Twenty-three random cosplayers; twelve crossplayers - it's striking when you think about it but this is the typical ratio at most events.

A scream chased me across the Dealers' Room: "Hey, Dr. Black Jack, are you a boy or a girl?  'Cause if you're a boy, I'll totally leave my boyfriend for you!"  I almost felt bad answering:  "Sorry, I'm a girl."  Even then I could tell she considered it a minute before answering, "Oh, well."     

Welcome to the wide world of crossplay: cosplaying a character of the opposite sex.  These days, as many as 50% of the cosplayers you see at any given con are not the same sex as their characters, and it is not uncommon to interact with a cosplayer for hours or even days without being certain of their gender.  On the other hand, you may have seen crossplayers whose crossdressing was very conspicuous, such as a female Roy Mustang in a miniskirt, or "Man-Faye," infamous for dressing as Faye Valentine, hairy legs and all.

Right: Yuki as Yuki Eiri; all but one of Yuki's costumes are crossplay: "I enjoy the reactions of others when they find out you're not really the gender they believe you to be.  It's also the satisfaction of feeling like a completely different being."

A central issue in crossplay is whether to try to "pass" as the other gender or let your crossdressing be obvious.  Some crossplayers go to great lengths to disguise their gender, binding, padding, adjusting their faces with makeup and their voices with laborious practice.  Others only pay attention to the character, paying no attention to concealing their gender so long as the costume is accurate and recognizable.  A third category intentionally brings attention to the fact that they are crossplaying by wearing a costume which highlights their wrong-gender physical traits, a hulking, hairy-legged sailor scout being the stereotypical example.  Generally one associates this third category most with males dressed as women, but the recent trend of playing "femme" versions of male characters, the Naruto "Sexy no Jutsu" trend being the most popular, is really the reverse of the same thing.  So why does it feel so much less strange to see a female Naruto or Gaara than a male Faye Valentine?

Left: "Femme" Ash and Pikachu at Otakon 2005 – don't they look like something that would happen in an anime?

Putting off the sexuality issues for a moment, one key reason is that the female body-type fits the current anime aesthetic far better than the male.  While muscle-bound heroes were common into the early nineties, current anime creators are turning out more and more feminized-looking males, even in shounen series.  In Japan, this movement is almost pure marketing, since companies have realized that shows are more profitable when they can be marketed to both genders, and now that series like Naruto and Death Note are full of bishounen, Shounen Jump is the #1 selling anthology among women in Japan, beating out all the shoujo anthologies designed expressly for women.  The consequence for cosplay is that a woman dressed as a bishounen often looks more like the character than a man would in the same costume, while a male crossplaying as a mahou shoujo has to make elaborate (and often painful) modifications to his figure if he wants to look the part.  "Sexy no Jutsu" Gaara may not appear in Naruto, but it does look like something which would appear in an anime, it has the right aesthetic, while a male-looking Faye Valentine-type character design would only appear in anime as a comedy character or pervert.  If you take pictures of fifty male anime characters and show them to a non anime-watcher, half of them will be mistaken for women; is it any wonder, then, that female variants look right to us while male variants look strange? 

Right: Nick "Sephygoth" as Witch Hunter Robin; roughly 10% of Nick's costumes are crossplay: "Women easily get away with wearing ANYTHING and they can look like the character, guys are looked down on for crossplaying: in society in general, either [because it's] too feminine or considered perverted, even though (in my case) it's just neither."

One important thing to note is that the category of crossplayers who ignore their gender and neither try to "pass" nor show it off, is composed almost entirely of women, while male crossplayers generally either try to look as female as possible or as male as possible.  After all, there is no cultural stigma attached to females wearing male clothes, so female cosplayers dress as male characters very casually, often without ever thinking about the fact that it is crossplay.  Males dressed as females, on the other hand, are actively violating social rules, so both the crossplayer and the spectator are far more conscious of the male's choice than they would be of a female's.  If you think back over your convention experiences, you have probably never seen a male crossplay without thinking, "Whoa!  That's a guy!" while you've seen hundreds of female crossplays and not thought about it.  There are even some male characters whom you would be surprised to see played by a male, classic examples being Duo Maxwell or anyone from Weiss Kreuz (Knight Hunters) or Gravitation.  I doubt any male has ever donned a female cosplay without actively thinking about the fact that he cross-dressing, something women can easily ignore.  Since males think more about their choice to crossplay, they then tend to make a more conscious choice in deciding whether to try to look female or remain male. 

