Feminism, Fantasy and Cosplay

Feminism, Fantasy and Cosplay

Sexy cosplay, battle lingerie and the rush to be offended

—

This article expresses some opinions that will hopefully stir up some debate, help people consider different viewpoints and prompt some heretical thought. I like cosplay. I like sexy artwork. On a fundamental, biological, natural level, I enjoy looking at human bodies and I like mine looked at with a similar appreciation. I also think all people should be allowed to dress as they wish so long as they’re not endangering anyone, and shouldn’t be made to feel inferior because they are/are not dressed in a sexy, visually arresting manner. People shouldn’t be the subjects of contempt, violence or mistreatment for dressing in a sexualised manner; frankly, society should learn to get that stick out of its collective bum.

Model: Lady Noctis

Photographer: Kitty Kemsphotography Radford

The Male Gaze

First, some background. Laura Mulvey wrote one of the most well known feminist film theory essays, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in 1975 in order to challenge spectators and film-makers for their treatment of women in film. The essay claims that it is the male gaze (male to male identification and male to female voyeurism, fetishism) that dictates cinematic form and interpretation, and in large part unconsciously so.

“The cinema offers a number of possible pleasures. One is scopophilia. There are circumstances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverse formation, there is pleasure in being looked at. … [Freud’s] particular examples centre around the voyeuristic activities of children, their desire to see and make sure of the private and forbidden (curiosity about other people’s genital and bodily functions, about the presence or absence of the penis and, retrospectively, about the primal scene). In this analysis, scopophilia is essentially active.” – Laura Mulvey

To illustrate her point, here is a picture full of visual pleasure, what I gone and done:

Artist: myself

One day I will finally get round to printing it on a canvas and then oil painting that sucker up. I designed the image to be visually pleasurable; she is composed of pleasant shapes that appeal to my male ape brain. Obviously, her battle-lingerie would be of little actual use in a “realistic” war setting, but as the artist, “realistic warfare” was not really a consideration. Instead, sexiness was the guiding aesthetic, and why not? I still think she conveys power, confidence and such, it’s just that as an artist, I didn’t want to focus on violence.

Mulvey goes on to argue that the way to deal with the above is to essentially analyse it into oblivion and destroy any beauty it has for the (presumed male) viewer.

As an example of a violence/plausibility-focused approach to fantasy armour design (arguably, its popularisation could be seen as an analytical response or attempt at destruction of male appreciation), of course there is Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones:

As it stands, the stereotype of fantasy and cosplay as purely an environment for Vallejo and Bell battle-bikinis to titillate adolescent straight males is now less informed than ever. There are examples of the archetypal “swords and socercy canon” male designs that are also full of eye-candy (or at least full of naked body), for instance, Conan the Barbarian:

Critics will argue that these images have a greater emphasis on power, to which I would agree. I would argue, that’s what makes them arresting, interesting and seductive. Men and women do still react with our animal natures; we would be better off understanding our desires to see power, violence, sex and status in evolutionary terms; it is not merely a male neurotic looking at this image – we should understand that films & geek media also appeal to the straight female and queer gazes also feed on images of beauty, sex, violence and power. We are, fundamentally, visual animals in a world of objects that we crave to experience as a result of our biology. It is not all an unconscious conspiracy of men trying to smash women into dehumanised sex objects.

Sex vs Violence

The threat from a focus on sexualised clothing designs (for armour, cosplay, whatever) rather than violent ones, is that the audience is too unconscious or generally infantilised in their media consumption to avoid treating women as objects for sex and somehow lesser people after exposure to eroticised imagery. The evidence for this, so far as I am aware, is pretty scant and disputed. As audiences have evolved, the visual representations of women film and literature have also evolved; the great dramas now (like Game of Thrones or The Wire) now accept that the audience is probably smart enough to understand that women are people too, and beauty and grotesquery can be enjoyed on their own merits and part of a wider, mature narrative.

Things may not be ideal in society or fictional representations yet, but I think it can be argued that they are better than they’ve ever been. For all the brutal violence in TV and film and computer games, social violence is at an all time low of an ongoing decreasing trend. Stephen Pinker’s latest book “The Better Angels of Our Nature” provides the mass-stats for such a claim, so I believe this reflects the emancipation of women and a general increase in education across the board.

Everybody Objectifies Everyone – And We Have To

While I’m sure media, sexual objectification and society’s attitudes do all intersect, I think that those who rail carte blanche against objectification have got it wrong, and this will likely be my most heretical point.

