Male cosplayers

I have been cosplaying for a while now, and have been to a couple of conventions, mainly in London. As a result of thus hobby, I look up many cosplaying-related videos on youtube and other sites. I have noticed that a huge majority of the cosplaying community is female, and that about half of those like to participate in 'crossplaying', i.e, cosplaying as a boy, usually doing things like binding breasts to look more realistic and putting on make up to look more masculine. OK, that's fine, most of us do it in the cosplay universe, and it seems pretty normal. No one usually amkes a fuss about it at all. But what about male cosplayers? They are much more rare. Even though in the western cosplaying culture cosplaying basically started with boys dressing up in Star Trek uniforms, ever since the Japanese way of cosplaying has come in boys have not participated as much. However, certain cosplayers have been adopted by men, and are the regulars when it comes to the time for the man-geek to raid the local converntion.

Look manly right? That's the point of men cosplaying (!) So the girls can look on in awe, boosting the man-geek's ego. But what about when a man doesn't cosplay as a shirtless warrior? What if he cosplays as Sailor Moon or a Pony from My Little Pony? No one seems to mind that either, no one at all. It's a regular occurrence, male crossplayers, and everyone had accepted it just as much as the female crossplaying. So what's the problem? Nothing. I love all cosaplying of any kind, and I think its all wonderful that anyone can dress up as their favourite character without being loo at weirdly. The problem - its not a problem and more of a 'wtf' moment - is shown in the video below me:



See that? Its a male cosplayer. What are the girls doing to him? Ripping him apart. Who is he cosplaying? Italy, Italy from Hetalia Axis Powers. If you do not know this character or this show you may realise why the girls have gone so crazy over him. Hetalia is an Anime full of gay-jokes, yaoi situations and general mucking about. I love it, everyone (?) loves it, but sometimes a boy likes it, and this blows the little fan-girls minds to smithereens. Not only can they believe that he is cosplaying a character from Hetalia, but that he is cosplaying Italy, a character who is certainly not as manly and masculine as Ichigo or Dante or even Germany in the same show (and trust me, Germany is pretty fanservice-ish). This poor boy, who only wanted to express his love for this character by cosplaying him, is being ambushed by a sea of groping hands and perverted smiles. Ok, I would be excited if I saw a man who liked Hetalia, but sometimes fan-girls go too far. I would not have angered myself over it if it came to the point where the girl asks "Where's your boobs?"

This happens more often than not. It's happened with male cosplayers cosplaying characters like Kyo from Fruits Basket, Harry and Ron from Harry Potter and many other characters from fandoms that have been invaded and taken over by girls. Games, sci-fi and Anime used to be concidered mainly a mans thing, and as much as I love equality, I think we have tipped the scale far too much the other way. Boys are sometimes afraid to dress up at conventions because they fear being harassed by rabid fan-girls, and they usually do, depending on the character. I think many more boys and men would cosplay if it weren't for this fear, if it wasn't for the fan-girls clawing at their hair trying to get a whiff of masculinity. Girls can sniff you out you know. They know what a real man smells like.

So my last comment is that I don't really mind what your opinion of this situation is, all I want to say is that I think that there could be more done to make cosplaying a much more comfortable hobby for boys - and in some cases - girls too.