The Cosplay Bodypaint Debate
Cosplay has grown into a far bigger and far more socially acceptable hobby in the past 5 years. That initial skepticism and preconceived disdain very quickly melted away upon the arrival of 2020’s lockdown and of course the rise of Tik Tok. It was the era of the triple split screen junko posing. And who could forget the My Hero Academia shipping discourse. Although we really really do not want to talk about the Bakugo poster incident. We don’t talk about that ever. Ever. People were getting creative with their makeup. wig styling and bringing characters from every single conceivable fandom to life. Once a hobby that was only really indulged in by people heavily into online and in-person fandoms, it has grown into something that those who are even vaguely interested or aware of pop culture can casually try out. Further normalized with musicians like Megan the Stallion and Baby No Money, who have started to include anime and pop culture and cosplay into their music videos and into their overall media marketing. I hate to say it, but liking anime and pop culture is kind of mainstream now. Being an otaku, being a weeaboo isn’t anything all that special. I mean, it never was, but I feel like it felt special because it was something that you weren’t meant to enjoy, but you did enjoy. But now, everyone kind of is aware of it and kind of enjoys it. And so you might figure that because we’re now sitting in mid 2025 that the landscape of this flamboyant hobby is so much more diverse and accepting and kind because of all the new people who are being introduced to it. Well, kind of yes and kind of no. You see, it’s really easy to assume that we fostered a more nurturing and kind space as a cosplay community. After all, social media can bring really quick attention to localized and widespread issues within the community and fandoms. Con drama spreads like wildfire, which means that you and your nan and yay han are all made aware very very quickly of a con creep or any outbursts that happen at your local or widespread anime convention. But in reality, there is still this ongoing and lingering toxicity that affects many eager anime and pop culture enjoyers. This less than subtle divide that often shows itself in the worst aspects of any vocal fandom. The cosplay community has a big problem and social media is making it abundantly clear that this issue is nowhere near being on its way out. And in just this past week, we’re being given more and more examples as to why it’s important to talk about it. So grab your strap and strap on in. So grab your ramen and your pocky and take a seat because it’s time that we had a chat. Cookie Kingdom is a popular mobile game that leans into the anime rules of gacha gameplay. Launched in January of 2021, the game very quickly gained popularity with its Western audience after the official English release of the game came out in October that same year. And because of its cute chibi designs, pleasing user interface, and strong public launch, it’s not surprising that cosplayers bought into this game and very quickly wanted to recreate the designs of the cookies. Because low key, these cookies are kind of dripped out, and there’s a huge roster for people to choose from. characters like Mystic Flower Cookie, Mozzarella Cookie, and seemingly one of Tik Tok’s darlings, Shadow Milk Cookie. Hell, they’ve even done collaborations with brands like Disney, recreating iconic characters and Disney princesses in their cookie form, something which I think accurately shows that the cookie dough color is often emblematic of the characters race or culture. The Pocahontas cookie still has her human counterpart skin color, as does Lilo from Lilo and Stitch, Princess Jasmine from Aladdin, and characters like Peter Pan. The design of the cookies and the art or culture that inspires them often plays into the coding of that character. Yes, they are technically cookies, but they are designed to be humanoid in the same way as chibiies. I mean, gingerbread men or gingerbread them. Yeah, there it is. The gay bomb are just meant to be little gingerbread people. It’s also kind of like how Claudine Wolf is a werewolf, but she’s also meant to be a black woman. Her technical separation from being human doesn’t separate her from the reality of humanity. And so for Cookie Run Kingdom, the choice of natural skin tones, or as it’s called in universe, cooking or baking, is still very much a deliberate one. Now, sure, there are cookies that have unnatural skin tones, such as pink or green or blue, but those are generally considered the minority in the overall roster of characters. And as previously shown, most of the characters are designed with real world recognition and cultures in mind. Now, for the most part, fans and cosplayers of Cookie Run Kingdom can understand this and acknowledge this. Most engage with the community and fandom without any backlash or controversy. However, instead of the great July earthquake that was predicted in Japan, we’ve instead received the golden cheese cookie blackface in Russia. To the tune of over 300,000 views, Russian cosplayer Meowan decided to elevate their cosplay. not by improving the wig styling or maybe adding more texture to their handmade costume, but to instead take their panone white smoke skin and paint it into a deep warm toned brown. Going far beyond the socially acceptable rule of tanning, which is three to four