Genderbending Cosplay

Cosplay: costume + play = cosplay.

Cosplay is the act of dressing up as a character or personifying something. Many people dress up as characters that they personally identify with, others dress up as characters, people, animals, or objects that they think look cool. Cosplay can help people become someone they’ve always wanted to be. There are no limits on what one can dress up as.

There is something very empowering about dressing up as a character and being someone other than yourself for a while. Cosplay has helped me overcome a lot of things in my life and it has helped me come out of my shell and be more confident. I have also met so many creative and amazing people of all kind through this hobby. However, I have also met many in the community who are a little pickier about their opinions on cosplay and are not always as accepting with the ideal of “you can cosplay whatever you want” as much as I personally feel they should be. One thing in particular that I notice many people having issues with is genderbent cosplays.

Genderbending: changing an original character’s gender to the opposite gender.

I have always been a huge fan of genderbent cosplay. I feel that genderbending is easy to understand if you understand Rule 63 of the Internet, which basically says that for every given male character, there is a female version of that character, and vice versa with females and male characters. Many popular ones include Charlie Quinn aka genderbent version of Harley Quinn; Kylie Ren, genderbent version of Kylo Ren from Star Wars; and Hellgirl aka female version of Hellboy. Really, any character of any gender can be genderswapped OR made gender neutral. Also, not all genderbent cosplays have a genderbent name to go along with the costume. Many times these are quirky nicknames or aliases created by the cosplayers or artists themselves.

Genderbending a costume doesn’t always mean that you have to play by the rules. For example, if someone of the male gender chooses to genderbend a Disney Princess, they can wear the traditional outfit, but, they can also take the outfit and transform it into something that fits their expectation of what a male version of Belle would look like if that’s what they’re going for. Females can also genderbend the costume into a male version, while still being feminine if that’s what they want. Gender-neutralizing a character means combining feminine and masculine qualities to a character or outfit and making it both or none. There are so many different and creative options as to what one can do with a costume – it doesn’t always have to look identical to the original.

I decided to do a quick cosplay of Doctor Strange for the movie premiere back in the beginning of November. I loved the way it turned out, but several people were skeptical of it and told me that I couldn’t pull it off. I felt very confident in the outfit and I loved being Doctor Strange. The thing is, I wasn’t trying to look like the original male version of Doctor Strange. I made my own Doctor Strange, and that’s one thing about cosplay that I absolutely love. You have the ability to make something all your own. Sometimes I think people don’t always understand this because they’re too caught up with thinking that it’s only okay to cosplay a character if you somewhat resemble them. I disagree though. I think cosplay can be whatever you want it to be regardless of your gender, or anything else.

So for what it’s worth, my advice for cosplay is simple: if you ever want to dress up, but feel as though you can’t be a certain character because of their gender, think again. You definitely can and there’s nothing weird or wrong about it. In fact, I think some of the best cosplays out there are genderbends.