Cosplay, Boobs, and History

Abby Dark-Star:

‘You don’t allow ‘boob’ comments on your stuff but then you post something like this. You are just asking for it.’

Orrrrrr….I’m being accurate to the character.

Don’t have fun ppl. Don’t you dare. Don’t be confident in your body, or sexuality and you better not dare share anything you have a sense of humor about.

No!

Abby Darkstar

The above picture and quote was provided by well known cosplayer, Abby Dark-Star on her Facebook page. Similar comments are frequently shared by women in the craft of cosplay as they are accused of any number of things just by showing a little of their figure.

It happens all the time; not just in cosplay as we are all aware. Women are accused of being too sexual often times just because they have legs, or breasts; especially when their breasts are large.

Breasts are a part of American life that has become scandalous. An ongoing outrageous debate which revolves around the idea that breasts on a woman are something that just MUST not be shown. (i.e. the expressive outrage from simple events such as Janet’s “wardrobe malfunction” still being discussed as a symbol of why we can’t have truly live TV anymore).

Now, with an ever growing cosplay trend, women are going out into the world dressed as characters rarely shown on the silver screen who tend to have more exposed breasts than what is seen as popular grocery store attire for the average american woman. The consequences of such costumes are providing an interesting platform for discussion in which men and women are all a titter (pardon the pun) over whether or not the various degrees of breast exposure equates to any number of crazy stipulations. To list a few hot topics surrounding the popularity of cosplay and boobs:

  1. Is a cosplayer less credible for dressing in a way that shows off breasts?
  2. Is the cosplayer a real geek or just a “risque” attempt to exploit nerds?
  3. Do sexually appealing costumes (anything showing cleavage is considered to be sexually appealing) comments merit, deserve, or beg explicitly sexual comments?
  4. Should there be dress codes limiting the amount of a breast exposed?

All of these questions are hotly debated in public forums where cosplay, boobs, and women are involved. And, as a new cosplayer who happens to have large breasts, I’m frankly quite irritated by it. To those who do costume, these topics are taboo on so many levels. There is a heightened environment of total acceptance and respect for crafting costumes and/or just getting inside a character and having the guts to walk around as such. And then there’s the social media where all sorts of people feel they need to interject their opinions and definitions of what real legitimate cosplay should be. The more conservative views are even seeping into the dress codes of public conventions where dress codes have popped up limiting women more so than men. Basically, we are told as a society that large breasts or exposed breasts are scandalous because they are just too sexy.

Phoenix Dress Code

Courtesy Phoenix Comicon Dress Code

As most cons will point out, they are supposed to be “kid-friendly.” Cool, fine, so don’t walk around being a total jerk and swearing and looking like your insides are hanging out in a disgustingly mutilated way…right? NOPE. That’s not a problem. Be as gory as you like, just don’t you dare show us your “underboobs” or a “sideboob.” It’s a pretty a ridiculous rule once you stop to consider the fact that most small children recently were fed 8 to 10 times a day with these very same mammalian features yet the realistic gore that actually causes adverse desensitizing affects is rarely even mentioned, if not at all, in dress code requirements across the bored.

The problem then lies in the over-sexualization of breasts which consequently has a positive correlation to the increase of middle class women using whet nurses, and an even larger increase in breasts viewed as sexual organs after the turn of the 20th century when male doctors forced “superior” infant formula onto women as healthier.

The correlation between increased formula use and the sexualization of breasts can’t be denied. Suddenly, women across the country during high formula times were placed in a shameful position if found breast feeding as nature had intended. Don’t get me wrong, do what you want, but there was a real time of discrimination for women who breast feed; and it still persists ever since the incarnation of Carnation Infant Formula. Suddenly, the once full out breasts for babes were covered up, and still in 2014 there are booming businesses devoted to “udder” covers for breastfeeding. Shirts, bras, blankets designed to cover your tatas so that no one should be disgraced by their horrifyingly sexual presence. Not surprisingly, all this breast shame has led us to a point in history when breasts are more sexualized and perverse than ever.

