I haven’t encountered much in the way of ‘cosplay‘, where individuals dress up (sometimes very elaborately) in imitation of favorite film, TV or comic-book characters. After seeing IO9’s two part photo essay on ‘The Most Amazing Cosplay from Wondercon‘, I have to simultaneously shudder at some of them, and take my hat off to others for their attention to detail.
Here are just four examples, two images out of the dozens in each article, to illustrate the lengths to which cosplayers will go. They’ve all been reduced in size to fit here.
Of course, some of the photographs illustrate the unfortunate reality that if one doesn’t have the body to go with the costume, one really, really shouldn’t wear it!
You’ll find Part 1 here, and Part 2 here. Both make . . . interesting viewing.
Peter
The problem, I think, is you get all sorts at fan conventions, and they tend to be the sort who consider "maybe you have about twenty pounds too many to be dressing up as a corrupt alien super-commando" to be 'fat shaming'.
'Course, a fair part of the problem is that the characters people want to dress up as tend to be either athletic in such ways that anyone able to convincingly dress up AS them either already has for a movie or simply wouldn't want to, or in the sort of ways that no actual human could ever quite match without either CG or extensive surgery.
Fr'xample, the reason 12 on the second page is photographed from the waist up is because the original character has digitigrade- and quite slender -legs, which probably makes it difficult for anyone with shins to come up with a workaround.
She was probably a lot warmer than most of the others, though.
2-26 looked particularly blue.
Liked the guy in the Blackadder costume.
The Princess Bride man was fairly accurate as well.
A number of the rest seemed to be very strange and/or the wrong sex entirely; probably a reason, but it's not one I likely want to hear.
Bet a lot of these people were grateful to be wearing masks.
I know I would have been.
Takes a certain courage to go to something like this dressed as a faceless goon.
Thing you want to keep in mind is, these are the best and carefully selected.
The worst are in a class all their own.
The woman wearing the wristguards, steel ivy and literally nothing else, for example? Imagine her, only three or four times the weight, with a lower budget and much less modesty.
Probably unwashed, to boot; what I've heard of this sort of convention suggests that just getting there is expensive, and having done so you're too busy running around looking at things and talking to semi-famous people and buying tenth-price merchandise normally sold with a gigantic markup to do anything so mundane as 'bathe'.
And now that I've inserted this delightful mental image into your head, please meditate on the fact that some of these people are the proverbial 'future'.
At least when hamplanets from the SCA dress up as people from the past, they're wearing armour. Usually.
It's just people wearing costumes and having fun. It isn't the end of civilization.
And, OMG! People without fashion model bodies daring to show them, IN PUBLIC!
Overreaction.
Antibubba