The joy of dressing up in a costume is as old as time. This timeline traces a history of cosplay.
Cosplayers experiment with gender, self-expression and identity. But that doesn’t stop once a convention is over — they carry those experiments into everyday life too. Crossplay and genderbending are therefore not marginal phenomena within a subculture, but necessary experiments in new social structures. In that light, cosplay can be seen as a form of activism.
But cosplay also shows up in activism: costumes used to make a political point. Think, for example, of the red robes and white bonnets seen at protests for women’s rights. They reference the series The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood. The story is set in a fictional society where women’s rights are severely restricted. At the other end of the spectrum, you’ll find the far-right demonstrators who dressed as knights during the Unite The Right rallies, under the banner ‘alt-knights’ (a play on alt-right).
Thanks to their colourful costumes, this kind of cosplay protest easily grabs the media’s attention. It also makes it clear — from the demonstrators’ point of view — who’s on the right side of the conflict, and who’s the villain. Here, cosplay projects the moral framework of the source material onto reality.
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In cosplay, you can take on any role you like. And that’s exactly what cosplayers do: a shy person plays a fearless superhero, a slight person gives themselves an impressive set of muscles, a boy shows up as a glorious woman. In cosplay, the body is malleable — cosplayers are often...
Cosplay is more than just a costume. The various accessories that bring a character to life play a major role too: from weaponry to wands, from wigs to make-up, and from jewellery to shoes.