Males who crossplay are far more likely than women to be doing so as part of an exploration of their own gender, and a very high percentage of male crossplayers consider themselves gay, bisexual or transitioning – the percentage is far lower among female crossplayers, though still substantial.  Since crossplay has become so common, anime conventions are now a place where men can dress as women relatively freely, and where those who would not dare to cross-dress elsewhere can do so with less fear.  These days, everyone knows males who crossplay receive far more encouragement than flak from their fellow otaku, so the number of males who are willing to crossplay females at cons is not limited so much by fear of social retribution as by men's own feelings of discomfort at the thought of cross-dressing.

Left: Lora as Orochimaru; all but one of Lora's costumes are crossplay: "I use crossplay more simply because I prefer the designs of the male characters costumes...  But as a female dressing as male characters, I don't get comments that say that I shouldn't be wearing the costume..."

Perhaps the least frequently-discussed reason that women crossplaying males is so much more common than men crossplaying females is that there are, sadly, more interesting male characters in anime than female.  While good shoujo series have introduced a lot of strong and striking women into anime, the standard formula of "the main guy, the big guy, the cool guy, the kid and the girl" still only has one girl.  While harem shows may make up for that in numbers, they don't make up for the fact that writers still tend to give a lot less depth and development to the "girl" than they do to the guys who rescue her.  Naruto is currently the most popular cosplay series by far.  Last time I counted (in the good old days before the filler) there were more than seventy recognizable characters in Naruto, of whom only eleven were women – that makes the odds of anyone's favorite character being female pretty low.  Combine that with the fact that there is no stigma to stop them, and a lot of girls will choose to cosplay males without a second thought.

As for myself, it was not until I had been cosplaying for many years that it occurred to me that I had never cosplayed a female character, not because I actively chose to crossplay, but because I'm the tallest member of my usual cosplay group, which always put me in a male role, plus all my favorite anime characters are male.  If I were to cosplay a woman it would probably be Oscar Francois de Jarjayes from Rose of Versailles, who dresses as a man anyway, thus bringing us to the more general question of whether dressing as a cross-dresser counts as crossplay.  This is not a moot question – anime is full of crossdressers, both feminine boys and butch chicks, and many cosplayers, male and female, often finding themselves wearing clothing, makeup or hairstyles associated with the opposite sex even while dressing as their own.  Just as a woman may dress as Gaara without much thought, male cosplayers may dress as Orochimaru or Haku (the Naruto Haku) without thinking about the fact that these characters dress (and even speak and move) like women.  Why is anime so full of gender-confused characters?  Short answer: shoujo.

Remember, the first manga ever written for a female audience was Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight, the story of Sapphire, a prince who was born with both a male and female heart and is caught between the two gender roles of prince and princess.  Shoujo has repeated these themes ever since, both in series directly based on Princess Knight, such as Princess Prince, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Le Chevalier D'Eon and most famously Rose of Versailles, but also in shoujo in general, everything from the Sailor Stars and the androgynous cast of Angel Sanctuary to Fruits Basket, whose gender issues only become more complex the more you watch and read.  These manga and anime are more than stories about cross-dressers, but really address the issues of gender roles, separate spheres, homosexual attraction and shifting gender types which are major questions in current culture in Japan, the US and the rest of the world.  For young girls (and young guys) beginning to mature and explore their gender roles and self-identity, these stories are a lot more accessible, and more enjoyable, than standard feminist literature with its post-modern rhetoric and strong political ties.  Adult readers too may find interesting, intelligent and approachable treatments of gender in more mature shounen ai titles like MW or Jousei titles like Tramps Like Us (Jousei meaning series aimed at adult women while shoujo is written for young women).

Left: Prince(ss) Sapphire, the first Shoujo hero(ine) – so is Cosmode's cover model crossplaying or not?

