As you might have read last week, I had the opportunity to attend Youmacon 2016 and meet some wonderful cosplayers and make some invaluable memories with my friends. It was a mind-blowing experience I don’t wish to discredit in any way, but this week I need to talk about something a bit more personal and a bit less exciting.
At Youmacon, I got to hang out with one of my great friends Al. He goes by BigAl on most forms of social media and told me about his Mr. Freeze cosplay. He told me that even though he worked so hard on his costume, it just didn’t come together right and it left him disappointed.
The thing with Al, though, was that he was a YouTube vlogger, and still is to this day. I met him through sheer chance when my younger brother recognized him at a convention, and pointed him out to me, asking “Is that BigAl?”
This icon who introduced me into the world of anime (and by extension, one of my all-time favorite shows One Piece) was standing right in front of me in a Wreck-it Ralph cosplay. I was terrified to meet him, of course, but he turned out to be one of the most caring and friendly people I have ever met even to this day.
And hearing this man who I look up to say he was upset because his costume didn’t work out stuck with me, even now a week after the convention. It made me think about my own time cosplaying, too. For my first Homestuck cosplay, I used washable paint and a permanent marker, and a wig I got second-hand from a girl in my anime club in high school. The cosplay wasn’t great, but I remember being super proud because of the work I’d put into it.
But the more and more I cosplay, the more I seem to be pressuring myself. I seem to find myself avoiding cosplays that could be deemed as “easy” to put together. I find myself constantly challenging myself, and not to say that it’s a bad thing. I think the constant pressure I put onto myself has been making me into a cosplayer so focused on perfection I have hardly any room for fun. I find myself critiquing my costumes so much that I don’t even want to wear some of them anymore because I feel like a failure.
I let a toxic mindset control me, constantly thinking I wasn’t a successful cosplayer because I wasn’t confident in myself, and therefore wasn’t having any fun. For a long time I felt I was alone. I felt like I was the only one constantly feeling like none of my cosplays worked out. And when Al told me he felt a similar way, I felt validated.
In a way, it grounded me. It made me realize messing up was ok, and that in the end, you could move on. You can prevent that one mistake from consuming you, and can still have fun and move on with your lives. Because if someone whom you idolized for most of your childhood confides in you that they were upset a costume didn’t work out, it suddenly makes you realize you aren’t alone.
