People about Cosplay...

Putting aside for the moment that the tone of the question doesn’t imply the most open of minds, cosplay is – simply – acting. Do you consider Mel Gibson, Ken Branagh, David Tennant, Cumberbatch, et. al. immature for wanting to dress up and act as Hamlet? Cosplay is a similar – if not identical – mindset: people, inspired by characters, possessing the right combination of talent, bravery and self-awareness, performing as said character for an audience. Whether it’s a convention stage or a Broadway stage makes no difference. The person who portrays Deadpool or Master Chief is very much spiritual kin to the person who plays King Lear or Hamlet. It’s wrong to praise one and denigrate the other based on the source of their inspiration, for to declare which works are “great” and which are not is subjective or worse. Still, even if most consider it blasphemy to compare Marvel to Shakespeare, the motivation to portray characters from either realm is identical and the healthy mindset WON’T criticize this, realizing that whatever it doesn’t “get” is not automatically inferior or invalid.

PS: Ironically you will find, if you but ask, that most cosplayers as children were very successful Trick or Treaters, as Halloween is quite often the “bug” that bites them for their subsequent motivation.

First of all, cosplay isn’t just about playing dress-up. Cosplay is a whole lot more than that. Good cosplayers will act like the character while in costume or move like the character. Serious cosplayers won’t break character when they’re in costume. It’s a little bit of acting too. But it’s a culture that’s meant to be fun.

You see, cosplay is a couple things. First, it’s a service to the fandom because other people get to essentially see their favorite characters in the flesh for a couple hours. And this is especially true if you really fit the character. But it’s a lot more than that. It’s a chance to be someone else for a little while. When you put on cosplay, you get to leave your life behind for a little while. And for the people who make their own costumes, it’s a chance to not only show off their knowledge of the character, but it allows them to show off their costume skills and say “I made that.”

So, there are a lot of different appeals to doing cosplay. Besides, with all the photos that people take of you in a day, it kind of makes you feel like a celebrity. :)

Costuming has been around a long time: we find artifacts from tens of thousands of years ago where they were used to portray a being or spirit. Often those who played the parts in costume were held in high regard.

A little time with kids or a parade group reminds us all how much fun people have – let alone when there is a formal play being staged. Costuming is fun; it’s fun for people to pretend, but it should be understood by all that it’s to be pretend. Problems come when the “role” gets mixed up with one’s being; the role defines the person instead of the person defining the role.

As Jack Nicholson famously said to Michael Keaton as they were suiting up for their roles in Batman (1989): “Time to let the costumes do the acting.”

When the role is more than the person, that causes psych problems.