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The cosplay community is full of a wide range of very diverse people.

No matter your age, gender, sexuality, religion, race, if you able bodied or not, body shape/size etc, no matter who you are, you can cosplay.

A question that is debated about a lot within the community is ‘Should a cosplayer cosplay a character who is not a member of that cosplayer’s race?’

The two usual arguments on each side of the debate are, that it is racist to represent a character who does not share the same race as you and the other side of the argument is that race should not matter to what character you cosplay.

I think that, if people are not painting their skin a different colour, to pretend to be a different race and no one is saying anything racist or trying to pose as someone of a different race, then there should be no problem.

Cosplaying is about representing a character not becoming them, so any character can have any skin tone.

People do not think twice about cosplaying someone of a different gender or age.

If we all had to cosplay characters that characteristics had to perfectly match each and every part of our identity, then no one would be able to cosplay anyone.

For example one of my favourite characters to cosplay is Elastagirl, we share the same race, hair colour and gender, but not much else. She is married, a mum, older than me, American and has superpowers, none of which I can relate too.

Over all the cosplay community being so beautifully diverse, means that anyone should be able to dress up and have fun being any character they love. No matter who you are and what you look like.

Featured Cosplayers – https://www.instagram.com/fezinavortex/ https://www.instagram.com/kellicosplay/ https://www.instagram.com/cosplayrebecca/ https://www.instagram.com/bulldog_cosplay/