Cosplay is the best and only kind of play a major comic/anime fan like me should enjoy. Cosplay is defined as the practice of dressing up as a character from a movie, book, or video game, especially one from the Japanese genres of manga and anime, but to others it’s defined as nerds in Halloween costumes way too early in the year. The insults towards cosplayers just go in and out of their ears now and days, but currently people of darker skin tone end up keeping those words in their minds.

Now, as a fellow cosplayer, I have not experienced any amounts of racism, while I have cosplayed, but many other cosplayers have. In the Japanese community, there are people who would go to the extremes just to call out people who are not of the right color as the favorite character they are supposed to be dressed as. These people are known as the Cosplay Fashion Police. We already don’t see many black cosplayers at conventions, so it’s harsh when we have bigots that drive them away.

People have the right to cosplay as anything they want to be at these different conventions and be able to enjoy this experience to the fullest. It’s sad that in this country and all around, people would stoop down so low as to harassing a cosplayer just because they didn’t have the right skin tone. The Japanese community for cosplaying is very harsh and it takes guts to be able to stand outside and show off the hard work you’ve done, just to go to the restroom and change because of a couple of insults. It’s sad to say that this is how some people were raised to be, and they can’t get it out of their minds to be a little less harsh. Since it is now stuck in our minds that as a dark skinned person we can not cosplay as a little-skinned person is also sad. Even know and then, I have those thoughts that I won’t be able to cosplay as a character I love, after hearing about what hardships some people go through.

But I do love how there are some people in this world that do not care whether they are, black, Mexican, Indian, white, etc., they just love to cosplay and have fun as a fan! Let’s not forget, there’s even a problem with white people cosplaying as dark people. It’s harsh that there’s a tag called #blackpeoplecan’tcosplay when in fact we can

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Now, I don’t know about you, but cosplay is just cosplay. If you love a character and you wish to be them for a day, by all means cosplay your heart away, but if you hear insults it’s fine. Hear them, but don’t dwell on them.