How to Crossplay

What if adults decided to dress up any way they wanted and pretended to be whoever they wanted to be? That's exactly what cosplay (a portmanteau of costume and role play) and now crossplay (a portmanteu of cosplay and crossdressing) is all about. Cosplay entails dressing up as favorite characters from manga, anime, video games or television. Crossplay is pretty much the same thing...except in drag.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Become an anime/video game/manga enthusiast. In order to participate in crossplay, you must know which character you want to portray, and that character's relationship to other characters the other players may assume.
2. Get involved in the crossplay community by finding others who enjoy it. While you might think that showing up to your first crossplay event without having done much research would be no problem (and you may be right), it is more fun to immerse yourself in the crossplay community first.
3. Dress up as a favorite character. Try to remember that you need to make your costume yourself while designing it. Don't get carried away. If you get it wrong, it won't go unnoticed.
4. Design your costume and set to work making it. Dress up and head for the crossplay convention.

Tips & Warnings

• While in some parts of the world, homosexual and transgendered people are accepted in mainstream society, in many places a social stigma attaches to these orientations. Crossplay offers people in those places a way to express themselves without the added stigma.
• Cosplay originated in Japan. It has become popular in the United States, where Japanese pop culture of this kind is becoming increasingly popular.
• A big issue within many crossplaying communities is whether someone should make their cross-dressing obvious or try to pass.