Playing with identity: gender, performance and feminine agency in cosplay

ABSTRACT

Women, as producers and consumers, want both to recognize themselves and be seen in fantasy and science fiction genres. When consuming these entertainments, female fans seek and respond to characters that reflect their experience of self and allow for their desire to tell their own, original stories, regardless of assigned, or assumed gender. Women’s assumption of agency in their embrace of characters across the gendered spectrum is particularly visible in the world of cosplay, where women participate in trans-media ‘produsage’ constructing and performing either faithful representations of canonical media characters, or creating new versions of those same figures. Cosplay communities allow for and embrace both crossplay and gender-bent cosplay, practices which allow women the agency to open new doors in representation of gendered identity. This study will examine aspirational fantasy-character identity construction from the perspective of female cosplayers. With a grounding in essential elements of interdisciplinary beauty theory, including the work of Valéry, Etcoff and Butler, as well as the integration of Axel Brun’s concept of produsage (2006), this paper will use personal interviews with cosplayers assigned the female gender at birth to interrogate how fan interaction with producers creates an opportunity for feminine agency.

KEYWORDS:

• Cosplay
• crossplay
• gender
• gender-bent
• identity
• produsage

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Aubin, Leanne. Interview by author. Personal Interview. Branson, Missouri. 24 February 2017. In interviews, I always give cosplayers the option to choose how they identify themselves. Therefore, some cosplayers will be identified with both given and surname, some with just their given name, and some by the name they have chosen for performances. The fact that many female cosplayers have invented performance names for themselves adds to my belief that cosplay offers women a unique chance to create new identities.

2. Please see: Beauty, Virtue, Power and Success in Venezuela 1850–2015. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016.

3. I choose to focus here on the experience of U.S. based cosplayers, as I have found that the experience of Latin American cosplayers generally, and Mexican cosplayers in particular, differs in some fundamental ways from U.S. cosplay. In addition, I am aware of significant differences in the practices and perceptions of Asian cosplay communities.

4. While I find that many of my observations here are relevant to younger women and girls, the Institutional Review Board approval for this project from my university is currently for adult cosplayers only. I hope to expand the scope of this work in the future. In addition, I want to note that for the purpose of this study I will be talking about cosplayers who presented themselves as cis-gendered women, not because the experience of female-identified persons is unworthy of study, but because it adds depth and complexity to the subject which I do not have the time to address adequately here.

5. The way that trans men and women participate in cosplay by choosing to manipulate or showcase the elements of their second and third bodies in a way that best represents their first bodies, deserves further investigation by scholars in the future.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols

Dr. Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols is a professor of Spanish and Latin American Cultural Studies at Drury University. Nichols specializes in the Popular Culture of the Americas, Women’s Studies and International Beauty Practices. Nichols is the author of four books: a cultural encyclopedia of popular culture in Latin America, an encyclopedia of world beauty practices and the recently published Beauty, Virtue, Power and Success in Venezuela: 1850–2015. Her most recent book chapters include ‘Virgin Venuses: Beauty and Purity for “Public” Women in Venezuela’ and ‘Ultra-Feminine Women of Power: Beauty and the State in Argentina’ both in Women in Politics and Media: Perspectives from Nations in Transition. Currently, Nichols is researching cosplay, gender and identity in the United States and Latin America. Her article ‘Youth Cosplay and Produsage: Creative Rejection of Social Norms’ has recently been accepted for publication. She has written numerous articles on cosplay for web-based publications and blogs at www.cosplaymom.com