shades darker, and instead jumping head first into what should be an obvious display of, albeit unintentional, black face. Now, sure, their intention wasn’t to be offensive. It was to be character accurate as Golden Cheese Cookie is a darker skin- toned character. But they’re also a character specifically designed around ancient Egypt, a country which sits within the continent of Africa. They were not emulating minstal makeup. And I think that’s one of the reasons why people assume that this shouldn’t be seen as offensive. After all, to many, imitation is the highest form of flattery. For example, if you were to take my hairstyle and copy it beat for beat, most people will probably just see it as flattering. And I don’t really care if people have the same haircut or color as me. But the thing is, we know that not all forms of blackface are done to mock black people. It’s why we have terms like black fishing or black scent or to describe the phenomena of non-black people adopting aspects of black culture or identity when they themselves aren’t attached to that culture or identity. Think a white woman with box braids who doesn’t realize she’s going to give herself traction alipcia or bald spots within a couple of months. or even Ariana Grande’s weird world tour of different skin tones and accents. Komi, get your ass in here. Come on, girl. Oh, wow. You just flung here. Rub me for a second, girl. What’s the craziest? Has anyone said anything to you about MAC? You know, I love my MAC lipstick. This is the Mac I’m here to talk about today. Girl, come on. Well, I think it’s that’s exactly what it is. It’s the beginning of um one of the greatest platonic love stories. When you are a white person adopting the skin tone of a dark-skinned character, you very likely just get to enjoy the applause and attention for doing that costume, doing that cosplay. But at any point, you can go to any public bathroom and take that makeup off, returning to the privilege and the life that you previously had. You don’t have to live with the handicaps and hardships of living every single day being a non-white person. Meanwhile, as I discussed in my previous cosplay video, which was quite literally an hour and a half documentary deep dive into the cosplay community and anime conventions, black cosplayers and just darker skinned people in general do not have this same privilege. Black cosplayers content comment sections are routinely filled with comments comparing them to the dark version of a character, black Meiku or Miku standing in the shadows. And in some more severe but still often occurring instances, people will just tack the n-word onto the back name of a character. Burn. Perry isn’t a lower race. Why cardboard colored? Okay, but at least get a little more accurate color people for this. I’m not really going to entertain you anymore. I don’t talk to slaves. Keep barking, mut. Hi, I’m Sparkle. I’m 31 and I’ve been cosplaying for 6 years. And those are just minor examples of comments that are in my comment section for existing. Being a black cosplayer has just come down to a few things. Either you post, you don’t get any attention. You post, it goes everywhere and you’re met with the most obscene and ridiculous and honestly unoriginal comments that I’ve ever seen. Most people just do simple things where they mix in word with what’s said character and they say that character ain’t black. But not everybody can have that same mindset as me. Not everybody has been on the internet as long as I have, who has been in a social sphere as long as I have. I may not have been in the cosplay community, but I’ve been in fandom spaces for so long, and I’ve been in aggressive spaces where I’m watched for everything I do. And that’s what happens when I’ve made cosplay my job. I’m watched even more than anyone else. I’m constantly compared to my counterparts. I sometimes compare myself to my counterparts. How can you not? We could have the same makeup, the same wig, the same costume. And for some reason, I’m in the wrong for who I cosplay because they aren’t my skin tone. And that hurts. It hurts very much. It hurts that I can’t just exist in the same space as everybody else without getting attacked. And I’m not getting not getting attacked because I did anything wrong. I’m just existing in the space. So yes, when you paint yourself brown to match a cosplay, it’s offensive. It’s blackface. Stop correcting black people on what blackface is. Even if your intent is not to hurt, it is blackface. Stop wearing our hair texture as wigs with laws having to be passed so people can wear dreads, so people can wear braids, so people can wear their afro. You can’t be wearing that as a costume. You can’t. There’s no wraparound. There’s no if ends or buts. Oh, you don’t want to be called not canon? That’s what you’re worried about. Out of everything in the world, that’s what you’re worried about. Cosplay is not about being canon. Black people have to try so much harder than white people to even get remotely an ounce of the attention everybody else gets. Painting yourself brown and wearing our hair textures is not a justifiable option just to avoid a little that character ain’t canon. No one’s canon. No one looks like the characters that we’re cosplaying. No one truly is the characters that we are cosplaying. And I will never let these comments stop me from doing what I love because I love what I do. I love dressing up. I love having