello 2014). Team Australia 2021, Elvis Ditto and Tall Joke, embraced this parody style wholeheartedly with their Pop Team Epic (Poputepipikku, 2014~) sketch show style skit.⁴⁷ Their video culminates with the pair removing their cardboard-box masks to reveal a pair of pale, beardy guys in cotton school girl outfits. Throughout their skit and in videos that they created as part of their tenure as Team Australia 2021, the pair made a series of self-deprecating jokes, constantly putting their own costumes and skit down due to the cardboard masks and low production value. However, it was these very cardboard costumes that set the skit apart and led to its being selected for submission to the WCS 2021 video finals.

One of the reasons that I limit my study of cosplay to competitions is that at these events, the notion of “good” or “bad” is not a subjective judgment but one that is weighed against a set of event and competition rules. Indeed, whether a cosplay outfit is “good” or “bad” is meaningless if taken out of the context of a peer review by members of the subcultural community. Leng (2013, p. 104) proposes that for crossplayers in the United States, success is measured “by compliments from other cosplayers as well as the number of photography requests.” In his work with a group of Japanese cosplayers, Daisuke Okabe (2012, p. 238) notes that a “cosplayer’s assessment of her own costume is meaningless on its own”; instead, within the Japanese cosplay community, beautiful crossdressing and costumes that recreate a “character’s appearance down to even subtle details” are “particularly appreciated.”

Cosplay brings together a wide range of skills and arts that in other costume related industries such as film, television, and stage productions are performed by a range of multiple artisans rather than a single hobbyist. In competitions such as the WCS, costumes and sets must be constructed by the wearer. A cosplayer is a makeup artist, a wig dresser, a milliner, a designer, a pattern drafter, a cutter, a tailor or dressmaker, an armorer, a prop fabricator, a prop master, a cobbler, a dresser, a script writer, an audio engineer, a stage designer, a videographer, a director, and a soundtrack designer. More recently, cosplayers are fitness experts, personal trainers, and social media influencers. While there are cosplay practitioners whose sole income comes from cosplay, most do cosplay as a hobby or as an act of fannish solidarity.

While terms such as hyperfeminity and hypermasculinity have long been used in relationship and sexuality studies, as this chapter demonstrates, these terms can also be used to describe the hyper feminine and hyper masculine costumes created by cosplayers regardless of their “mundane” gender outside of cosplay.