Remember, Shoujo manga has brought girls back into American comic shops after several decades' absence, and it is certainly not just because shoujo is romantic – there is plenty of romance between the galactic conflicts in your standard X-men title, and there were many romance titles around in the fifties and sixties before women's comics died out in the US.  What shoujo, even bad shoujo, does that American comics never did is address gender issues and gender identity directly.  For example, Marvel comics' famous shape-shifters, Morph and Mystique, never deal with how their abilities to switch gender affect their identities, and female X-men don't discuss how they feel being called X-"men" (or at least they never did until recently when they found themselves competing with manga.)  The same lack of interest in gender issues used to be found in shounen manga.  Take for example shounen's most famous man-woman, Ranma Saotome.  In twenty-plus volumes of manga and many seasons of Anime, Ranma's crossdressing and gender-flipping are used for endless gags and martial-arts tricks, but serious gender elements such as menstruation or pregnancy are never addressed, homosexuality, gender roles and identity issues are treated only in a comic light, and Ranma's experiences of how he his treated differently in female form are limited to flirtation, groping and getting discounts on food from lecherous venders.  If Ranma ½ were a shoujo series "she-man" Ranma and "tomboy" Akane's shifting gender identities would be the central theme, and the series would probably be extremely dark.  Recently, though, even shounen has taken up the gender question, as Japanese marketers have discovered that series sell better if you aim them at both sexes.  Keep an eye out and you will find effeminate bishounen, tomboys, crossdressers and homosexuals even in such staple shounen titles as Kenshin, Naruto and the Gundam franchise.  Try if you can to think of ten anime series which never have a character cross dress; on average it will take you more than three minutes, and most of the shows you think of will be old school or hard-core shounen.  You can probably think of ten American TV dramas which have no cross-dressing in about twenty seconds.

If shoujo has lured American girls back into the comic shops, it is largely because shoujo manga are finally exploring the gender issues which are key for young women in a society where gender roles are evolving so rapidly.  Men who read shoujo also tend to like it for the same reasons.  After all, gender roles are changing for men as well as women, as traditional gender types are dissolving and even male fashions are becoming feminized.  Homosexual romance manga, Shounen Ai, Shoujo Ai, Yaoi and Yuri, are the fastest-growing sub-genres of shoujo in the US, and allow both male and female otaku to explore their own sexuality as they watch the characters explore theirs.  Still, for every Yaoi that comes out there are at least three more mainstream releases which also contain a gay, crossdressing, androgynous or other unusually-gendered character.  It should come as no surprise, then, that for fans who are drawn to manga because of its innovative treatments of gender, exploring and celebrating their identities as otaku also means exploring and celebrating their sexual identities.  For shoujo fans, crossplay is a way of exploring self-identity, but also an invitation to the spectator to think about the subject or engage the crossplayer in a discussion of variant sexuality.  Clothing is communication, and crossplay is a way of weighing in on the ongoing dialogue on gender which has drawn so many into the manga world.

Left: Kimberly Balduf as Suigintou from Rozen Maiden; about 90% of Kimberly's costumes are crossplay: "A good many of the crossplayers I have met in my years of participating in the community have been either confused or curious about their gender and/or sexuality.  In my experience, crossplaying was an accepted and safe way to start to explore that side of myself."

So why do otaku crossplay?  There are girls who crossplay as males without thinking about it – this kind of cosplay is exclusive to women because a man can't put on a skirt lightly.  There are men who crossplay as females in order to get attention, in the same vein as guys dressing in drag for Halloween or frat parties – this kind of cosplay is exclusive to men because a woman doesn't get any attention just for wearing pants.  The third category, then – the only category which is the same for men and women – is the category of shoujo readers who, even if they are not cosplaying shoujo characters, are otaku in part because of an interest in the very open and accessible treatments of gender which shoujo offers.  Cosplayers build giant weapons because we like the way warriors in anime explore the nature of violence and individual strength; we build mecha because we like what mecha says about warfare; wings because we like the theology debated through anime's angels and demons; cyborg body parts because we are interested in the future potential of technology.  Crossplay is just like these, a way of engaging in one of the oldest, most widespread, and most interesting themes of shoujo and of anime and manga as a whole, and if seeing a male Catgirl Nuku Nuku walk by makes you think about the fact that strap-on breasts are more unsettling than strap-on cat ears, then that kind of question is itself what crossplayers love most about anime.