Cosplay for Those Who've Never Heard the Word

It's a stereotype of the utter nerd.

At a convention, abbreviated "Con," super geeks wear homemade costumes to look like their favorite characters and sometimes act like the character they're dressed as.  Pop culture has made fun of these people, often teens or grown adults made to look childish for "playing dress-up."

Let me tell you about cosplay.

Cosplay is the lingo for the phenomenon of making and wearing a costume based on a fictional character.  If you ever made your own costume of a fictional character for Halloween, you were cosplaying.  Usually, though, cosplay refers to costumes worn at conventions or for photoshoots.  A cosplay can be of any character, or even an item, from a fictional work.  Some people cosplay real people, but this can be hard to pull off.

Cosplay, like fan art, fan fiction, fan music, and other fan works, is an expression of creativity from the fan base (sometimes called "fandom") of a work of fiction.  It takes enormous creative talent, patience, and skill to create a good cosplay.  There are varying degrees of quality cosplays, and some are more expensive than others, but all of them express a love for the work and (usually) the character.

The word cosplay can mean many things.  It can be a noun, meaning a costume of a character ("I'm working on a cosplay!") or the person wearing it while doing so (though usually an -er is added to the end, i.e. "That's a talented cosplayer.").  It can be a verb, meaning the act of wearing the costume around ("I'm cosplaying this weekend at Comiccon.").  When specifying the character, the phrase could be "cosplaying [character name]" or "cosplaying as [character name]."

I am somewhat new to cosplaying, but I did create a cosplay that I wore to Katsucon in February.  It was of the character Avatar Yangchen from the TV Show Avatar: the Last Airbender.  My facebook profile picture is me in a Doctor Who cosplay.

This is Avatar Yangchen.

This is me as Avatar Yangchen.

This is the Eleventh Doctor from Doctor Who.

This is him with a fez.

This is me as the Eleventh Doctor.

So as you can see, cosplaying is a fun and creative activity and anyone can do it.

Go forth and cosplay!