I know a guy who dresses up as female anime characters every night for the enjoyment of others on a webcam. He chats with these people, sends them pictures, even strips :eek: occasionally for them. He wears a full-body leotard, complete with hands and feet, a mask and a wig. It’s beyond creepy to me.
Can someone tell me what this whole cosplay/kigurumi thing is? Is it sexual? From what I’ve read, some of it is perfectly innocent, but I’ve found that a lot of people have websites with quite adult themes behind them where they act out fantasies, strip, and engage in cyber sex as the character.
Wikipedia has a small entry about it (entirely work-safe, by the way), but it doesn’t really shed much light on the motives behind it.
I know nothing about the subject, but it seems to me that simply by reading the wikipedia entry on crossdressing , things would be cleared up for you. So these people cosplay as Lum, rather then Marilyn Monroe, so what? It appears to be the same thing.
P.S. Ok, so it involves masks, rather then using wigs, blush, and shadow, to feminize the features. Still, same difference.
I considered it being related to transvestism, but not all of them dress as the opposite sex. Still, cross-dressing seems to be a likely answer. Anyone else?
In the Tokugawa Era, men and women were forbidden to act together, so a tradition of men dressing as women was born… 
Does he get paid for these sessions? Would he dress up like this on his own, or has he simply found an economic niche on the internet that he’s willing to exploit? Do his customers know he’s a guy? Is that part of his draw?
If they wanted to see a girl dressed as an anime character, they would look for one.
He is not being paid for these sessions. He is chatting with people via webcam and posing as an anime girl for free, probably because he’s getting something out of it too. I’m not sure if they know he’s male or female. He doesn’t know I know about his hobby, so I can’t discuss it with him. I found out sort of by accident, and I searched a bit and found his anime girl website and blog.
By the way, when I say he strips for them, I mean that he strips down to the unitard with bra and panties.
Humans are really, really weird.
There you go, that explains it. 
I believe this is related to tranvesitism, or cross-dressing for sexual pleasure. Yes, it’s a bit strange, but there are far kinkier and crazier things. From what you’ve described, it seems like he is pretending to be a female anime girl and then putting on shows for people. Some of these people are transgendered individuals who haven’t come to terms with themselves, but most are normal heterosexuals males. There are a variety of reasons people do this. For some, taking on a female role is liberating, others get turned on by the idea of ‘tricking’ men into desiring them, others just enjoy the attention and feel that they are sexier as a woman, etc. Kigurumi is popular because it is annoymous. Anyone can do it and be sexual without revealing their true selves or indentity unless they are careless or wish others to know. Kigurumi is related to “dollers,” people who dress up and act like dolls or who are attracted to such people. A google search will reveal websites with plenty of pictures although some are not work safe.
I think, though not really sure, that most cos-play is about the level of people dressing up like Sci-fi characters for a convention. They just do cartoon characters which pose some problems as to how to defy the laws of nature to get the hair or the clothes to look right.
How does one explain a socially retarded, cave-dwelling, badly-in-need of a date geek?
Wow plnnr! That was amazing! Do you know him? 
Cosplay is short for “costume play” and refers to anyone dressing up like a character from any sort of book, tv show, movie, play, etc. Cosplay apparently first became big at Star Trek conventions and has since spread across the world, becoming especially popular in Japan. Cosplayers do so for various reasons: Some are wanna be fashion designers who enjoy the challenge of bringing outfits from anime or manga to life. Others are skilled (and not so skilled) seamstresses who enjoy displaying their talent and skill. Some people buy outfits or have their friends make them and still enjoy cosplaying. For them it’s mostly them having fun dressing up as an admired character and you will see a lot of people ‘role-playing’ at conventions. Cross-play is when people dress up as opposite sex characters. This is done for a variety of reasons, including some sexual, although most individuals you see cross-playing at cons don’t do so for sexual reasons.
“The universe is not only stranger than you imagine; it is stranger than you can imagine.” 
I thought cosplay refered specifically to anime costumes, while people dressed as Star Trek characters were just plain geeks.
While what this guy is doing is just off the charts but still the guys watching him are maybe a little bit stranger.
So kimera, what characters have you dressed up as?
“Kigurumi” is a Japanese hybrid word basically meaning a stuffed toy that you wear. Just like you get lots of different stuffed toys, it can sometimes mean dressing up as a sexy manga character, but often is used to refer to all in one animal costumes. For example see thisAnimal Costumes site.