Last weekend ’s Gallifrey One formula featured some incredible Doctor Who cosplay , including TARDIS dress , Dalek clothes , and an army of Amy Ponds and Rose Tylers . But what really caught our eye was the “ Femme Dr. . ”
Why do so many cleaning woman want to coif up as the Doctor , rather than his many companions ? And why do they make such beautifully femme versions of the Time Lord ’s outlandish costumes ? And most of all , why does n’t the Doctor calculate like this on telecasting ? At Gallifrey , we went to a panel on “ Crossplay ” to find out more about this amazing phenomenon , and then we followed up by question the panel ’s moderator , writer and “ acafan”Courtney Stoker . Here ’s what she order us , plus some of our favorite photos from the upshot . ( Sadly , nobody got a photograph of the amazing Sylvester McCoy costume we saw , with a dubiousness - mark jumper dress and plaid tights . Update : tot up a characterization at the goal ! )
Top mental image : Hanpa_etc on Flickr
How long has this been go on ?
As far as I can tell ( cosplay is weirdly ephemeral , archived mostly in pictures online ) , the first femme Doctor cosplay debuted in 2005 . But it really seems to have exploded in popularity in the Doctor Who rooter community in the past 3 - 4 year .
Do you think it ’s mostly actuate by the sense that there are n’t any female part in Who who are as grand or primal as the Dr. ? Is it an implied critique of the show ?
Why yes , I do ! I ’ve been interviewing cosplayers , both femme and not , for the past two years . See , cosplayers are not always the most aware or conscious of their conclusion . I cosplayed as a steampunk , bustled TARDIS last year at Gallifrey 2011 . I was in the midst of my cosplay research , and thus opine hard about why I was making the cosplay decision I did . Why , for example , did I want a corset ? Why a ado ? What did these choices say about my fandom and how I interpret Doctor Who ? But months after I had worn the costume , I find that there were unfathomed depths of rendition up my arm . I had n’t realized how much I plug into Doctor Who , and the TARDIS in picky , with steampunk . The moral of this story is that even when a cosplayer is pertain with what her costume means , she does n’t always know . She may not be conscious of why she is lay down the decisions she is .
So some of the femme Doctor cosplayers I interviewed were clear about their motivations , but even the ones who were less witting were clearly making up for what they saw as a lack of female friend . While there are peck of awesome companions , there are no female hoagie in Doctor Who . The companion are , definitionally , sidekicks . And femme Doctor cosplayers are very aware of this . They require to be Cuban sandwich , not follower and sidekicks , however badass . And Doctor Who does not offer them a hero that match their experience , who looks anything like them . So they invent her .
Further , I do n’t think femme Doctor cosplay is just a review article of the show . It ’s also a review article of the devotee community . Nightsky , a cosplayer I fit at Gallifrey 2011 , narrate me “ I do want to get my fellow fan thinking about the function that fiction has for women , and how that has and has n’t changed since 1963 . I want them to say , ‘ A distaff Doctor ? ? ? ! ? Whaaat ? ’ and then think about why that sounds so ridiculous , even inside their heads . [ … ] I want them to say , ‘ Impossible — she could never run to keep the day crop like that ’ and then call up about how fashion ( and , more broadly , societal expected value ) hobbles woman and constrains their choices of use . ” Nightsky was a bit more articulated than most cosplayers I interviewed , but her sentiments were common . Femme Doctor cosplayers are often trying to review the path the Doctor Who fan community treats grammatical gender and how that community disregard the ways that women are constrained by lodge , skill fiction , and this show that we all love so much .
Do you recall a big part of the solicitation is putting a really dissimilar spin on familiar designs , and re - creating something everyone will recognize in a young way ?
utterly . I was once asked by a science fiction devotee , but non - normal - goer , “ What makes an otherwise reasonable person dress like a Klingon ? ” And the answer is that while cosplayers are sports fan , they are also usually costumers , or even actors . sports fan come to their cosplay with different curing of motivations : as lover , as costumers , and as actors / roleplayers . Sometimes these motivations will draw at each other . For example , a costumer might choose a costume because they love the costume or ascertain it a challenge , while the fan in them need to choose a character they relate to closely , even though the costume is boring or easy .
