tiafernandes: cosplay

, by Tia

Cosplay, Gender, and Representation: Is Female Representation in Video Games Increasing the Likelihood of Harassment within the Cosplay Community?

I attended my first cosplay convention at the age of eleven. By then, cosplay was already an extensive practice, with the term itself (a portmanteau of ‘costume’ and ‘play’) being coined in 1983 (Yeinjee.com, 2008). Now, the trend is perhaps bigger than ever. I recently attended London MCM Expo, where a record-breaking 130,560 people gathered (Mcmcomiccon.com, 2015); many of these were in cosplay, becoming the characters they admire for a day, despite differences in race, gender, and so on. A large amount of female cosplayers choosing to cosplay within their gender at these gatherings tend to cosplay revealing or ‘sexy’ outfits. However, this is unsurprising; research has found that female characters in video games alone are far more likely to wear sexualised outfits, with 41% being ‘voluptuous’ or unrealistically large-breasted. (Beasley and Standley, 2002.) A further study in 2005 (Downs and Stacey) found that female characters in video games are much more likely than males to wear ‘inappropriate’ clothing that does not fit their role within the game.

Despite this, a large number of cosplayers choose to wear these hypersexualised or inappropriate outfits and treat it as empowering; it is their own choice to don a leather miniskirt or a fur-trimmed crop top, rather than the choice of a designer behind a screen aiming to use the sex appeal of the feminine form for popularity. Yet the community is continually divided between those who call out these ‘cosplay girls’, treating them as fake or attention-seeking, and those who view the reclamation of these sexualised outfits as automatic permission to harass, assault and objectify the cosplayer.

A survey taken by Asselin (2014) at San Diego Comic Con found that 13% of the comics fans and professionals who responded had received unsavoury sexual comments, and 8% were groped, assaulted, or raped. With these kinds of statistics, it is not difficult to believe that many cosplayers know at least one story of harassment or assault within the community, either of an event that they’ve experienced themselves or witnessed happening to others. In fact, this kind of behaviour has become so common that large conventions such as New York Comic Con have developed anti-harassment guidelines under the tagline ‘Cosplay is Not Consent’; urging attendees to ‘keep [their] hands to [themselves]’. (Newyorkcomiccon.com, 2015) Unfortunately, other conventions have not been so proactive, with San Diego Comic Con public relations director David Glanzer responding that changing the policy would give the press a bad impression of the convention, commenting that news media might ask “why do you feel the need to single out this one issue and put signs up about it?” (Glanzer (2014), cited by Waldman (2014)), despite it being an ongoing issue at the event.

One question must be raised; why do some convention attendees feel it is acceptable to harass cosplayers and treat them as objects or prizes? One article written late last year suggests that the cause is that the characters themselves were designed to be sexual beings from the beginning; this causes ‘onlookers [to] view [the cosplayers] as the sexy characters they emulate rather than individuals wearing costumes, who should be treated with respect’ (Romano, 2014). It is easy to assume that the majority of people can and should separate fantasy from reality and understand that the person standing in front of them is not their prized ‘fictional favourite’, but a real human being; however, a study by Driesmans, Vandenbosch and Eggermont (2014) suggests that this is not the case. The sexualisation of females in video games causes us to ‘blur the lines’; both male and female adolescents who played a video game with a sexualised female character were proven more likely to accept sexual harassment and myths concerning rape than adolescents who played the game with a non-sexualised character. The study also found that just fifteen minutes of playing a game with a sexualised character could have negative effects. This may explain the staggering levels of harassment at conventions; the hardcore fans in attendance have most likely spent hours over months (or even years) indulging in and studying their preferred media, thus leading to an extremely hindered ability to distinguish between the fantasy of the characters who are designed and posed by those paid to make them as sexually appealing as possible, and the reality of a human being with rights to their own body who has made a valid choice in what to wear at a cosplay convention. Combined with the true endeavor of the cosplayer, to become the character of their choosing and effectively bring them through the border of fiction into the ‘real world’ for a day, it becomes a disaster. Cosplayer Vivid Vivka explained that she feels “[fans] see this character that they also know and love and [she feels that] they forget that there is a person inside the costume.” (cited by Linde (2014)).