fun with my friends. I love getting the chance to even have this conversation on Add’s platform because this is important because black is beautiful. We are beautiful. We are amazing. And just because a lot of you guys want to be ignorant and pretend that things do not exist is never going to stop how amazing we are because we are black and beautiful. When black and dark-kinned cosplayers can’t engage with the hobby in the same way as their white peers purely due to the color of their skin, it’s kind of objectively fundamentally wrong for white folk to use that melanin for personal gain and profit. Because again, black and dark-kinned cosplayers who have that skin tone don’t get anywhere near the same recognition, opportunities, or even just treatment from their peers as white people do for using the makeup to achieve it. Oh, cool. monkey and off it goes. All right, that was fun. And so, in response to people’s mixed reactions, the Golden Cheese cosplayer decided to clap back at their critics, posting more videos of the cosplay in question, again to the tune of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of views, as well as then re-sharing stories of other Russian cosplayers defending them, in some cases by wearing black face paint, as well as this weird story of them just flipping off the camera. Two subsequent Tik Toks also ended up getting posted after this. The first of the two videos was them lip-syncing to the Cat’s Eye Gnarly music song that’s like trending, right? Music song. Music song lip-syncing to the song from Cat’s Eye that is currently very very popular with the text on screen stating, “Stop writing about Blackface. This is not blackface. This is a cosplay of a cookie, not a human. Please stop. I have no bad intentions. I wasn’t trying to offend anyone. I am just cosplaying my favorite character. I will not stop cosplaying her.” Oh boy, that really was a bad song choice mixed with the all caps because yikes. As you can imagine, this inevitably did not go the way that they had hoped with more and more critics piling into the comments wondering why they were being so defensive and argumentative. And as more creators began to become vocal about this issue, too, which spread the video further, the cosplayer decided to post another video, which was more in line with an apology, but was still kind of an oapology, which stated, “Hello everyone. Today I want to respond to comments about my golden cheese cookie. First of all, these are cookies. I’ll give you an example of dark cocoa. These are dark cookies due to the fact that it is made with cocoa. Golden cheese cookie is dark because it is brown. Secondly, I am not a blackface or a racist. I didn’t want to offend anyone’s feelings. I love dark-kinned people. I just wanted to make a canon version of the character. Blackface is the concept of caricature depiction of people with dark skin, depicting them in a bad light. I have a cosplay in the fashion show. I generally portrayed her greatness in Russia. The concept of blackface is not relevant since I’m not from Europe. We don’t judge for that. If I hadn’t cosplayed my skin, I would have been condemned for whitewashing. You show racism by insulting Russians because of my cosplay, but our countries have different mentality, and it’s hard to please everyone. Believe me, I’m tired of all the comments. I would like to ask you to stop making videos about me. I apologize to those whose feelings I’ve hurt, but I will continue to do cosplay and content on her as I really love this character and my cosplay. I made this cosplay for a very long time and put a lot of effort and soul into it. Only beautiful content is waiting for you in it. I didn’t know about blackface before this. Now, firstly, I do want to make one thing perfectly clear and that is that I don’t want people going to find and harass this cosplayer in the name of feeling morally superior. I understand the frustration. Trust me, I do. But personally, harassing them and causing them harm is not productive. It’s not kind. It’s not nurturing the atmosphere that we want in the cosplay community. And it’s also going to lean into their victimhood. And secondly, if you consider this an apology, it’s not mine or any other white persons to accept. However, from my perspective, this person isn’t really addressing the problem or acknowledging why this was an issue to begin with. Instead, they’re just focusing on cherrypicked kind of non-issues, which further lean into them being a victim of misunderstanding. And again, yes, I completely acknowledge, I think it’s fairly evident, that they weren’t trying to do something offensive, but that doesn’t mean that their intention doesn’t have a consequence. People are very often willing to give you the room and space to grow. They want people to improve. They want people to understand why it’s a problem and make changes for the better. But to make that improvement happen sincerely, you need to accept that there was a mistake that you’ve made. Something which they’ve honestly, again, in my opinion, not really done in this video and didn’t really do in any of their previous videos or stories. And in an allegation made by one commenter, this creator has done far more minstral adjacent makeup in non-English-speaking social media circles. Apparently doing this because they hate Americans and they’re annoyed with Americans. But like with anything, please keep your critical thinking