Fantastical body narratives : cosplay, performance, and gender diversity.

This dissertation aims to explore how the phenomenon of cosplay has been able to produce and sustain a diversity of gender expression due to its emergence from an activity-based community that emphasizes creative play. This creative energy is manifested through cosplay as an active, ritualized practice in which gender diversity is invited to be realized as a distinct possibility, resulting in a display of a full range of masculinities and femininities as well as crossplays and genderbend cosplays. I argue that cosplay can therefore be understood as a phenomenon that destabilizes the gender binary—its active practice promotes the production and interpretation of gender as being within a spectrum for cosplayers and their audiences alike. I also assert that the degree of diversity of gender expression observed through cosplay at fandom conventions is better accounted for as social change achieved through ritualized practice rather than as a subversive performance. This dissertation hopes to demonstrate that the sustainment of diversity of gender expression hinges upon the interdependent relationship between a ritualized, repeated practice and the individuals, community and space that promote it

Managing Cosplay Performance: The Forms and Expectations of Convention Roleplay

Costume play (i.e. cosplay) is a performance of fandom rife with rituals and communication practices. Cosplay roleplaying performances are cultural practices that reveal how cosplayers interact with one another and among non-cosplaying members of their fandoms. This study examines the expectations that cosplayers hold for roleplay, the forms of roleplay, and the ways in which roleplay can become an instigator of harassment. Through the lens of Face-Negotiation Theory, the author discusses how roleplay functions to maintain or threaten the public images of cosplayers and their audiences, and what strategies cosplayers implement to avoid the loss of face

The Role of Social Media in Negotiating Gender Identity among Young Thai Women

This study explored how 18-year-old women in Bangkok used social media to negotiate and express their gender identities online. In Thailand, prevailing cultures and traditional public discourses on hetero-normative sexualities constrain young women’s gender performance both offline and online. The study interrogated processes of adaptation and resistance of traditional mainstream discourses through the consideration of social media as an alternative and flexible space for young women to negotiate and communicate diverse, autonomous gender performances. A gap was identified in terms of the ways in which identity was tactically managed and constructed within different class structures. To investigate these, young women were recruited from three socioeconomic backgrounds: lower class, middle class, and upper class. Data were gathered through interviews, focus groups, and online ethnographies, such as posted pictures, shared contents, and comments on profiles, and interpreted through a multimodal and social semiotic lens to gain deeper understandings of women's classed and gendered social media practices. By examining and cross-referencing qualitative data and the construction of online profiles deriving from different social backgrounds, insights were yielded and a snapshot of the everyday identity work of Thai young women captured as they responded to and resisted traditional forms of feminine conduct

Slice of life in a live and wired masquerade: playful prosumption as identity work and performance in an identity college Bilibili

This article investigates Chinese urban youth’s mediated ‘slice of life’ and playful encounters as part of their identity construction and performance work on Bilibili, one of China’s most influential video-sharing social media sites mediating anime, comics, games and novels. Using a mix-method approach of digital ethnography, participant observation, interviews and data visualisation, this article examines fans’ hermeneutic practices through anime, comic, game and novel prosumption, exemplified by danmaku: ‘bullet screen’, barrage-like comments overlaid on videos. This article argues that Bilibili works as an ‘identity college’ for fans to perform various roles and explore their hybrid identities in a social-hermeneutic engagement process. In particular, the function of anonymous danmaku comments will be closely analysed as it offers a quasi-real-time engagement experience for fans and helps shape fans’ social self. Following a symbolic interactionist tradition, Mead’s ‘generalised other’ and Goffman’s dramaturgical theory are contextualised in the Chinese socio-cultural milieu where fans’ identity performance is regarded as masquerade. Departing from the moral panic rhetoric that Generation Z is ‘amused to death’, becoming ‘infantile and animalised’, or even enslaved by their desires and capable only of ‘cold intimacies’, the findings of this explorative study present a more complex understanding of Chinese youth’s identity work through participatory social media use and networked fandom

"They Said We Ruined the Character and Our Religion": Authenticity and Legitimation of Hijab Cosplay