The truth is, every day, we interact with and pass far more humans than we could ever actually maintain active relationships with due to society now operating at scales our primate brains didn’t evolve to deal with. Objectification is how we simplify the world to make sense of it and conserve mental resources. When people watch football, they see “footballing objects” and “opposing team objects” and “goddamned crooked referee objects”. They know deep down that these are people, but in the stimulated moment, the brain converts them into objects for ease of use and focuses on the game.

For every porn star that anti-visual pleasure proponents will condemn, how often have they condemned the following?

These are all people too, but their significance to us is on the level of objects. And there’s nothing wrong with that so long as we understand they are people and afford them respect and dignity befitting anyone else. If a girl enjoys being looked at, or filmed while having sex, or dressing in full battle armour, then it is not objectifying all women, so much as it is that woman doing what she enjoys. That woman or the artist of a sexy design has shared something they find personally appealing in a creative way. At most, it is objectifying that individual in a way they’ve consented to, and she and the audience derive pleasure from viewing and being viewed. Barring sociopathy, how anyone can “forget” that this is still a real human person is beyond me.

Saying that; douchebag audiences on the internet could pipe down once in a while. Nobody needs the cruelty and bullying that infests every comments section in the world; all it takes is a little class.

Prehistorical Boobies

It is true that for every medium we’ve ever had, we’ve turned it into a medium for depicting sex. From the most ancient cultural currency, the “venus” to statues to paintings to photographs to the internet. People just like looking at women, men, tits, ass, vaginas and cocks. They’ve always liked these things, and there is no evidence that this titillation corrupts anyone, and who can say the same for puritanical attitudes?

I’m going to quote Oona Chaplin here, from this interview on Game of Thrones, where she expresses with refreshing honesty an opinion similar to mine:

I quite like the nudity. The more nakedness the better, but that’s just me.

It’s got something for everyone. It’s satisfied those basic human needs to see nakedness and violence and it has tapped into a universal truth that unfortunately we’re facing now, which is this huge struggle for power.

A lot of people nowadays feel really powerless. We don’t know how to address the fact that we’re all angry about this current status quo, and that’s very much like Game Of Thrones except they have dragons as well. Dragons and beautiful naked ladies.

We’re really not going to lose sexy imagery. It is too much fun for its consumers and the people who enjoy being imaged.  The presence of these images is not requiring anyone to adhere to such standards of beauty, nor is it there to make people feel bad. Anti-sexual complainers would do well to unclench once in a while, dress up for themselves and get that sometimes, creative people really do expect the audience to be mature, smart and be able to cope with material that challenges them. Sometimes, the challenge is from a position similar to theirs, working in a more libertarian creative space.

Lady Noctis Interview

Lastly, I end with a mini-interview I had with Lady Noctis, the lovely, intelligent cosplayer I posted a photo of at the start of this article:

1) How do you feel when people claim you are being “objectified”?

It baffles me when I see such comments being made on my images (and other’s for that matter), this only seems to occur when my modelling/cosplay images have been shared; and can mostly be seen present within my Star Wars series.

I think people forget that these shoots are my chosen concepts, and I am at no stage in any of these works being objectified, I’m a dork in dress up; and an actual person with feelings.

2) If someone says a picture of you makes them uncomfortable because they feel it makes them feel as if they don’t measure up or don’t want to conform to male desires, what do you think?

I’ve never experienced this, but I don’t think people should compare themselves to images as such, or view it as them conforming to “male desires”. I do these cosplays for myself, and just me; and that’s the way it should be.

3) Do you also appreciate women who cosplay “seductively” in the way you think a male audience would, as well as appreciate their skills at making dresses and so on? Do you enjoy seeing the female form in sexy attire on its own merits?

I think this kind of attitude is the problem to be honest. Yes, there are more seductive takes on cosplays, but let’s not forget how a lot of female characters are presented within the illustrative comic book world. If people have issues with women recapturing these incredible strong iconic female characters, then surely you should have an issue with the initial source too. Which most people seemingly do not have a problem with. So my view is, if you have a problem with the cosplays, stop drawing the women that way.

If it’s a kick-ass cosplay, and you can see that the person has taken time in creating the concept, the outfit etc etc; and you should just appreciate it for what it is.. which is a frakkin awesome cosplay! Who cares if they’ve gone for a more seductive take on the character, kudos on them for having the confidence to do that!

 

And to end it, here’s some gifs I stole from imgur:

TL:DR – sexuality is awesome, let’s enjoy it, be moved to uneasiness by good drama AND understand we’re all lovely people too.