skills in line and take it with a pinch of salt. And to make one other thing perfectly clear, Russia does not exist outside of the understanding of racism. They were quite literally neutral towards Germany in 1939, only changing their stance on them when Germany tried to invade in 1941. In a BBC article from 2020, black Russians and black immigrants who were studying or choosing to live in Russia talked about their experiences of racism from childhood to adulthood, whether it being denied taxis on the regular due to the color of their skin or experiencing unfair treatment in all stages of education. Just because Russia isn’t inherently diverse doesn’t mean that their treatment of minorities is somehow acceptable or okay. And also just to point out the obvious, but it’s 2025. We have the internet to look up and research things if we’re not sure if something we’re doing is okay. We literally have the ability to go through human history and pinpoint exact information that we want to learn about. If you have the time to open up Tik Tok, you have the time to open a textbook or look at Wikipedia. Again, that doesn’t mean that you can’t make mistakes, but it does mean that you have all of the resources to learn from them. Now, you may be thinking, Addy, they apologize and their videos are gone. Their account is seemingly deleted or privated. What do you mean bigger issue? Well, apparently, we’ve moved on from the hyper cautious 2020 kawaii is a slur era of Tik Tok and instead have gone full speed into finding ways to defend this behavior in 2025. And I honestly wish I could say that that was a small minority of the people responding to the situation. But if it was, I’m not sure if I would have felt so compelled to make this video because when I initially spoke on this over on Tik Tok and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube, I got literally thousands upon thousands upon thousands of comments telling me that I was too sensitive, too woke, and that this behavior was not at all offensive. One specific comment that was saying this had the audacity of having the lesbian flag and player 120 from Squid Games 2 in their public profile. As if their passive enjoyment of queer representation, freedom of expression, and just media as a whole isn’t thanks to the ongoing and historical work of people who were woke and sensitive. More specifically, the work of Marsha P. Johnson, a black transwoman who was a vocal advocate for all of the things and queer representation that you get to enjoy today. The audacity of this comment definitely stuck out, but by no means was an isolated incident. Other asinine comments included gems such as, “So, you’re saying I can’t paint my skin blue?” Or, “Let’s be real though, if she didn’t paint herself brown, people would be calling it whitewashing.” Or even just see classic white people mansplaining what racism is and posting pictures of minstrel makeup in the comment section. Not my comment section, mind you, but the comment sections of dark-kinned and black cosplay creators who were vocally uncomfortable with this use of body paint. Most of these creators ended up having to turn off their comments because it just became an inroad for people to leave hateful remarks. I really don’t think I should have to say this, but like don’t do this. Don’t do this. What are we doing, guys? Come on. Come on, chat. Let’s not. A fellow Russian cosplayer even took it as an opportunity to post themselves in the same style of blackface with the hashtag that you may have spotted in the thumbnail of this video being cookies have no race. But like we’ve established, golden cheese cookie is quite literally based off of ancient Egypt is very emblematic of ancient Egypt. The cookies are coded to suit their origin of inspiration. And even though you might be cosplaying a cookie, you yourself are human and you live in a society where skin color, human skin color, has been used to oppress and hurt people. But regardless of common sense, a small micro trend seemingly started amongst some Russian cosplayers who again saw it as an opportunity to put black face paint on in various dark shades at some point just being pitch black in order to defend the use of body paint in a weird cry against them being racist, but also doing a thing that they’ve been told by people who are black is racist. I I don’t know if the logic makes sense. I’m I’m struggling to figure it out. So, what’s Add’s talking about right now that there’s a cosplayer that cosplayed an Egyptian character and she used like brown paint uh to do her makeup. Hi guys, I am Egyptian. I am a cosplayer and I’m white. You can’t cosplay Egyptian characters with white skin because we have a lot of skin tones. We have white, tanned, brown, you can name it. We have black people. We have Egyptian people are the most diverse nation you can see. So you don’t have to color your face to cosplay an Egyptian character cuz guess what? Wait, Egyptian do exist. That’s it. Thank you. Now, I know my beautiful, gorgeous core audience does not need this explained to them, but just let a girly yap and let me lay it out for you so we’re all on the same page. Firstly, painting your skin blue or green or pink or any other nonh humanoid color is not a problem. There is no historical oppression or misuse around the use of painting your skin green to look like Shrek or painting your skin blue to look like a mermaid or sea monster. There are no