A Marginalized Community

The crowd moved around; roach-like, scattered. A man dressed in black with green with a silver snake on his vest and a wand in one hand, a spell book in the other, moved through the swarm to buy the latest prop weapons and clothes of his favorite heroes. Suddenly, he overheard a group of people judging a fellow participant of the event. They mocked her character choice and body size. As they laughed and walked away, the wizard stood there with a dumbfounded blank stare. He shook his head and thought to himself, “This beautiful community I belong to is growing in so much love, but also growing in hatred resulting in marginalizing itself.”

In the nerd world, there are a lot of communities to choose from; gamers, booklovers, comic fanatics, movie goers. But the most unique group are the cosplayers who are in which I belong to. There are a few reasons why this is a true statement. One thing that makes us unique is the way in which we can be hobbyist/amateur at cosplaying. For example, hobbyists could be dressing up as their favorite character even if they are not to full detail. Amateurs just do it for fun by just wearing their favorite heroes or heroines’ symbol/logo. Another part of my community that makes it interesting is that hobbyist can upgrade themselves to a professional cosplayer. One example would be that pros get paid to dress up as their character if they pay more attention to details on their costumes. Another example is that professionals get featured in nerd magazines and sometimes YouTube or big media films. The last unique thing about being a cosplayer is that it can be for anyone. For example, girls can dress up as their favorite male hero and that is called gender bending. In which the guys can do the same. Also another example is that any age can start being their favorite characters. Well, this just one part of my community to which there is also a dark side but before that is demonstrated; let’s look at the word marginalization.

Marginalization is to treat others by belittling, banning, or making them feel like they don’t have a voice. One important factor of marginalization is banning or separating a group from an activity or from others. For example, let’s say a person or group who doesn’t dress or don’t have the same interests as their co-workers or classmates tend to get banned from their peers at school lunching or don’t get a chance to participate in their peers conversations.

Another important fact of marginalization at the core is belittling a group. One example that explains this fact is Galaxy or Android users make iPhone users feel inferior towards them. They do this by teasing them of the cool features their phone comes with instead of an iPhone and how less their phones cost. They sometimes do it to an extent that they wouldn’t even talk to anyone who has an iPhone. Another example, is how some of the youth feels towards the elderly crushing their dreams and tell them their ideas won’t work, or that their generation doesn’t understand nothing in the world and they need to just work, work, and more work to get ahead in life. Now, the most important factor to explain marginalization is making a group have no voice in the matter. For instance, some police abuse their power against minorities. Some police will arrest with no question because the person fit a description from a crime that was reported. Also they beat the person because the person just asked a question and the officer felt his or her authority was questioned. It’s quite sad how most authority figures and people show all three of these sides of marginalization in one’s life time. Which leads to the dark side of the force, as my fellow cosplayers may say.

It’s sad, just like every other community out there cosplayers have to experience self-doubt, hatred, and no voice, just like the examples for marginalization. The only different is the community is marginalizing itself. One reason is because cosplayers are becoming more targeted for “the no consent cases” in the nerd world. Most pro and amateur girl cosplayers have been faced with cat calls, being touched the wrong way, molestation, and rape victims are being reported more frequently than I have seen in long time. One more reason this community has felt they have no voice to speak of. Especially, one cosplayer that I know of; her name is The Lady Kaylah. She has been trying to organize a pro consent community within the cosplaying community. But a lot of professional organizers for our community have denied her to speak about consent or anything that “might” bring shame to the community and just lock the door in face making her feel like there no hope for this cause to be worked out. The last big issue with marginalization for my community is the hatred concerning body shaming and amateurs not getting any respect from their peers. For example, there some characters in the nerd world that are drawn to be white or Asian, so most cosplayers of color who dress as that character get shamed for doing that. Other cosplayers experience different types of body shaming from their weight to their height, if they don’t fit the part to a Tee, they might get shamed by some or most pro and amateur cosplayers. This brings me to the amateurs not getting respect in the community. They don’t get the respect for many reasons. One reason: a pro might say an amateur didn’t go all out on their costume. Another reason might be that the amateur’s image is not big enough to be thought of. The last reason might be they just don’t like what the amateur is “bringing to the table” so as to say. Well, even though there is a lot of darkness in this community there is also light right around the corner.

Despite the craziness my community is going through, Kaylah is still trying her best to get that organization going. My community of amateur cosplayers are still fighting the good fight with bodying shaming, using positivity. By bringing awareness of the issues using social media and word of mouth. So even though marginalization is giving us a lot of hardships and self-doubt, we are still a loved and strong community.