Cosplay
Cover Feature: @yayahan
Getting In Character: The Psychology Behind Cosplay
Mindy Weisberger
WithHalloween just around the corner, everyone seems to have costumes on their minds. People who typically wear jeans and T-shirts are suddenly eyeing colorful spandex, capes, wigs and corsets, and are opening their wallets to acquire an outfit that will present them to the world as someone — or something — they’re not.
But for people who cosplay — dress in costumes to role-play characters from movies, TV shows, books, comics and video games — the challenge of transformation is one they happily accept at various times year-round.
Cosplayers can invest considerable time, money and effort into crafting or commissioning head-to-toe presentations that are one-of-a-kind. Some creations include enormous accesso ries, facial or body prosthetics, working electronics or complex mechanical parts. Other cos tumes limit how well the wearers can see or move, making it difficult for them to sit, or navigate a room, without help.
But what inspires cosplayers to reinvent themselves so elaborately? Cosplayers and psychol ogists who study the phenomenon reveal the individual and community features that make dressing up so enticing and rewarding.
For the love of costumes
From Oct. 6 to 9, hundreds of cosplayers attend ed New York Comic Con 2016 (NYCC), costumed as superheroes and supervillains, Jedi and Sith, Ghostbusters, Starfleet officers, Hogwarts students and teachers, and many, many other characters. “Cosplay makes mehappy,” Edgar Roldan, a co splayer and NYCC attendee, told Live Science recently. Roldan — who wore a furry, blue suit and an oversize head to represent Happy from “Fairy Tale” (Del Rey Manga) — said the most satisfying part of cosplay was “just being you — being what ever and whoever you want.”
Other NYCC cosplayers said cosplay allowed them to explore their own creativity, particularly when much of their costume was handmade. Joe Bokanoski and Mike Labarge told Live Science that they assembled their costumes — postapoc alyptic interpretations of DC Comics’ Captain America and his nemesis, Red Skull — by scouring flea markets and junkyards. “It’s worth it just to putsome smiles on people’s faces,” Bokanoski said
Inhabiting a character
When a cosplayer selects a particular costume, they are often tapping into a specific character — or combination of characters — because some thing about that role speaks to them personal ly, according to Robin S. Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Rosenberg, who has written extensively about how people interpret and embrace fiction al characters, particularly superheroes, told Live Science that she became interested in studying cosplay after seeing cosplayers in convention cen ters where she was delivering talks.
“We know from psychology that we all play differ ent roles through the day and week,” Rosenberg said. “Different aspects of me — ‘psychologist,’ ‘wife,’ ‘mother’ — come to the fore in different con texts. I became curious about people who truly inhabit a role, and what’s coming to the fore when you wear a costume.”
Certain costumes offer some people a way of working through personal difficulties, Rosenberg said. Batman, for example, can be an especially meaningful cosplay choice for someone coping with trauma. The dark superhero faced devastat ing trauma when he was a child — witnessing the brutal murder of his parents — which he overcame to become a hero. “When people are dressed as Batman, many talk about having [experienced] their own traumatic experiences,” Rosenberg said. “He survived and found meaning and purpose from his experience, and that is inspiring to them.” Rosenberg noted that Wonder Woman is another enduring and popular choice that resonates with many women, partly because she holds her own in the male-dominated world of costumed comics superheroes. For those cosplayers, dressing as Wonder Woman is a way of celebrating and em bracing her power, Rosenberg said. Recently, a series of images on Instagram featuring a 3-yearold girl costumed as Wonder Woman quickly went viral. Her fatther, a photographer, said he not only “fulfilled my daughter’s dream of becoming Wonder Woman” by creating an elaborate cos tume but also staged a photo shoot that placed his daughter in scenes from the upcoming movie, due in theaters June 2, 2017. Judging by the girl’s expressions in the photos, she wholeheartedly embraced her new
It can be SEW simple
