cosplay
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Black Celebs and Characters to Dress Up As for Halloween 2023
From Pulp Fiction to Rihanna at the Super Bowl, we have all of the funny, cute, and scary costumes for you to choose from.
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Keke Palmer, Javicia Leslie Play With Our Emotions in Amazing X-Men Halloween Cosplay
The Nope actress and Batwoman star celebrate Halloween with spectacular X-Men costumes.
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Gaming Vet April Bowler Weighs in on Racism in the Anime Community
Being a woman is one thing. Being a Black woman in the anime community is quite another.
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A White Woman Admits She's Been Rachel Dolezal-ing Us for Years—and I Feel Fine
I admit that I don’t know how to feel about this story. I don’t know how to feel about this story because it doesn’t affect me in any material way. I don’t know how to feel about this story because I am a human being. I don’t know how to feel about this story because…
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Journey to the Center of the Urkel: A Black Nerd Summer Quest
I love a good quest. As the resident comic-book and science-fiction guy at The Root, my pop culture life has been inspired by quests—Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Lord of the Rings, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle—if it requires finding hidden treasure or discovering a lost world, I’m all over it.…
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It Be Your Own People: On Universal FanCon and the Perversion of Community
My mother, God bless her (she’s still around, but still), grew up in a certain village in rural Nigeria. And to survive this upbringing, she had to adopt some beliefs, behaviors and coping mechanisms that would seem paranoid to untrained and Americanized eyes like mine. One of these behaviors was continuously forbidding me and my…
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#28DaysOfBlackCosplay: Cosplay Is for Everyone (but It’s Nice to Have Options)
In 2002 I hopped a Greyhound bus from my Iowa State college campus to get back home to Illinois for my first anime convention. I had no idea what to expect, but more important, I had no idea what to wear! I was going to a place where being a geek was highly encouraged—and I…
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#28DaysOfBlackCosplay: Too Black for the White Geeks
I was 6 years old when my mama educated me in the ways of saving princesses by touching flowers and shooting fireballs at turtles. Four years later, a kid in my class revealed a juicy bit of gossip: There were adult cartoons that aired way past our bedtimes. I stayed up and discovered “Japan-imation” (or…
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#28DaysBlackOfCosplay: Learning to Love Myself by Playing Dress-Up
I’m a cosplayer. A black geek. A black, queer, cosplaying geek in a plus-size body. I conduct a body-positivity panel at conventions called “Love Your Cosplay Body.” For about an hour, I wax philosophically about accepting yourself and ignoring the randos of the internet who comment on fat-black-girl pics with witty remarks like “whale” or…