Bum pinchers and booth babes: The cosplay battle that's still not won

Just as most women have experienced harassment in their day-to-day lives, so too have most women who attend pop culture conventions, especially those who go in costume.

Bum-pinching, "upskirt" photos, being groped by a "FREE HUGS" guy, being leered at and breathed on: for many years, gross behaviour from fellow con attendees was just shrugged off as an occupational hazard for cosplayers.

I attended my first Australian convention back in 2008, dressed as Silk Spectre I from Watchmen, and my first American con in 2010, dressed as Jessica Rabbit.

Both costumes could generously be described as "abbreviated", and both attracted some, shall we say, unsavoury attention. When it came to doing something (anything) about reported harassment, event organisers and volunteers were often about as helpful as a sun-roof on an X-Wing, and like many other female cosplayers, there seemed to be an implication that my cosplaying was, in effect, inviting unwanted attention.

(The fact that said unwanted attention didn't cease when a few years later I was wrapped in a long-sleeve, long-legged, drab green jumpsuit as Ripley from Alien was seemingly immaterial to these great wits.)

In the intervening years, however, the notion that conventions should be safer spaces – and that, as the catch-cry among cosplayers goes, "cosplay is not consent" – has become widespread.

Increasingly, major pop culture conventions have instigated stricter rules surrounding harassment, training volunteers to better handle complaints, and some conventions have gone so far as to ban "booth babes", the scantily dressed models often employed to promote certain brands and products on the con floor.

Locally, Oz Comic Con has an explicit "Cosplay Is Not Consent" policy, with a zero tolerance stance on harassment of any kind, while PAX Australia has strict policies on both harassment and booth babes, with the latter stating it exists for "the purpose of creating an environment where everyone can feel comfortable and welcome, and the focus is on games, not hired booth staff. Booth babes are defined as staff of ANY gender used by exhibitors to promote their products at PAX by using overtly sexual or suggestive methods".

Both conventions are run by reedPOP, a global exhibition company that also runs major events such as New York Comic Con (where the "Cosplay Is Not Consent" policy began) and Star Wars Celebration.

The link between booth babe policies and harassment policies is generally thought to be that the presence of sexy (and predominantly female) models plugging games and other properties fosters an atmosphere where women are considered little more than decoration, and this filters through to the way certain convention attendees interact with female fans and cosplayers. 

As a few years ago I began cosplaying (or "crossplaying") almost exclusively as male characters, my experience of this brave new era in safer fandom has been perhaps a little muted, but the mood at PAX and Oz Comic Con this year seemed to have shifted for the better, so I asked some prominent female cosplayers for their experiences.

Henchwench, a Sydney-based cosplayer and costume designer, has been attending local cons for years, with the psychic battle scars to show for it.

"Sadly, I've had too many negative experiences at conventions to count," she says. "Thankfully, that number has really dropped off this year, so hopefully that means things are on the mend in the Australian convention scene. These days, I feel much safer inside a convention than outside on the streets, and I think that's a good indicator that things are absolutely improving."

The "convention as safe space" is something familiar to Elizabeth DeLoria, a Melbourne cosplayer and games writer, who has also experienced the dangers of commuting while cosplaying. "Last year PAX was held during cup week, and a lot of cosplayers were verbally – and in one case I know of, physically – assaulted by race punters at train stations or in the outside area of the convention building," she says.

"Conventions are definitely much more aware of cosplayer safety, however, and I think they've finally realised that cosplay is a big convention drawcard and more will cosplay if it feels safe to. There's a lot less 'maybe you should have cosplayed something less skimpy' from staff and security and a lot more understanding, and that's just happened in the last three years."

The consensus is that things are improving across the board, though all the cosplayers I spoke to said that some of the smaller conventions in Australia are lagging far behind their major competitors when it comes to attendee safety (and that includes things such as Supanova inviting actor and GamerGate antagonist Adam Baldwin to attend in 2015).

"I think some of the other conventions need to cater very much to a more 'mainstream' audience to be financially viable, and so you get some really undesirable people showing up to 'look at the freaks'," Henchwench offers. "I have never been made to feel uncomfortable by another cosplayer; every single time I have been catcalled or insulted or inappropriately touched has been by someone in plain clothes."

For Shivjam, a Melbourne cosplayer who appeared at PAX Aus as Harley Quinn, PAX's staff training in dealing with harassment came immediately in handy. "I was approached to 'attend' Sexpo on behalf of a company if I did an 'audition' at some warehouse," she recalls. "I told the volunteers immediately of the man who did not have a pass and they got straight on the radio to let people know. It's always refreshing to see staff jump straight to a complaint. Word to the wise, never trust a weird man with a live rabbit on his shoulder, I guess."

So, while the no harassment policies and better trained staff have changed the general mood of larger local cons, the jury is still out on booth babes.

While the PAX policy seems like a step in the right direction, what it hasn't done is address the fact that there are vastly different dress codes for promotional staff according to gender, something Henchwench remains concerned about. "It's not addressing the actual problem that trade shows like E3 have continued with using booth babes, which is that the vast majority of companies using booth babes have their male employees in baggy pants, sneakers and a polo shirt, and their women (ie: 'booth babe') employees wearing the same company colours and logos but with bared cleavage, six inch heels and a miniskirt," she says. "The problem here isn't that aggressive sexuality is being used to sell product, it's that there is a severe imbalance in gender representation in their sales tactics, which absolutely alienates women."

Banning "sexy" booth babes also creates confusion among cosplaying attendees, as most of us will be aware that plenty of female characters of fiction are, in Jessica Rabbit's words, just drawn that way. Take it from DeLoria, who attended PAX last week dressed as Princess Daphne from 1983 video game Dragon's Lair, one of the sexiest characters in gaming history.

"There was some confusion in regards to 'costume length' in their rules this year," DeLoria says. "Jessica Nigri was asked to leave the show floor and change into a less skimpy costume a few years ago at one of the American PAX shows, which caused a lot of confusion. Jessica is a professional cosplayer famous for being quite chesty, but PAX's justification was that she was promoting for a exhibitor at the time."

All three cosplayers agree, however, that the general vibe among convention-goers (something Shivjam describes as "a wonderful mood") is that fans' and organisers' grasp of consent and safety is improving exponentially.

"This year was my second PAX, and I feel like it was a super inclusive environment, even more so than last year," Henchwench says. "People are definitely more expressive of their identities at PAX – you see a lot of crossplay from all genders, which I love, and a lot of positive LGBTQIA expression within the cosplay community present, and in my personal experience people were so much more likely to come up and talk to cosplayers about their craft or their enthusiasm for the franchise the cosplayer is representing. 

"Every single person who posed for a photo with me this year at both Oz Comic-con and PAX asked before touching me, which was fantastic."