races of people on this earth that naturally have this skin color and have faced widescale and historical oppression. That is the key differential between painting yourself brown as a white person and painting yourself blue. What is wrong with you? Why are you blue? And before any wise guys try to bring up the blue Fuggate family, let it be known that that was a white French American family that hailed from Kentucky. Some of whom happened to have a rare blood disorder. So although their skin presented this kind of deep, cold, steely blue color, only four of the seven original children possessed this defect, this genetic abnormality, and the other kids were just regular white Americans. The continuation of this gene throughout the following generations was a byproduct of get out American inbreeding. Due to a small gene pool in the local area, there wasn’t a lot of other people to mate with or marry. And so people ended up just by proxy unintentionally going with a second cousin, accidentally going with somebody who’d also been in your family twice removed. The Blue Fuggate family did indeed have blue skinned members, but they were not a race of people and again only likely suffered poor treatment for their appearance on a far smaller and localized scale. There are no dedicated slurs or artifacts that hearken to a wider anti-blue agenda. If you want to cosplay Mina from My Hero Academia or Marceline or Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time, you absolutely can. Honestly, Meowan could have very easily done something other than dark body paint. They could have gone for gold body paint or even used some creative contour in the colors of their costumes such as gold, red, and blue. All of which would have absolutely suited the character would have still been 100% identifiable as the character without having to adopt a skin tone that they would otherwise never naturally achieve. Another popular opinion that was used to justify this race swap was that if they hadn’t changed their skin tone, they would have been accused of whitewashing. With people making the vague assertion without dropping any specific names, the other white cosplayers who had cosplayed Cookie Run Kingdom characters that had a darker complexion had faced online bullying because they hadn’t changed their skin and were being called the whitewashed or noncanon version of that character. To which I say, so what? Who cares? Maybe this might be a controversial take. My Green Goblin moment and an otherwise saccharine and hypers sweet online personality because like if you can’t handle dumb comments from dumb people who are likely just trying to rage bait, suggesting that if you don’t darken your skin for a cosplay, you’re somehow being offensive. Maybe just don’t cosplay black or dark-kinned characters at all. Hi, I’m Lemonade. I’m a black HIV cosplayer from the UK. I’m 19 years old and I’m here to talk about my experiences as a black hijabi in the cosplay scene. So, I’ve been cosplaying since 2022 and my first ever convention that I that I attended was the MCM October Comic-Con and it was incredible. I had such an amazing time. I saw so many cool cosplays and I decided from there that I really wanted to cosplay as well because I’ve always been someone who’s who’s loved dressing up and I decided to take inspiration from people like Suslike and Hijabi Hooligan. With that being said, online, I am really grateful to be able to show my cosplays to so many different people since everybody can cosplay. And I’m so thankful that I know that as well because I’m able to cosplay and show people my creativity and skills. And I’ve gotten so many wonderful, wonderful messages from people being inspired by me as a cosplayer to just general compliments. And honestly, being in the cos community is amazing. being out um and offline, I’m able to meet so many people. I’ve been able to meet some of my lifelong friends and I’ve just been able to do things I probably wouldn’t be been able to do had I not been a cosplayer. Unfortunately though, being a cosplayer, especially as a person of color and a hijabi, I have experienced quite a lot of hate and racism, especially in the recent months that I’ve really started to grow as a cosplayer on both my Instagram and Tik Tok. And comments can range from just simple mean comments about my hijab or just my cosplay in general to full-on racism. And it really does sometimes get discouraging, especially when I get comments like this and this because it seems to me that a lot of people don’t realize that being on the internet, a lot of people have lost a lot of empathy and um logical thinking towards things like realizing that the person that they’re seeing behind the screen is a real person. And I have real feelings and I feel those things. And when I get racist comments as a person who’s experienced racism and a lot of it in my lifetime, it does it really does suck. But with that being said, as a cosplayer, even though I do get hate, I do get racist comments, that’s not going to stop me from cosplaying. I truly believe that being the person I am, I truly want to just continue to inspire people and to educate people. It’s a good thing to talk about it because it’s good for people to be informed and to not stay ignorant. But if you want to see more of my cosplays and want to know more about me, I’m on both Instagram @xaboox and on Tik Tok @ lemonade_cos. Look, I know being picked on online