I think the sports fan in femme Doctor cosplayers is critiquing the show and the fan community , relating the costume to their fandom . They will probably want to choose Dr. they relate to and love affectionately , Doctors they would like to be . As costumers , however , they will often choose Doctor cosplays that inspire them creatively . They want to re - excogitate the character and the costume ; a large motivation for costumer cosplayers is to make something beautiful and creative .
Is there a conflict between wearing a screen - exact Doctor costume on a female body , versus deepen it so that it has skirts and ruffles and high heels ?
There is , though I think the difference is more svelte than many people imagine . There are two vulgar types of female Doctor cosplays : crossplay and femme cosplay . Crossplay is where female cosplayers vary their body to “ pass ” as a male character . They will often bind their titty , wear man ’s wig ( or cut their whisker ) , and wear costume cut for manlike body . Femme cosplay need a manly costume / graphic symbol and reinvent it as femme , which is not merely distaff , but feminine . As you said , skirts , ruffles , and high heels . Some femme cosplay is less womanly , but it ’s hard to do something in between femme and crossplay , because many female bodies but ca n’t wear a screen - precise manful cosplay without altering either the costume or their bodies .
Both crossplay and femme cosplay take out attending to sex . Women passing as men are destabilizing gender by illustrating how comfortable it is to perform the polar gender , by showing that all gender public presentation is performance , since cosplay is fundamentally performative . Femme cosplay does the same matter : it draws aid to the carrying out of grammatical gender , but this time muliebrity . One of the ways we can tell that femme Doctor cosplayers are draw attention to gender is the fact that most of them do not perform femininity in their real liveliness . They often debate themselves tomboys or not particularly womanly . Femme cosplay is not about playing around with skirts and heels and war paint , it ’s about emphasize the performative nature of femininity . As women who often do not perform femininity in their daily lives , these cosplayers are familiar with how much labor pop off into “ appear like a womanhood . ” They know how much work femme is .
So really , crossplay and femme cosplay are not that dissimilar . Both alter their body , showing that no matter what gender they are playing , their bodies often do n’t touch any ideal . While crossplayers wear binders , femme cosplayers jade corset and blackguard . But their motivations are the same : they emphasise the performative nature of gender , and thus destabilise it . Women do this more because they have more to gain by destabilizing gender , being at the bottom rung of the gender pecking order .
Does the Doctor sort of lend himself to a femme revamp , given how many frilly , ruffly , lacey equip he ’s endure over the year ?
I had n’t really thought of that , so I ’m not sure I can give a smashing answer . But I would note that the Doctors most often femmed are really not the frilly , lacey Doctor of the Church . They are the physician in wooing . It ’s potential this is because so many fans connect to the most late physician , and it ’s possible it ’s because costumer want a more ambitious task , since making a feminine lacey costume femme is not on the dot hard .
How did you get concerned in this issue ?
By being a lover in graduate school . I became interested in devotee studies while getting my M.A. in English , and acknowledge that almost no fan studies scholars were talking about cosplay . And the phenomenon is so fascinating ! When I begin fancy femme Doctor cosplay , I got really interested . I suspected something amazing was go on about gender , Doctor Who , and fandom , and I need to roll in the hay what it was . And cosplayers have certainly exceeded my expectations . Their cosplay is more complex , more thoughtful , and more imaginative than I ever could have opine .
Most photos byHanpa_etc on Flickr . Other exposure viaAimee Major , L.A. Weekly , Femme Doctors on Tumblr , Gigs-83 on LJ , Caitlin Katz , Shaina Philipsand Michele Watkins .
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