Anna Fischer: Response to Cosplay of Color Article

Anna Fischer is a very talented and well-known photographer, not only in the cosplay community but also in the fashion world. Out of the many responses I received, both good and bad for the article The Face of Cosplay: Racism & Cosplayers of Color,  I felt Anna’s response needed to shared (with her permission). In the three articles Nerd Caliber wrote about racism and the nerd community, we provided very few answers. I wish there was something we could say that would be the solution to an age-old problem. However, within the nerd and cosplay community, we can start to minimalize it by looking at the causes and impeding them. Feel free to share your thoughts about what we can do to stop it.

Hey,

Thank you for your recent post about cosplay and color. Cosplayers of color are facing additional challenges on top of the judgement and heavy scrutiny most cosplayers are already subject to.

I feel there are a few root causes.

First is that there are not enough positive depictions of characters of color in the source material. If a black person wanted to cosplay someone of their own skin tone their options would be fairly limited – Sazh Katzroy from FF, Bob from TenTen, that shinagami with the corn rows from bleach and then, um, Hercule from DBZ (although he’s already kind of a racist parody), and that really, really racist blackface pokemon….

This problem isn’t limited to manga and anime either – look at American comics which are generally set here in the states. There are a few more options, and even a few central characters (Storm, Static Shock), but they certainly are not equivalent to the existing demographics. I could go on a five page rant about how I would totally read a comic about how a young girl from Washington Heights (my home town) gets superpowers and instead of moving to the X-mansion/moon base/ magic castle stays home to address some of the problems in their own community. But for the sake of brevity I’ll say there is nothing we can do about the top-down problems.

Second, haters gonna hate. The internet is full of trolls, wanks, and dudes cruising for fap fodder who are just waiting to tear someone down. I used to spend a lot of time being mad about this. But now I feel like, if I’m not getting hate mail I’m not keeping relevant. There is also no way to solve this problem.

Third, is attitudes within the community. It’s difficult, cosplayers are naturally competitive. Cosplay fans want them to be as perfect and idealized as the characters they dress as. It’s easy to bully some one to mask your own insecurities, it’s easy to exclude someone you see as different.

But we can make changes, we can build a better, safer, more supportive community. And we can start right now. Start standing up for cosplayers of color. If someone leaves a race-related comment on your you tube channel, call them out on it. Don’t start flame wars but let them know it’s inappropriate, be the voice of reason. If you are at a con and you see some one being excluded from a group activity or maybe just shy to join in, invite them.

There is something additional you and I can do as producers of fan media, and that’s include positive depictions of cosplayers of color in our reports. There are more black cosplayers now than there have been in the past, and if we keep showing them to best effect I’m sure there will be even more in the future.

Sorry this was so long, I think about these things a lot but don’t have a voice outside of my images. Cosplay is all about transformation.

I am hopeful for the future,

Anna