isn’t fun. I literally do it as a job. I put myself out there to be picked apart for funsies. But this reaction of whitewashing is not only misinformed, but it’s still only a fraction of what black cosplayers have to deal with for just posting cosplays online for just existing in their skin every day. I don’t know why we’re acting like we can’t block people or remove comments posted in bad faith or even just explain why we don’t want to darken our skin because we don’t want to offend people in our community and make it an unsafe space for them. If your solution to whitewashing is blackface, then I fear you’re missing the point entirely. If you wouldn’t elongate or tape your eyes for anime characters that are meant to be Asian, then I don’t know why we’re normalizing the idea that it’s okay to deepen your skin tone when cosplaying a character who hails from Northern Africa. But maybe you don’t want to hear all of this from me because after all, I am quite literally the whitest woman in the world. I have an award. It’s in the post. Okay, I can’t show it to you. It’s in the post. My mother’s very proud as a white person. I don’t have the lived experiences of people who have to deal with what blackface brings with it. I walk through life with an invisible and completely subconscious level of privilege that many of my friends, peers, and other people within this space creatively don’t have. But I also don’t think it should just be up to people of color to have to talk about why this stuff is wrong. Having to advocate for themselves constantly and waste their time educating people who are choosing to be ignorant. I think in order to improve the community, we all need to feel comfortable elevating the opinions and voices of black people that already exist online. But equally, I wouldn’t have felt okay making this video if I hadn’t previously talked to black cosplayers on how they felt and if I wasn’t involving black cosplayers who have this lived experience in this video. And so I want to thank the black cosplayers who may have already been watching through this video and that you’re about to hear for sharing their voices, sharing their opinions, and giving their time to another dumb thing that they needn’t be having to educate people on. Hi, I’m Black Ace Cosplay. Some of you may already know me in the UK because considering the fan base, I started cosplaying when I lived in the UK between the years of uh 2017 2021 for four years. and why I can’t talk about my black cosplay experience around the world because I travel a lot like a lot a lot. I have been to Germany, Italy, Spain, Iceland, Morocco, other countries and you know how I live in the United States and the cosplay experience is a lot different from the US to the UK. Back when I was starting back in 2017, you could count the amount of black cosplayers at the convention on your hand and maybe if you’re lucky both hands. We got like you go cosplay go black cosplay. I just I was like okay there’s barely any black cosplayers here. But now that I visit every year after I left like in 2022, 2023, 2024, there’s way more black cosplayers. But yeah, let me talked about my experience and I have to say like in the beginning it was hard because like you just got I started cosplaying characters I know like Static Shock, Eddie Gordo, very simple characters. And now I was like I want to branch out more. I want to learn techniques like how to sew and how to wig make and I was like oh I could put my own twist into it. for example. So this shirt we gave frame here is based off my stained cosplay that kind of like went by when I first did it because I put a twist on it with having an afro and one of his knives being an afro pick and how that affects like how the cool factor if you would on the characters. So when I say hair mask for a black cosplayer it kind of does it makes everything look cool. People love that wig. People love the wigs I do for like my Genchin cosplays or my Hong Kong Star Rail cosplays. I do curly hairs. I make the wigs for it. But when it comes to like state side, there’s way more black cosplayers. It feels it’s 50/50 sometimes. Or when you go to like Dream Con, it’s the other way around. There’s also some downsides. It’s a lot of people will get discouraged when you start cosplaying when you’re black. And you cannot let that get to you. You got to keep pushing through and have fun your own way. And that’s how you make better cosplays. fight. It’s like once you find that one character you like and just nail it, you’ll get a lot of attention for and love for like Naguryuki is now my staple for Guilty Gear. And people when they look up Guilty Gear, they and Nagyuki cosplays, they look at me or Casant from League of Legends. Same thing. But yeah, that’s pretty much my experience. Now, I know at least one person has already angrily started typing the comments, if not having already posted a comment saying that, “Oh, I guess I can’t cosplay whoever I want now. I guess I can’t cosplay this character. Am I not allowed to cosplay black characters?” And the answer is obviously not. You can cosplay whoever you want regardless of your skin tone. I personally love characters like Clementine from The Walking Dead, Spider Punk, Miles Morales, Michonne. I also personally feel comfortable not cosplaying them, not because I’m not allowed to, but because I know they’re important representation for other people, and I can also appreciate and