Fantastic Fangirls: Comics and Culture

Posted by Jennifer Smith

I was excited about Baltimore Comic-Con’s first annual costume contest, held just a few weeks ago. My younger brother is an anime cosplayer, and he’s been telling me for years about the fun that can be had at convention costume contests. But before Baltimore, I’d never gotten the opportunity to watch one. This time, I was determined to see the contest – and my determination was only strengthened by the knowledge that my fellow Fantastic Fangirl, Anika, would be competing.

The contest should have been fantastic. The costumes, across the board, were fabulous. The adult competitors were exuberant, their weeks of preparation and their enthusiasm for their characters equally obvious. The child contestants were universally adorable. George Perez was a judge. What could possibly go wrong?

As it turned out, a lot. The contest was a disorganized mess. It was held in one of the open-air “rooms” in a corner of the convention floor with no roof and only flimsy temporary walls separating the competition from the rest of the convention, which meant that it was hard to hear anything, including the calls for contestants to line up. (This was a problem that had plagued all of the panels that had occupied that space throughout the con, and is probably the most widely-acknowledged flaw of the convention). The organizers, meanwhile, seemed to have no idea how to separate the contestants into categories – some Star Wars cosplayers, for instance, were placed in the “established superhero” category while others were placed in the “potpourri” category for non-superhero/villain characters. And on top of all of that, the competition was held at the very end of the convention, which meant that the Baltimore Convention Center staff began dismantling the rest of the con floor halfway through the contest, turning off most of the lights and making an even bigger ruckus than the con itself had.

Now, all of that I can forgive. As the first costume contest at that venue, it was bound to suffer from beginner’s mistakes. With any luck, the organizers will learn from these mistakes and improve next year. But what I can’t forgive – and what I hope against hope they’ll fix next year, even if none of those other problems are solved – is the rampant, rage-inducing sexism of the judges’ comments and behavior.

The main judge of the event was local Baltimore radio DJ Ed Norris, who, from all appearances, knew next to nothing about comics. He was constantly deferring to his fellow judges (con organizers and pros whose names I never caught due to the poor sound quality, and George Perez) to identify the costumes being modeled, and that should have been my first hint that things were going to go downhill. But other than a few groan-worthy jokes of the standard Top 40 morning show sort, Norris didn’t set off any warning bells during the children’s categories – that is, until he loudly and droolingly commented, on a young girl’s Kingdom Come Wonder Woman costume, “I’d love to see the adult version of that costume.”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the creepiest thing he’d say that afternoon. Because soon it was time for the adult female categories, and a deluge of comments ranging from the patronizing to the outright sexually harassing. Did you know that Poison Ivy “makes things grow, heh heh”? Because those judges were more than happy to tell us – both times a Poison Ivy cosplayer came up. Invitations back to the judges’ hotel rooms were implied, and when a Batgirl and “sexy Robin” in store-bought costumes appeared, they were identified as “the Batman and Robin we all dream of.” Perhaps even more notably, when a contestant came up whose costume wasn’t conventionally sexy – or if the contestant wasn’t a size zero – the DJ and his cohorts had absolutely nothing to say, and the woman was quickly hustled along.

But all’s fair in love and war, right? Surely these judges would treat the male contestants with comments equally patronizing and innuendo-laden. I waited, clutching my hands into fists, to see what would happen as the category was announced as “the one we’d all been waiting for.” The men lined up, walked down the aisle to the judges’ table, and… were praised for their ingenuity. “How did you make that costume? How long did it take you?” the judges asked, awestruck. The men remained at the front of the room, in some cases, for several minutes as the judges peppered them with questions, and they all walked away with their heads held high.

Not a single woman had been asked about the construction of her costume, despite the fact that some – Anika’s included – had obviously taken a lot of effort to put together. No woman had been asked to stay at the front for longer than thirty seconds. And I was enraged.

I don’t want to make a generalization about all of the judges. I mention George Perez separately from the others because he was the only one who never participated in the offensive commentary, and even corrected the others when they identified Anika’s costume as Hawkgirl – “Hawkwoman,” he said. As for the other judges, they were all varying degrees of responsive to Ed Norris – but Norris deserves the lion’s share of the blame for instigating it all. Someone, it seemed, had failed to tell him that this was a costume contest, and not a beauty pageant – or a parade staged to solely benefit his libido.

But beyond Norris’ specific faults, the stomach-turning sexism of the contest points to larger problems in superhero comics and culture. As I said earlier, I love the idea of cosplaying and costume contests, though I don’t have the courage to participate myself. I was excited for Anika, and while I was disappointed that she didn’t win her category, the very exuberant, in-character Harley Quinn who did win was plenty deserving. I believe that women should be able to dress up as their favorite characters to revel in their power, just as men do. I also believe that women can, if they choose, dress up as those characters solely because they’re sexy and liable to attract attention.

But it’s a problem – a huge problem – that women who choose to dress up for the first reason are assumed to be dressing up for the second. That because superheroine costumes are, by and large, skimpy affairs, all women who dress up as those heroines must merely be seeking lascivious attention from men. That women in costume contests are only there for the benefit of the male spectators, and that those who aren’t conventionally sexy are worthless.

There was one cosplayer who was portraying Emma Frost. Emma, as comic readers know, is a character who has no qualms about wearing revealing clothing, and the cosplayer’s costume fully displayed those proclivities. But while the woman, when she wasn’t in character, was chatting with friends and simply being herself, when she was posing for pictures, or competing in the contest, she was Emma incarnate, shoulders thrust back, disdainful look in place, full of confidence. It was clear that this woman was cosplaying Emma because she loved the character. But all the judges saw was a woman in a flesh-baring shirt posing for their pleasure.

What does this say about attitudes toward superheroines? What does it say about attitudes toward female comic fans? And how, in the face of these attitudes, can those superheroines, or those female comics fans, possibly win? Anika already touched on this problem in her post about retail Halloween costumes, but my experience at the costume contest made it even clearer.

“We’ll have to do the adult female superhero category last next year. Everyone left after that one!” one of the judges remarked, halfway through the male superhero competition. His point, of course, was that people would have stuck around longer if they’d had to wait to ogle the sexy ladies. But to tell you the truth, if Anika hadn’t been a contestant, I would have left myself after that horrific display – not in disappointment that the sexy show was over, but in disgust that it had happened in the first place. And if the Baltimore Comic-Con costume contest doesn’t clean up its act next year, I don’t think I’ll be attending at all.

By Jennifer Smith
E-mail: Jennifer@fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: throughthebrush