This question is inspired by getting an invitation to a fancy dress party. I’ve been invited to a few in the past, but have never actually been to one, and can’t imagine why anyone would want to.
Why would you want to embarrass yourself, and have to spend money on a costume for the privilege? I’m quite capable of making myself look like an idiot without a stupid costume?
So, can anyone explain the point to me? I mean, I guess the answer is “it’s fun,” but why? What is fun about wearing clothes that you don’t normally wear?
This is one of those things that I just don’t get, and makes me wonder if I’m a visitor from another planet. (Dancing is another example)
The point of cosplaying is to be someone/thing you’re not or at least to emulate a fictional character that you like or identify with. Usually when you dress up as such a character you’re not at risk of being embarrassed because you won’t be around that many judgmental assholes.
You’ve never understood why people might have fun by dressing up in costumes or dancing? Whether you personally do or don’t find those things fun, you truly can’t understand why other people might? You must have very little in the way of imagination.
Right. You are getting socially accepted license to play someone other than yourself, and it doesn’t even need to be a character you particularly identify with, it can be just the fun of saying, tonight I am NOT the person who has to behave and project in a certain accepted manner, I’m someone else. It helps if one doesn’t take oneself too seriously to begin with and keeps his sense of proportion about the playing.
Trick-or-treaters on Halloween, Mardi Gras crewes, SCA, the people speaking Klingon to each other in full getup at the SF con, they all are at various points of the spectrum of expressing “what if I were someone or someTHING else, in another time or place?” under controlled conditions. And they’re a lot more fun if they keep it, well, fun, and lighthearted.
Some modalities of “fancy dress” or “masked ball” are associated with the tradition of Carnival in the different cultures that have it. In those societies the fancy dress can be anything from full fantastic outfit to just a simple upper-face concealing mask, the idea being that during the festival you provide a socially accepted fiction of “plausible deniability” about the citizens’ identities being concealed, so they can let their hair down and join in the revels without having to be self-conscious about it and without having to mind so much each others’ usual public station.
(The dancing part, that is indeed another story. But again, even if some of us are so rhythm-impaired that dancing is risking material injury to ourselves and others:p, we can understand that it must be fun to move to the music for those who can do it.)
I have no idea what “cosplay” is (dressing up like Bill Cosby?), but we used to throw *fabulous *costume and theme parties in Baltimore in the 1970s.
Mara owned one of the “dollar mansions,” and once a year she’d throw a Dead Party–you came dressed representing your favorite famous death. One year I came as Isadora Duncan: ballet dress, bare feet, old tire with a scarf tied to my neck. One year I came as Amelia Earhart and just didn’t show up.
We threw a Beach Blanket Bingo party one year: 1960s bathing suits, sunlamps, beach towels and sand scattered around.
Dressing up like a fictional character, usually someone from a fantasy or science fiction franchise. Characters from comic books or Japanese cartoons are the most common, but it can be applied to almost anything. Including Bill Cosby.
You’re probably wondering what the difference is between “cosplay” and “wearing a costume.”
“Cosplay” is a word taken from Japanese, and they in turn created the word from the English “costume play”. It involves dressing up as fictional characters, particularly those in anime – so you could dress up as one of Bill Cosby’s characters, though that would be rather boring compared with being Sailor Moon or Naruto.
I would love to dress up in a fabulous costume, but I’d have to buy one, as I can’t make them. Also I’d need to lose about 30 lbs to look good in one of those female ones. I absolutely will not be a fat Catwoman. And to me, a perfect Catwoman is impossibly thin Michelle Pfeiffer in that impossible suit.
Also I wanted to say that today was a great day for learning new things on Straight Dope (I almost made an OP about it in fact) but this is by far the best thing I have read in quite a while:
Cosplaying is dressing up as (cartoon) characters. It takes a lot of money and effort to look good. The problem I have with anime cosplay is characters are drawn in such an idealized fashion few people look flattering. Go to an anime convention, and you see a lotta fat sailor moons.
A friends ex gf dressed as Zatanna for comic con one year. She was busty, but on the chunky side. Sure enough, she looked very unflattering, and lots of people were making fun of her on the internet.
I have bolded what the problem is. I don’t find wearing costumes embarrassing at all. They’re just fun (SCA, cosplay, LARP, fancy dress, anything) - possibly more so because they’re transgressive for mundanes like you. Freaking out the mundanes is you giving us power over you, in a way. And that feels great.
Kiyoshi, I think this may be a case of “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.” Your view of wearing costumes is radically different from mine. Every year, I spend a great deal of time on my Halloween costume (One person got last year’s Cyber Satyr). I will take nearly any excuse to wear a costume.
Thanks for everyone’s answers so far, although I still can’t say that I get it.
In response to rachellelogram, no I literally don’t understand how someone could consider it fun. I don’t understand how someone can just put their dignity to one side and be happy to look like a fool in front of other people.
Heck, a lot of the time I’m more dignified in costume than in ‘normal’ clothes. It’s fun. You get to wear things that you don’t get to wear other times. Getting double-takes from mundanes is awesome. Sometimes you get treats and gifts.