enjoy them without having to personally cosplay that character. But just because I choose not to do it, that doesn’t mean that you can’t. If you want to cosplay Clementine from The Walking Dead, who is such a great character, you can absolutely do cute space buns with your natural hair, wear the clothing that she wears in game, and do the super cool self-shaded makeup that makes a series so iconic. People will know that you’re cosplaying her without you having to make the people around you feel unsafe. The same goes for Spider Punk, especially because every single Spider-Man is cannon. You could very easily do your own version of Spider Punk and mohawk up your hair or do a really cool mohawk wig again without having to change your race to look like Hobie Brown. Diversity, humor, friendship. These are some of the things that makes cosplaying so fun. I love turning up to anime conventions and walking away knowing more and more people every single time. I’ve built many, many friendships within this community and I know so many amazing people who I love going drinking with or bumping into or always having to take a photo with. I’m so blessed to know so many amazing, wonderful, talented cosplayers who come from all walks of life. Hijabi cosplayers, cosmakers, even people who just buy their costumes from AliExpress, but wear the [ __ ] out of it. This community thrives on creativity and our desire to connect with each other through our shared love of fandom. No one is saying that you can’t cosplay Shrek or Spider-Man or even a cookie. But what we should expect is empathy and the willingness to listen and in this case learn and improve. In all sincerity, I genuinely hope that that golden cheese cookie cosplayer goes away, takes a break, and when or if they choose to revisit creating content online can do so by leveraging inoffensive makeup, or even just by improving their already super cool costume. And I hope those who willingly or naively followed ignorant lines of thinking can take real time to process, listen, and understand the perspectives of their black peers, of their fellow cosplayers, the people whose cultures, skin tones you admire so very much. We all want to have fun in this community. We all want to feel safe. But to do that, we not only need to strive for equality, but also equity. This isn’t the first time that this has happened, and it likely will not be the last. Each time it happens, you’ll be faced with comments and opinions that are oozing with ignorance and malice. And it’s up for you to decide what kind of cosplayer you want to be and what kind of community you want to be in. This isn’t about cancel culture. This isn’t about canceling anyone. This is about keeping people safe in an increasingly unsafe and conservative environment. It is so easy for us to fall into ignorant lines of thinking when we’re constantly bombarded with propaganda that reinforces this viewpoint. Now, normally at the end of the video, I’d say to leave your thoughts and opinions down below, and I want you to, but I also want you to be aware that I don’t want to be seeing any racist stuff in my comments. I don’t want to see people pop off about Reform UK or Trump in any kind of positive way. I don’t care if you see it as woke censorship. This is my goddamn page. I got blue colored hair. All right. What did you expect when you clicked on this video? I’m in the thumbnail. You knew what you were opening up. And so, you can talk about this. We can discuss this but I want this to be a productive space. I want this to be an encouraging space. If you don’t have anything nice to add to the situation, anything nice to suggest, then maybe ask yourself why. Maybe just ask yourself why firstly, but secondly, please use this as a space to foster positive and important conversations in the framework of genuinely good faith understanding. But please, please just don’t be horrible. Just don’t be horrible. Also, just straight up, being woke is just literally having empathy for other people, even if you don’t understand their personal experiences. It’s just being nice and empathetic and kind. That’s what being woke is. I don’t know why we fear being woke so much. I feel like being woke is kind of just being nice of the time. Like, the very vocal minority who make woke this hyper cancel culture thing are usually like very young people who just do not understand nuances and are very black and white in their thinking. all their people who were actually just trying to rage bait. And can we also just normalize that rage bait isn’t actually cool or funny. If you post something offensive as rage bait, you still said and did the offensive thing. I don’t care if it’s ironic and you don’t go around in real life behaving that way, you’re still doing that for attention, which is just as bad, if not worse, because in order to gain attention, you have to lop as some awful person. And by proxy, you are just an awful person. So rage baiting isn’t also a thing here. I don’t care. Like literally rage bait is the dumbest argument against why you shouldn’t be upset over something. As if people aren’t just saying the horrible thing anyway. Let’s just get rid of that. Tell me what you think about rage bait. How about that? Actually, valid crash out. It’s a valid crash out. And I don’t care if you It’s a valid crash out. If you want to know more about the cosplay community and what’s happening with cosplay, if you’re new to