Although more in-depth research could be performed, the multiple studies of academics and the experiences of real-life cosplayers suggest that the sexualisation of characters in popular media could realistically influence the amount of harassment within the cosplay community. Perhaps it is the role of the designer to create less sexualised characters; this could lower the amount of people harboring negative opinions about the sexual nature of characters (as implicated in the study by Driesmans, Vandenbosh and Eggermont), and bringing those opinions into the cosplay community where they manifest as harassment. However, this is not the only factor to blame in this complex situation; the petitions and complaints raised by cosplayers must be addressed and policies updated to ensure the comfort and safety of the attendants who feel that conventions are not doing enough to prevent harassment. In the end, it is the cosplayer who has the right to their own body, and neither hardcore fans nor staff members should ignore the kind of treatment they deem unacceptable.

References

Asselin, J. (2014). How Big of a Problem is Harassment at Comic Conventions? Very Big. | Bitch Media. [online] Bitch Media. Available at: https://bitchmedia.org/post/how-big-a-problem-is-harassment-at-comic-conventions-very-big-survey-sdcc-emerald-city-cosplay-consent [Accessed 17 Nov. 2015].

Beasley, B. and Standley, T. (2015). Shirts vs. Skins: Clothing as an Indicator of Gender Role Stereotyping in Video Games. [online] Available at: http://www.uky.edu/~dlowe2/documents/4.BeasleyStandley2002GenderRoleStereotypinginVid.pdf [Accessed 15 Nov. 2015].

Downs, E. and Smith, S. (2015). Keeping Abreast of Hypersexuality: A Video Game Character Content Analysis authored by Downs, Edward. and Smith, Stacy.. [online] Citation.allacademic.com. Available at: http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/1/4/8/8/pages14888/p14888-18.php [Accessed 15 Nov. 2015].

Driesmans, K., Vandenbosch, L. and Eggermont, S. (2015). Playing a Videogame with a Sexualized Female Character Increases Adolescents’ Rape Myth Acceptance and Tolerance Toward Sexual Harassment. [online] Available at: https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/460419/2/PrePrintVersion.pdf [Accessed 17 Nov. 2015].

Linde, J. (2014). Cosplay Is Not Consent: Exploring the Dark Side of Adult Dress-Up | VICE | United Kingdom. [online] VICE. Available at: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/cosplay-is-not-consent [Accessed 17 Nov. 2015].

Mcmcomiccon.com, (2015). Record crowds join the stars at MCM London Comic Con! | London Comic Con. [online] Available at: http://www.mcmcomiccon.com/london/2015/10/27/record-crowds-join-the-stars-at-mcm-london-comic-con/ [Accessed 14 Nov. 2015].

Newyorkcomiccon.com, (2015). Anti-Harassment Policy - New York Comic Con | October 6 – 9, 2016 | Javits Center. [online] Available at: http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/About/Harassment-Policy/ [Accessed 17 Nov. 2015].

Romano, A. (2014). Cosplay Is Not Consent: The People Fighting Sexual Harassment at Comic Con. [online] Mashable. Available at: http://mashable.com/2014/10/15/new-york-comic-con-harassment/#9NUD06fpPPqG [Accessed 17 Nov. 2015].

Waldman, K. (2014). Comic-Con International Has No Interest in Taking on Sexual Harassment. [online] Slate Magazine. Available at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/06/03/sexual_harassment_at_comic_con_san_diego_convention_says_no_to_a_more_comprehensive.html [Accessed 17 Nov. 2015].

Yeinjee.com, (2008). Nobuyuki (Nov) Takahashi. [online] Available at: http://yeinjee.com/tag/nobuyuki-nov-takahashi/ [Accessed 14 Nov. 2015].

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