Cosplay Practices in Platform-Based Fan Communities: A Study of Embodied Labor, Gender Performance, and Community Care

Abstract

As anime, games, film, and social media have become more closely intertwined, cosplay is no longer simply a leisure activity of “dressing up as a character.” It has become a layered cultural practice that involves bodily performance, fan identity, craft production, platform circulation, commercial opportunity, and community relations. This study uses a conceptual review approach and examines cosplay through four dimensions: embodied fan labor, gender performance, platform visibility, and community care. It argues that cosplay is not merely the reproduction of a character’s appearance. Rather, through costumes, makeup, poses, photography, post-production retouching, and online interaction, participants turn fictional texts into embodied works that can be viewed, evaluated, and circulated. At the same time, cross-gender cosplay and experiments with gendered style create room for expression, while observers cannot infer participants’ gender identity or orientation from characters, costumes, or bodily presentation alone. Platform circulation gives cosplay creators visibility, audience growth, and commercial possibilities, but it also intensifies algorithmic pressure, body comparison, harassment, blurred boundaries, and ongoing online labor. The article therefore approaches cosplay communities from the perspective of social policy and community governance, with attention to consent culture, minor protection, photography boundaries, digital literacy, and crisis referral pathways.