cosplay and you want to learn more about cosplay culture, cosplay etiquette, just anime conventions as a whole, then check out my other video, which is literally an hour and a half dedicated to this subject. And it does have a little chapter about this issue as well. But this video, I feel, is particularly necessary because I feel like people just aren’t getting it. Now, if you love my content, if you love seeing me yap and video essay and deep dive and just cover pop culture and fashion, and there are more fashion videos coming, I promise. I know I’ve diverted from fashion recently, but there are more fashion videos coming. I’m very excited. I just want to take good time cooking them up, especially with the current one that I’m cooking up because the community and the subculture around it is far more rooted in mental health. It’s more sensitive. Uh, and I really want to handle that with some grace and dignity and levity. So, that’s taking more time to script. But there is a big fashion video coming. You can probably guess if you know me what the topic is. So that’s coming soon. That’s that’s coming soon. But in the meantime, if you want to support my content, if you want to support me whilst I spend time scripting and creating and editing these videos, cuz I do edit and create everything myself. I only occasionally have the help of editors when it comes to covering me if I’m on holiday or creating my clips. Big thank you to my clip editor. Then please consider supporting my Patreon, which is an amazing way of supporting this channel and supporting what I do. We have three different tiers over on Patreon. We have the Oshi tier, the Otaku tier, and the Keeping It Casual tier. And the Keeping It Casual tier is literally cheaper than a Costa Coffee every month. And again, all of that money gets put directly back into the channel and directly back into supporting me doing content full-time, which allows me to work on videos for YouTube and daily uploads for YouTube shorts, Instagram, and Tik Tok. And I really appreciate all of my amazing patronons who are already supporting this channel. And those people are Lace Hart, who has also done two different fan arts for me so far. Fable in Tokyo, Nina Hopkins, JMN R16, and the newest Oshi member, Idiot Insomniac, and of course, our lovely otaku tears over here as well. Once again, please consider checking out my Patreon. And a big thank you to anyone who is already supporting me. It means the world. And of course, I am currently working on the room tour, which will be a Patreon exclusive, as well as other Patreon exclusive projects, such as my Japan vlogs and a couple of exclusive video essays. So, be sure to keep an eye out for them, and I will be updating on my Patreon as and when those are coming out. However, I know things are tight right now, like the economy is kind of cooked. And so, if you do not have the money to spare, if you do not have the money for matcha right now, let alone some YouTuber that you watch occasionally, then please don’t stress. The cheapest and easiest way of supporting this channel if you can’t support on Patreon is to engage with this video. Comment, like, subscribe, and click the notification bell to keep updated with all of my newest uploads. And so, with that, we’re at the end of the video. And of course, that means it’s time for the end of the video outfit check and some of your amazing fan art. And for the people asking how you can submit fan art, literally just tag me over on Instagram. Thank you again and bye. Hello. Hello. It is time for the end of the video outfit check as per usual. That’s why I’m here in this tiny restrictive rectangle. Top of my head, we have my AliExpress goggles. I’ve talked about them before. You’ve seen them before. They are the Ramona Flowers Classic, and I’ve had them for many years. Next up for necklaces, we have my Named Collective safety pin, which has a little kind of heart design. A lot of people really like this one, and honestly, so do I. That’s why I wear it so often. And I also have this razor blade necklace, which is from Marc Jacobs Heaven. Now, this little black crop top number is one that I wouldn’t usually talk about, but I do actually really like it. Uh this is a Lucy and Yak crop top. And I got it purely because my friend has a discount. Uh but it is really comfortable, breathable, and it’s a great little kind of top to just have with something like this. I don’t usually wear crop tops on their own, but with kind of jackets like this, it’s a really good thing to wear in the summer. And then speaking of this jacket, this is the Galfy track set, but more specifically, this is the Komi Exgalie track set in black. And as for trousers, I’m actually not going to disappoint you this time. Although my fit is kind of resembling Adam Sandler, the bottoms match the tops. It also has matching shorts which are Galy X Coromi. They’re really, really cool. This is a super comfy track set. I’m really glad my friend Grumpy Bunny convinced me to buy this when we were in Japan last month. This was a great purchase and if you can get this, I highly recommend it. It is so comfy.
今日、私たちはオンラインおよび対面のコスプレコミュニティ内で進行中の問題について話している。公正なコスプレのメイクとして構成されているものと、キャラクターのボディペイントでラインを描く必要がある場所に関する議論。最近のCookie Run Cosplayの論争の裏で、コスプレに話しかけましょう。 💙https://www.patreon.com/c/addyharajuku https://www.twitch.tv/addyharajuku_バックグラウンド＆pngtuberアートKonohart（Ig＆Tiktok）機器によって作成されました。
MAG.MOE - The MAG, The MOE.