Cosplay For Kids

I started the PCA/ACA paper I did last year with an anecdote about a little girl that I met at Baltimore Comicon a couple years ago. She was three years old and dressed as Harley Quinn. Here’s an excerpt from the story:

In September of 2012, while attending Baltimore Comic Con, I met a three-year-old girl whom I’ll call Lucy. It was her first comic book convention and she was dressed as her favorite character, Harley Quinn. While spectators gathered to photograph Lucy, posing in her intricately crafted costume, I asked her parents how long they had been comic fans. “We’re not,” her father told me; neither he nor his wife had read a single comic since they were children. I asked why they would bring a three-year-old to a convention wearing a clearly very expensive costume. He explained that he was an avid video game player. A few months prior, Lucy happened to enter his living room and sit down next to him as he played the Batman: Arkham City video game. She watched intently as he, controlling Batman, struggled to defeat the villainous Harley Quinn. When he finally succeeded, Lucy demanded he play it again. She became obsessed with the character. She wanted toys, cartoons and books — any merchandise featuring Harley. She wanted to dress as Harley for Halloween. Unable to find an authentic costume that small, Lucy’s mother began mail ordering custom made pieces. I praised their devotion. She told me Lucy’s happiness was worth it, but “you have no idea how difficult and embarrassing it is to convince a European sex toy shop to make a toddler sized leather corset over the phone.”

Clearly Lucy has the coolest parents ever. Or at least two of the coolest parents ever. Today, the photography website PetaPixel had a story about photographer Josh Rossi and his daughter Nellee. Rossi has apparently spent $1500 to construct a film accurate Wonder Woman costume for his daughter and put together a kickass photoshoot of her wearing it. His hope is to one day shoot her with Gal Gadot in her Wonder Woman costume… but even if that never happen Nellee has automatically won Halloween 2016.

I don’t have children. But at this moment I have never wished more that I did. For all of you who do have children, if you haven’t dressed them up at least as cool as Lucy or Nellee then you have officially failed as parents.