Marketers and the media are infatuated with Gen Z consumers (born mid 1990s), their media habits, their consumption behaviours and belief systems; for this teens and tweens segment constitutes more than 60 million consumers in the US alone (Forbes 2015). These consumers are forecasted to shape the future of consumption. Our study seeks to explore further the hijabi cosplay subculture and thereby contribute to the growing interest in youth cultures and their consumption habits, by exploring how tensions between religious identity and performativity of the body are explored and negotiated to achieve ‘authenticity’, a decidedly under-researched area. The human body has a cultural performative role which reveals private and public spaces, illustrates the construction of gender and race, and is a medium that transgresses the borders of art (Parker and Sedgwick, 2013). Given the role of the body as a site of negotiating identity, the study of tensions in this context between authentic body performance and religious identity constitutes a pertinent research issue

PENGARUH KOMPOSISI CAT AKRILIK DAN BINDER SABLON TERHADAP KUALITAS TAHAN LUNTUR WARNA DAN KEKAKUAN DALAM PEMBUATAN MOTIF COSPLAY PADA KAIN KATUN, SATIN, DAN DRILL

Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui (1) pengaruh komposisi cat akrilik dan binder sablon terhadap kualitas tahan luntur warna , (2) pengaruh komposisi cat akrilik dan binder sablon terhadap kekakuan, (3) komposisi yang memiliki ketahanan luntur warna terbaik, (4) komposisi yang memiliki tingkat kekakuan terbaik pada masing-masing jenis kain, dan (5) menghasilkan katalog yang berisi hasil penelitian. Penelitian ini adalah eksperimen murni dengan desain eksperimen faktorial 3x3 dimana komposisi cat akrilik dibanding binder sablon masing-masing dalam persen adalah A 80:20, B 65:35, dan C 50:50 terhadap X kain katun, Y kain satin bridal, dan Z kain drill dengan jumlah pengujian disesuaikan dengan standard pengujian. Populasi penelitian ini adalah cat akrilik merek Winsor & Newton Galeria Acrylic warna 077 Burnt Sienna Opaque 120 ml, binder sablon Matsumin Bronze Binder 301, kain katun Tokai Senko kode warna 14, kain satin bridal merek Bridal Soft kode warna 3802, dan kain drill serat sedang American Drill #1668 kode warna 601 yang ada di pasaran maupun e-commerce Tokopedia. Teknik pengumpulan data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah uji tahan luntur warna terhadap pencucian (SNI 08-0285-1998) dan uji kekakuan arah lusi dan pakan (SNI 0314) yang dievaluasi oleh Balai Besar Tekstil. Validitas yang digunakan adalah validitas internal dan eksternal serta reliabilitas yang diperoleh dari alat-alat yang terkalibrasi dan dalam lingkungan penelitian yang serupa. Analisis data yang digunakan adalah ANAVA non-parametrik Kruskall-Wallis. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan: (1) berdasarkan uji statistik, tidak adanya pengaruh variasi komposisi cat akrilik dan binder sablon pada berbagai jenis bahan baik pada pengujian tahan luntur warna terhadap pencucian 40 ⁰C maupun penodaan terhadap kain putih; (2) hasil uji statistik kekakuan kain menunjukkan adanya pengaruh komposisi dan jenis bahan terhadap rasa pegangan kain yang menggambarkan kaku atau tidaknya suatu bahan, (3) tidak ada variasi komposisi yang paling baik maupun buruk pada seluruh jenis kain, jika terkait ketahanan luntur terhadap pencucian dan penodaan (4) komposisi yang menunjukkan tingkat kekakuan terbaik untuk kain katun adalah komposisi 50:50 serta 65:35 untuk satin bridal dan drill, (5) hasil katalog yang telah divalidasi oleh pembimbing dan layak untuk publikasi

“expressive Rationality”: Habitus And Field In A Malaysian Cosplay Community

Malaysian cosplayers, as a subset of Asian cosplayers, engage in a visually performative activity which raises the issues of ethnic and gender performativity, among other identity markers. This is further contextualised within an “everydaydefned” experience of identity, in which its formation is influenced by non-“social power” agents such as popular narratives (Baharuddin 1996: 18; Baharuddin and Athi 2015: 268). In addition, cosplayers are noted to be affected by global cultural flows. Given its relevance to studies of cosplay, I use Bourdieu’s framework of cultural capital to outline the components which make up an established cosplayer. Using a snowball sample, I survey several tertiary educated and employed Malaysian cosplayers regarding the cultural capital they use to navigate the intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. I compare the responses of my sample to that of cosplayers from international forums, and to the content of emerging counter-hegemonic popular narratives. My fndings suggest that cosplay can be viewed as a form of public theatre, comprising rational and expressive elements