Image Attribution: “Assignment 2 Part A – Chantel Dobell” by York In A Box is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. (See interactive map)
The photo pictured above shows two commonly known cosplayers who go by the online title of Aicosu. This couple has created over 200 cosplay costumes, all of which do not conform to dominant ideologies that one might assume based on their he/him and she/her identities. Through their website and various social media (Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr), the cosplay couple finds the culture around cosplay beneficial to creating jumping points into various creative careers and social connections with like-minded people. These creators do what Hill describes cosplay as being, an “…escape into an idealized world and persona…” (p.4) by taking the characters of Star-Lord and Gamora from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and add a gender-bent twist to the characters.
Marvel superheroes are a popular genre of cosplay that has become more prominent over the last twenty years. Alongside the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the comic book versions of these superheroes are often turned into cosplay characters. However, in these drawn-up versions of the superheroes, “…both the female and male comic figure continue to be a site of spectacle, if not outright fetishism” (Taylor, p.345). These gender-bent styles can go against that which has become the ‘norm’ and prompt questions about what is ‘expected’ from gendered characters. Aicosu does a great job promoting these questions when they take on characters like in the above photo.
Through this creative rendition of the characters, Sheila as Star-Lord, is able to escape the often portrayed female characters, who are represented as “sexy heroines or villainesses [who] tend to reflect extreme traits drawn from western ideas of the female body” (Winge, p.100). However, neither of Aicosu’s versions of Star-Lord and Gamora are presented in a way that is oversexualized or gendered based on societal constructs.
This version of Star-Lord, despite being portrayed by a woman, still holds true to the original male character, based on the similarity of the costume to the movie and the confident persona the pose emits with her gun present and pointed smirk toward the camera. Even more so, the cosplayer portraying Gamora has no apparent gender and could even be assumed to take on an androgynous demeanour. They present the character with a strong stance and intense stare, not adhering to typical Heteronormative concepts—an example of these constructs being the strong man and weak woman in need of saving.
As Hill explains so brilliantly, “the wonderful thing about cosplay is it is an interpretation” (p.76), which is something Aicosu so graciously tackle in their imaginations of the Marvel characters of Star-Lord and Gamora.
References
Hill, N. L. (n.d.). Embodying cosplay: Fandom communities in the USA. ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. Retrieved October 13, 2021, from https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/anthro_theses/119/.
Home. aicosu. (n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2021, from https://www.aicosplays.com/.
Smith, A. (2015, May 15). Cosplay Photoset: Genderbent Star-Lord and Gamora. The GCE. Retrieved October 14, 2021, from http://www.geekchicelite.com/cosplay-photoset-genderbent-star-lord-and-gamora/.
Taylor, A. (n.d.). He ’ s Gotta ’ Be Strong and He ’ s Gotta ’ Be Fast and He ’ s Gotta ’ Be Larger Than Life: Investigating the Engendered … comic_bodies-with-cover-page-v2.pdf. Retrieved October 14, 2021, from https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/32171271/Comic_bodies-with-cover-page-v2.pdf?Expires=1634264625&Signature=NhovPHlH3MP797aF9tCUCM0oCqvwFkAG90K2HYdXmc5XQIQjwgzUy-OcjiHhSXE9tsfVBkRIggTm8gQqJpP7ZHNcn8VMKdfE2J4EfQAQGDo7pRGb8LkEoBQXpAteig9FgH4i3sSdJ1FT-OvTE48CSdVm7qtsABWxPgmrF~lgHJ7ZEhp2PrP1OOr3po5uA~tgBjwQspfPK5DHNQAAdDr5aaiT~3YxLeTg7qgnmuc8ZTsRcvbmrxea2Ss1WF-snmN-~ipX-hXkXkGaFIKXIcvKe88tQ7QbzqZF4H2ohpwC1NqyC04G2Xu5I-jzwfpqXaOs3qkH7YC3sQFZBVeCXPPvTw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA.
Winge, T. M. (n.d.). Costuming cosplay. Google Books. Retrieved October 14, 2021, from https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=wKJyDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=cosplay%2Bgender&ots=rN8J5HDyUN&sig=QjifuHMjDK2pqvczapUsvoEE3IQ#v=onepage&q=cosplay%20gender&f=false.