Why Do We Dress Up And Cosplay?

     The reason behind things such as cosplays or dressing up for a particular event is subjective to the person but like most things, there is psychology surrounding it. The person in this image is a young girl dressing up as fan favorite character, Sam from ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ which belongs to the horror genre of movies. The costume will be worn at a Halloween party and also on Halloween night for trick or treating. In the picture, the person is in a home environment as they are still constructing the body part of the costume, something resembling an orange onesie, which is still being worked on. The costume is completely homemade. It can also be noted that this costume can be purchased easily from Halloween stores or through online shopping, however they lack quality compared to the original source material. This signifies and was revealed by the individual that they are dedicated to spending more time and effort in order to come as close to resembling the real character as possible. There are psychological reasons that can back these actions. It is said that people that participate in such activities enjoy the challenge of creating their own costume which leads to gaining competence and depending on the situation, leaving their reality for a short while to become a different persona. The creator can also gain positive feedback for their costume which in turn reinforces their confidence in their creative abilities. Furthermore, the age of the person dressing up as this character should be accounted for. In the photo the individual dressed up is a young girl, age 12, signifying that she has some interest or fascination in the genre. When asked if she had seen the movie that she is trying to recreate, she responded with no, she is too young. This may relate to younger people’s fascination with things they are not allowed to do in general. Some children may be more interested in a certain thing purely because they are not allowed to experience it. What makes a film like ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ so bad for young kids? Is it truly as gruesome as they say? This interest may be part of what leads to what is portrayed in the photo and why younger children are so sensitive horror symbols. Like in the movie, the character’s main attribute is its big round head that has been respectfully recreated through doing paper mache over a balloon. Another attribute shown off in the film is the gender. The character, Sam, is portrayed as a pumpkin headed monster that wears a sack over its head. It is played by a young boy for the movie, but the gender is never touched on in the film, making it a wildly available character anyone can dress up as in the cosplay community. Even ‘Sam’ (short for Samhain) is non-related to gender, but tradition. The costume itself represents the individual not only in their fascination with such characters (previous costumes include ‘Chucky’ and ‘Jigsaw’) but their determination and creativity as well.  

Martin, G. Neil. “(Why) Do You like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films.” 18 Oct. 2019, Frontiers in Psychology, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02298/full  

Kane, Laura E. “Why Cosplay? Motivations Behind Participation and Use of Social Media Among Cosplayers Who Maintain Facebook Artist Pages.” 10 Mar. 2017, Oregon State University Scholar Archive, https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_