Fuck Yeah Fat Cosplay

Mod post!  Haven’t posted one in a while, so here goes.

This is my adult Toph Bei Fong cosplay from Avatar: The Last Airbender/ Legend of Korra.  I debuted this costume exactly a year after my Sailor Jupiter one and was about as nervous about it.  Even though it did cover considerably more than Sailor Jupiter did, (which was my concern with Jupiter), I had never really made armor before and when I first wore the costume, only one or two other people had cosplayed this version of Toph.  But it immediately became my favorite as soon as I wore it.  This past year in particular, I’ve scarcely worn any other costumes at the multiple conventions I’ve attended.  Toph is tied with Jupiter for my all-time favorite costume I’ve done, and she’s one of my all-time favorite characters in general.  I’ve just fallen in love with, connected with, and learned from the character, and made a lot of connections and fallen in love while wearing the costume.  I grew close with my roommates this year through the character and the costume, met some of my now-best friends in that costume, traveled to and saw a lot of places in it, and even met my girlfriend through cosplaying Toph.  Even if none of it lasts, the fact that all of this happened through my love for an animated character and through wearing a geeky costume, to me, is pretty amazing.

A lot of people I’ve come across think it’s really nerdy to love a show and a character that much.  So that’s why I think it’s especially odd and terrible that those who are nerdy, those who are labelled “weird” by a large portion of society, often ostracize other nerdy people for how they look, especially in terms of cosplay.  It’s reactions like that that made it, even with the huge positive reaction I got from Jupiter and the enormous confidence boost it was, still a small bit nerve wracking to cosplay a character that I knew was considered to have a different “look” than me.  But I took a leaf from Sailor Jupiter’s book when I cosplayed her and the positive response from everyone was one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me.  So I did the same with Toph. 

I cosplay the characters I do for a reason; they tend to have similar outlooks on things (and I’d bet money they’d all get along famously if put in a room together.)  They are all imminently themselves despite people’s labeling them as abnormal in some respect, particularly Jupiter and Toph. I follow Toph’s philosophy of doing what you love and staying imminently true to yourself, despite any perceived oddity in it and regardless of what anyone else thinks about it.  Toph does what she wants and if you tell her she can’t, you’d better be prepared because it’s about to go down.  Toph Bei Fong doesn’t take anyone’s shit and I try to do the same.  And if anyone ever told me I wasn’t doing justice to the character because of what I looked like, it’d be clear to me that they don’t understand Toph.  Toph does not care what she or anyone else  looks like and why would she?  She knows exactly how much bullshit it really is to judge on looks. She cares about the content of peoples’ character, their actions, their words, their behavior and she judges herself on the same standards.  She knows who she is and doesn’t need anyone else’s justification for her existence. Why would I ever be concerned with what people think about how I look in the costume when I love it so much and when it’s done so many wonderful things for me?  Never be ashamed of who you are and who and what you love.  Don’t hesitate to give something your all. Wearing first Jupiter, and now Toph, has taught me that loving something with everything you’ve got, and to hell with anyone who has a problem with it, can do unexpected and extraordinary things.