Anyone else a nerd about cosplaying???
Show your designs/photos here!

I LOVE cosplay (I mean I was already disguising myself for fun my favorite characters at home when I was less than 5 x) ).
Unfortunatelly, there is just no con around here where I could cosplay the characters I would like to cosplay (there are Japan cons, but I would rather cosplay fantasy characters than manga characters, not that I don't like manga, but if I make/buy expensive cosplay stuff I want it to be to cosplay one my all time favorite characters... And in my countries people are not fun at all and look down at people doing this kind of stuff). =(. The closest con where I could cosplay a character I would be trully enjoying to cosplay I could go to is in Germany. And even if I speak a little bit of German, I can't see myself going there alone only to be able to cosplay characters nobody will probably know about x)

And also, I'm small and slightly overweight, so I would look absolutely RIDICULOUS in most cosplay I would like to wear XD :( :'(
*cries loudly: When I was a child doctors where all telling me I was supposed to become quite tall (for a woman), more than 1,75 metre tall and I didn't, it's soooo unfair! It gave me so much false hope! :'(*
Plus my hair is so bad, I can't grow it long and I don't think that a realistic wig is cheap =(
(Plus with my chest and my stupid size make it impossible for me to cosplay a male character, I would already look stupid as a female one, and some character I would like to cosplay and roleplay as are male, so for those one I can't even THINK that maybe I'll be able to one day x)).

So, to summarize, I hate my country, I hate my body, but I want to do cosplays so badly...
I still hope like one day I would look better, good enough to not look utterly stupid in a cosplay of characters I really like. :(
One of the other things I would like to do is buying/making realistic clothes from my favorites historical periods (not 100% cosplay, but still close... