Non-Heroic Attitudes on "Heroes of Cosplay"

I'm a science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc fan and author so I had to check out the new SyFy series "Heroes of Cosplay" even though I don't normally watch competition shows.  I've seen some episodes of a few other art competition shows in the past and thought may this might also have commentary on geek culture and conventions that have been getting so much attention on the Net this year especially in regards to women in the subculture. After three episodes I feel that I need to express some of my thoughts.

Episode one made it clear that this was not a regular competition series.  This isn't "Face Off" (SyFy), "Design Star" (HGTV), or "Top Chef" (Bravo) where a group of competitors have specific tasks they most complete and then a winner or loser is declared for each episode.  Thank goodness!  I find so many of those shows contrived and I get bored after awhile as the artists and chefs start arguing while they are supposed to be creating.  No, "Heroes of Cosplay" follows eight artists who compete in the cosplay category at science fiction, anime, and related conventions around the USA. The ninth "hero" is Yaya Han who has turned her own cosplay and competing in contests at convention into a career.  Given that only one man is a "hero" on this show, though there are support male staff, assistants, and lovers of some of the other "heroes" I hoped this show would address some of the fandom problems that have be getting Net attention this year.

My hopes were almost dashed in episode two when our cosplay competitors get together at the convention to welcome the newest member Chloe Dykstra.  Up until this point in the show I had been impressed with the helpful advice and commentary from Yaya Han .  However during this dinner the other cosplayer competitors there, the vast majority of whom are female with only a few supportive males at this dinner, start making comments about how certain body types should not be doing cosplay and when Chloe objects they basically tell her that she is naive and they are trying to protect people from rude comments in person and online.

STOP!

What?

One of the threads in this episode before this dinner was Yaya telling us and Monika Lee (whom she sees as a good friend and protégé) that sexy shouldn't be the focus for cosplay.  Yaya is the "Ambassador of Cosplay" and at first I thought the "sexy isn't the point" was a pretty cool statement to make.  Yaya's own career shows that she tries to make the characters she is playing come alive, yes, some of them, many of them, let's be honest, are sexy because this is how women have been shown in much of geek culture.  I thought she might be making a comment about how anyone who wants to cosplay should and that promoting just the sexual spin is undermining the point of cosplay.

Until she and the rest of the cosplay competitors used that old excuse of caring about overweight people's feelings as a reason they shouldn't cosplay as certain characters.

Had the group at dinner been discussing competing in cosplay competitions their weight comment would have made perfect sense.  In the competitions you are judged on the quality of the costume and the quality of your acting like the character.  If you being an existing character it makes perfect sense that you want your body type to match as closely as possible the character.  But they didn't say they were only talking about the competitions, they made a blanket statement about who should and how they should cosplay.

Some reviews online of this episode and the previous one have pointed out that Becky Young, another competitor, said that she picks characters that fit her body type and are attempting to make the dinner conversation and her state equivalent.  They are not the same and this is why.

Becky's comment was about her choices as a cosplay competitor, someone who does contests for money and to promote her career.  She was not making a comment about how other people, especially non-contest cosplayers, should be dressed.  One comment is personal, the other comments are presented as a group acceptance of some universal standard for anyone who wants to cosplay in public.

Note that the sexy isn't the point idea is also presented as Yaya's vision not an ideal embraced by the group of competitors on the show.

Yes, people can be cruel but telling others how to dress because you don't want their feelings hurt is really just empowering that cruelty to continue. It is really just promoting the stereotypes about geek culture and not confronting them.

But then again is this show about confronting stereotypes and promoting cosplay for a wider audience?  Given that so many of our competitors are trying to make careers out of this not just as cosplayers but as prop and costume makers I'd think they'd want to maximize their potential buyers circle.  You don't do that by saying who can and can't pretend to be a particular character for fun. You do that by making a wide range of sizes or opening up the custom made aspect but you also do that by speaking up for every geek's right to embody their favorite characters without cruelty.

Episode three seemed to happen in a vacuum with only a few of our previous competitors showing up for Megacon.  The episode fell back on the relationship between competitors and their supportive lovers and friends or in this case the potential break up of the Jessica and Holly team who have been friends for even longer than they've been business partners.  I suppose this relationship stuff is interesting but given that we don't know how the cast was chosen for this series I'm not as invested in them as individuals as I am in their approach to cosplay as potential career versus fun hobby, buying into the stereotypes of fandom versus expanding the audience and customers of cosplay.  On the up side I wasn't turn off or inflamed by this episode so I'll watch again and see if the bugaboo of sexism and sizism rears up again.