Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Geeking Out and Ignoring Gender Roles for a Day




Posted by Ruby Allen, ATLANTA, GA – The Anime weekend convention provides folks with the opportunity to geek out for a few days a year – mostly by becoming characters in their favorite television cartoons and series, as well as movies. I went to Anime last fall for the first time recently and there were three girls dressed up like characters from CATS (the Broadway musical) and another group dressed up like the human gang from TV cartoon Scooby-Doo.  I was disappointed that I didn’t see Scooby himself, real dog or human imitation. Nevertheless, I felt right at home even though I didn’t know anyone because I was surrounded by people playing characters from the shows I love.





It wasn’t odd for normal gender roles to be broken. For example, someone was dressed up and playing Thorin Oakenshield from The Hobbit. Thorin is a male character but a woman was behind this exceptional costume. I loved how this was just a normal thing at Anime. I also ran into three women and three men dressed as The Powerpuff Girls along with a woman dressed up as Powerpuff’s famed Professor Oak. Just think if these men and women were dressed up in these opposite gender outfits in their real everyday worlds of work and college. People would give them quizzical looks, or perhaps even get a quick photo on their cell phone to upload to places like Facebook or Twitter for a laugh.  I think Geeking out and ignoring normative gender roles for a day or two is great fun.


Ruby Allen is a student at Georgia College and State University majoring in Psychology. She can be contacted at ruby.allen@bobcats.gcsu.edu.

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