Cosplay Activism Fatigue

If you opened this post thinking you were in for yet another diatribe about issues in the cosplay community, then tie yourself down to whatever chair you’re sitting in – because this is the remix.

If you’re even a semi-active cosplayer with a social media presence, you’d have to be living under a rock to have missed the recent influx of articles, videos and blog posts discussing various issues within the cosplay community. Admittedly, I contributed to this, at least in small part, when I wrote a piece about my experiences as a black female cosplayer for XOJane.com this past February. Shocked, I watched as my story took on a life of its own, spreading across the internet like wildfire, reaching people and places I wouldn’t have even imagined – and at this point, I’ve basically given up all hope of walking into a job interview and not discussing my hobby ever again.

By no means was my piece the impetus for all of this, but as time went on, I started to notice a tidal wave of articles bringing additional issues within our community to the forefront of discussion. Issues I’d faced personally, issues I’d never even considered but thought were terrible, and issues I didn’t personally think were that big of a deal. Some pieces I agreed with. Others, I disagreed with. But as they continued to come down my newsfeed day after day, they began to blend together in my mind, and I found myself starting to gloss over some of them. After awhile, I began to avoid them altogether, only breaking down to read about the issue of the week after being asked multiple times to weigh in on it. It’s not that I was lazy, that I didn’t care, or that these cosplayers were talking about issues that weren’t as important as my own – it’s just that I was tired!

Real talk: I try to be a (mostly) decent person. Really, I do. As a geeky black female member of the LGBT community, I know several times over what it’s like to be an outsider, so I do my best to treat everyone else the way I’d like to be treated. I try to be open to learning from those who walk a different path in life than I do. I try to keep other people in mind. But to be completely honest, I work a full time job, and there are only so many issues I can find time to champion in a day, you know what I mean? When I see another article talking about cosplay issues getting a million shares on Facebook, and people start tweeting me to ask for my opinion, I’m not going to lie – my heart sinks a little, like, here we go again, something else to be pissed about this week. I think I’m suffering from what I’ve started calling “cosplay activism fatigue” – and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Listen – I want to be crystal clear about this – I would never tell anyone not to be open about the issues they’re facing. Never. Talk about your experiences. Share them. This is how we grow, not only as a community of cosplayers, but as well rounded people in general. I don’t under any circumstances agree with telling people not to speak up when they’re being treated unfairly. You don’t have to agree with what they’re saying, but you don’t have to try to silence them, either. Everyone deserves a voice. And if you don’t want to read what feels like the 20,000^th article about whether or not cosplay equals consent, then I have a novel idea for you that might just change your life: don’t read it. Scroll past it. Turn off your computer, and go outside. I do it all the time, mostly because there are (usually) margaritas outside.

I try to look at it like this – the influx of articles might be annoying and feel a bit like overkill, but not everyone feels like they have the power to speak up. Especially if a cosplayer doesn’t have thousands of supporters on Facebook, they may not feel like anyone cares about what they have to say. When someone writes a piece that speaks to their experiences and puts words to a feeling they’ve been struggling to vocalize, that’s a powerful thing that means a lot to so many people. For some people, these pieces do provide some clarity and relief, and that should not be ignored. I think it’s important that we talk about these things, because it’s clear that there is a good amount of dissent among the members of this community, and no real change has ever come to pass by sitting down, shutting up and “getting over it.”

With all that said, however – it is entirely possible to have too much of a good thing. Like I said, I personally just don’t have the mental energy to get riled up about a different issue every week. Frankly, it’s exhausting, and with so many other, more pressing things going on in the world, I don’t always have it in me to care. Sometimes, I just want cosplay to be the light hearted, mindless escape it started out as. Sometimes, I just want to dress up as my favorite character, hang out with my friends at a con, pose for a few pictures, and maybe not have everything be so serious. Sometimes, I just want to focus on the positives and have fun, which is where I feel a lot of this viral cosplay article backlash is coming from, at the core. People are tired of feeling chastised. People are tired of getting into fights on Tumblr. People are tired in general, and just want to have a good time.

So where’s the balance? How do we strike a happy medium between addressing things that need to be addressed, and flooding each other’s newsfeeds with doom and gloom pieces about everything that’s wrong with our community? Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for that, as I am not a wizard. However, I do think one thing we could stand to do is spread more positivity than negativity around. Let’s get an article about what we love about cosplay going viral. Let’s see some stories about the better parts of this community get some recognition. Let’s talk about how cosplay has improved your self esteem, helped you make friends, taught you skills you wouldn’t have otherwise known (because seriously – why else would you have ever learned to use a dremmel?). We all know there’s an undercurrent of racism, sexism, homophobia, slut shaming and more in this hobby – and we’ve discussed it all ad nauseum. Let’s not dismiss each other’s problems, but let’s try to talk about the good things, as well.

Hell, let’s all just hang out at a con and have some margaritas. Away from the internet, for once.