All the talk about covering up the boobs and hiding them away has really got me thinking though. When did all this boob phobia come out? We have all seen National Geographic pictures showing the fashion of tribal-sized communities of women dressed fully bare chested and no one bats an eye no matter where the people are. Some missionaries to these once unknown places just 50 years ago claim that these people simply had no “shame” and had to be “taught” to cover their bare breasts. Yet a simple exploration into our recent fashion history of Western Civilization points to a far more liberal use of breasts in clothing. I think the world deserves to know that our extremely breast censored society where women are called slutty for a little cleave’ and women hiding breasts while feeding their children is an extremely recent development.

Many fashion drawings depict a high society class of women who frequently wore dresses which were cut so low as to expose the nipples worn as late as the turn of the 19th century. When I found some of these pictures, I scanned the text looking for evidence that this was how prostitutes, courtesans, and “french whores” dressed. The shocking thing is that was entirely not the case. Ordinary high society women exposed their breasts on a routine basis.

According to the book these drawings came from, “beginning with the [17]’80s we see an engaging loosened of feminine attire, the bib crossed at the breasts, slyly revealing.” (Gorsline 98). Slyly revealing definitely as we see bare breasts and nipples out, not to mention the huge amount of cleavage if nipples are hidden away at all. Yet this wasn’t a brand new development.

During the Rennaissance in Italy, “The form of the body was either revealed or at any rate accentuated by the clothing. […] The low-cut dress was shaped to emphasize the bosom, which was either covered with a light transparent material, or left completely bare.” (Kybalova 139).

Italian Renaissance Garb

Fully bared breasts in European high society during extremely modest times seems hard to believe, yet the history doesn’t lie. The introduction of extremely high neck lines appears to have been a mostly American construct right around the last part of the 19th century. Before then, a long history of bared and exposed breasts were completely acceptable; a stark contrast to the judgmental society we live in which forces millions of men and women to believe that cleavage or large breasts necessitate sexual thoughts or even comment as we see in the realm of cosplay modeling.

What’s so troubling is that boobs are a biological feature of women just like an elbow. Common sense says these things are not something to be equated with the act of sex anymore than a man’s muscles, however beautiful and attractive we may find them, breasts should not stir a raging erection in people who find them beautiful.

Breasts are well….they are and always have been a part of a woman’s form. The size, shape, or amount exposed should really not amount to much in the realm of social politics. Even in conservative Christian society, Mary, the mother of God in all of her perpetual virginity and symbolic purity has traditionally been depicted with lush, round nippily breasts, all the while she was equated with purity, chasteness. Below she is simply painted in common Gothic Fashion to reflect the time period she was painted in.

Virgin Mary

Modern society’s view on breasts, and cosplay’s “use” in particular then, is in desperate need of reflection as to what is considered pure and chaste. The more comments made about “boobs” as if they are provided on women’s bodies to be nothing more than a sexual, slutty, risqué, or you name it scandalous adverbial noun, the more likely we will find the extinction of ladies showing off those beautiful parts that separate us from men in a flattering, curvy way. In a recent Sexuality and Cosplay podcast, I pointed out that nothing makes me want to cover up more than when someone makes a sexual comment because of my breasts or any other body part for that matter.

To put it in perspective, could you imagine if all arm muscles on men became so scandalous that men everywhere began wearing loose, long sleeves? No more tight-fitting or sleeveless male characters because it would be too risque? It’s absurd and most likely won’t happen, but unfortunately, American culture tells us that women must do the same thing with a similarly nonsexual in origin body part, and cover completely those breasts which are responsible for advancing humanity this far in the first place. (Allowing people to grow larger brains with flatter faces due to the extreme round shape of a woman’s breast is a popular modern theory exposited by evolutionary biologists). In case you were wondering Alanis, that’s a textbook case of irony.

Sources:

Kybalova, Ludmila. The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Fashion. Crown: New York, 1966. Print.

Gorsline, Douglas. A Visual History of Dress from Ancient Times to 20th Century America: What People Wore. Bonanza: New York, 1951. Print.

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