... but I can see where he was coming from. Now, I'm not
going to launch into an expletive-riddled misogynistic rant about
fake-cosplay-girls, but I can understand why he would be skeptical of girls at
cons, especially after the realization I came to today. Let me explain - I was
riding the bus back to my dorm after picking up comics today, and I was reading
the latest issue of Wolverine and the X-Men to kill the twenty minutes of time
until I got back to Akers. When I got on the bus, it was relatively empty, but
a bunch of people got on at a later stop. Bus is kind of crowded now, but I
still have two seats open to my left on the bench I’m sitting on. The bench
opposite from me has four of its five seats taken up, with the middle one open.
A girl sits down in the open seat farthest from me on my bench, and I glance
over because the movement out of the corner of my eye distracts me. It’s a
glance that maybe takes a half-second, but we make eye-contact. I may be a
little socially awkward, but I’m not that awkward that I was the cause of what
happens next.
She literally sat down for a second, sees what I’m reading,
and opts to get up and sit on the opposite bench. She saw me reading a comic
and she had to get up because she couldn’t even sit on the same bench as me. It’s
not like I was reading an Image swim-suit special or something equally sexist,
this was Wolverine and the X-Men, a comic that I would think would appeal to
the largest number of demographics out of what the Big 2 publish. After I finish
reading and we get to another stop, more people get off and more get on, and
this time both seats next to me are taken up by women.
Now, I’m not going to pull a Dante and start making broad
generalization about broads, but this isn’t the first time something like this
has happened; after two years here at school and riding the bus, it’s become a
familiar occurrence. I’ve noticed that men don’t have as much of a problem
sitting next to a guy reading comics on the bus, but women do; not all women,
there have been times when women haven’t avoided me because I happened to
reading the latest issue of Justice League. My point is that there is a
stigmata associated with comics, specifically in the minds of women. To say
there isn’t is just being naïve. So I can understand why Mr. Harris would be
skeptical of girls at cons, and how his suspicions would be “confirmed” by asking
a cosplay girl about the source material for her costume and finding out she
doesn’t know the difference between Cassandra Cain and Barbara Gordon.
That said, there’s a lot he’s not taking into account. For
one, cons are a mecca for geeks, and you don’t have to be a comic nerd to be
considered a geek in general – it’s a pretty large umbrella that people can fit
under. My practice has been to attach an adjective – videogame geek, comic
geek, costume geek, etc. So saying these women are there just for the male
attention is a baseless accusation since most of these skimpy costumes are also
incredibly elaborate; you’d have to be obsessed with them enough that you’re a
geek for costumes. You’re technical know-how in this area would be well beyond
the average person’s, the same way a comic geek’s knowledge of continuity and
characters would also be well beyond that of the average person’s. Both groups
have equal right to be there. If you’re going to use the justification that
because they don’t know jack about the character they’re cosplaying as, they
shouldn’t be allowed to be there, then a reverse argument can also be used. I’ve
seen a lot of photos of male cosplayers who look like they bought their
costumes, so if you don’t know jack about making costumes, you shouldn’t be
allowed to cosplay. Is that fair?
Now, I’ve never been to a con, mostly because I don’t want
to spend a minimum of three hours on the road to go to pay a bunch of money to
get into a packed convention center, where I’m probably interested in less than
10% of what’s there. Just not worth it for me right now. From what I’ve heard
though, it seems like not only are the number of women to men cosplayers is
highly disproportionate, with more women than men, but out of the number of
women at cons, most of them are cosplayers too. Maybe if the ratio of
cosplaying women to non-cosplaying women was more equivalent to the male ratio,
Tony wouldn’t feel the way he does. Not to say he’s correct in feeling the way
he does (although everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how moronic
it is), but it would probably be a good sign for the comics industry if they
could draw more female fans who are purely obsessed with the source material
the way the male audience is, instead of just bringing in costume geeks.
This is a problem the industry has had trouble correcting,
historically speaking. While I’m glad that there are people who love these
costumes enough that they’re willing to spend months creating one to wear for
maybe three days at a con, I don’t see a reason why they shouldn’t also be in
love with the continuity and characters too; I’m not saying they have to, I’m saying the industry needs
to do more to get them into the source material. These cosplayers obviously
have an interest in these comics, but they don’t want to read the comics, and
who would blame them considering how much we as fans bitch about the schlock
that gets pumped out? Marvel and DC need to take a hard look at this phenomena
because it shows just how much they’ve failed to draw people in, but also that
there’s hope for their properties because they’re that iconic and enduring that
they can still draw people’s interest despite the crap. Sometimes it’s not even
that they’re producing crap – Marvel is publishing an excellent X-Men comic
with Wolverine and the X-Men, but its sales are dropping off despite this –
why? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they’re more pushing books
like All-New X-Men, which only appeal to the same shrinking audience (that’s my
theory), when they coud be embracing series with wider appeal like WatXM,
X-Factor or the recently cancelled New Mutants.
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