The Sexcess of Genderbending Cosplay

3/23/2015

When I first encountered genderbending cosplay it was at the Dallas Comic Con a few years ago. A group of female Avengers was holding up walking traffic in the middle of the displays. People were waiting impatiently for opportunities to photograph or be photographed with them. I thought they looked cool, but I also thought this was cheating: after all, the original characters were male. Wasn’t this cheating?

My boyfriend recently told me that there is talk of a female Thor movie coming up in the next years. Again, I thought, is this cheating? I intrigued me that a major studio would entertain the notion of genderbending a major comic book (and theater) superhero. But it still didn’t sit well with me.

Then I got on Pinterest. All hail Pinterest with its lovely organization of the internet world. Genderbending cosplay is everywhere and it finally hit me. I finally got it.

It works because it’s sexy. And it’s sexy because it works.

It works because seeing women dressed as superheros traditionally characterized as men is sexy with its empowerment. These women could snap my neck and that level of strength and, the fact that they don’t, humanity makes them sexually appealing. The become goddesses, amazons, warrior women. They suddenly become powerful in a way men do not—probably because we already assume men have power. Misogynistically, we see women as weaker, most especially in America. So to see women as traditional male superheros elevates them above all else—including their male counterparts.

It’s sexy because it works: We see them as sexy because we buy into the idea of women as male superheros. We buy into the idea because superheros are universal. Superman doesn’t need to be a man, nor does Batman. Superman is an entity that can be anyone. A woman wearing the costume takes upon herself all the attributes and strengths and characteristics that come with the personae. If this wasn’t true, we wouldn’t find the cosplay sexy at all: it would seem ridiculous.