“Oh, You Sexy Geek!”: “Geek Girls” and the Problem of Self-Objectification – A longish piece, but well worth reading. The sexiest cosplay I’ve done was probably the Wonder Woman outfit from Halloween last year. It falls in a weird area though. I didn’t alter the costume to be sexier; Wonder Woman by default wears a pretty skimpy costume. And I didn’t choose it to be sexy; I chose it because she was my childhood hero and I had the WW Underoos as a kid. (Unfortunately they don’t make WW Underoos for grown-ups.) I actually tried to de-sexy the outfit a bit by adding a skirt over the (very brief) shorts. I guess it’s a bit like the woman in the essay who defends dressing as slave Leia. For her, that outfit is about empowerment. “You put me in a gold bikini with a chain, and I’m gonna choke you to death with it.” For me, Wonder Woman was about embodying my inner 4-year-old’s ideal of a strong, powerful woman. (That said, I felt much more comfortable dressing that way at a party with my friends. I don’t think I would’ve done it at a convention.)
2 thoughts on ““Oh, You Sexy Geek!”: “Geek Girls” and the Problem of Self-Objectification”
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Target has Wonderwoman underwear at the moment!
But I’m guessing “underoos” are the type you wear on the outside.
Huh. Nah, underoos were actually underwear. But since it was for kids, we still tended to run around in nothing else. 🙂