The Phenomena of Crossplay

Somewhere in a galaxy far far away, in the nowadays not so uncommon Japanese pop culture, there is an entire world packed with hot animated guys... It would really be something if we were able to see them in real life, wouldn't it? Good luck with finding an actual male cosplayer who'd be willing to undergo the torture of makeup, styling, and shaming of portraying a somewhat feminine complexion an ordinary bishounen or shota features. For reasons that make sense or not, most cosplaying guys are just not ready to sacrifice themselves to the altar of an ordinary girl's dreams, even if it meant getting a lot of attention from the female side of the fandom (and it does).
And while we could barely say that there is a lack of pretty girls willing to cosplay girly characters of many sorts, to many a guy's delight, same can't be said for androgynous male characters most girls drool to.
This is where crossplay came in.

I'm not exactly sure who came to the idea of disguising him/herself to another gender, the concept is probably as old as humanity is, but it became, it could be said, necessary to put some of the girls' cosplaying strength to boys' characters. Girls don't seem to mind. I don't.

While crossplay, of course, exists the other way around, where some guys fiddle with wearing skirts and dresses and beautiful long wigs and makeup, girls dressing up as boys is a much more common situation, and it raises much more dust on the internet. It is perhaps due to the fact that boys' design really does look somewhat feminine. Or does it? It has most of the traits an 'ideal' man has, narrow hips, wide shoulders, defined jaw and chin, masculine nose... Since an obvious 90% of popular female characters is idealised as well, being either small, cute or sexy, I see no valid reason to use the design as an excuse not to cosplay an ideal, beautiful boy, or bishounen, as Japanese pop culture refers to this concept.

All of this aside, situation being as it is, many girls have decided to fill in this typecast gap by turning themselves into boys using makeup, binders, costume modifications, custom diets etc. They act as boys, they look beautiful, masculine and attractive, many fangirls are swooning over them, and they are praised far and wide. Basically, some of them are
doing a darn good job. But at what cost?

The thing is, as with everything else in life, there is a limit to which this is, well, healthy. Being a fan of many franchises, as well as cosplayers, I've seen a fair amount of girls who went into crossplay to that extent, that they were hiding their real gender, or even claiming they were guys, just for the sake of their newly found popularity. All of a sudden, many insecure girls are declaring themselves ''guys trapped inside a girls body'', swearing how they never felt like a girl anyways, how they found ''new strength in being a guy'', and how now they feel much more powerful. Some even fell to delusions that far, that they underwent a groundless medical procedures of physically alternating their bodies. Well, for your information, ladies, you need to be pretty powerful to be a female as well. In today's world, it perhaps requires even more power than to be a male. Being a proud woman tells a lot about you. Besides, who is to define what sort of a woman are you anyway? Since this blog's intention isn't to fall into a feminism preach (in my opinion it has nothing to do with it), or to belittle known serious medical cases of gender identity disorder, I just want to turn your attention to a distorted lifestyle internet trends are imposing upon us all.

Hats off to those few male cosplayers who are smart and brave enough to make their appearance in a true bishounen image. As for my opinion, crossplay is awesome. I adore crossplay. And in the end, what I would like a lot is to turn to that part of ever-complaining male cosplayer community and say - I am a girl, and I cosplay guys better than you do.

Wouldn't you?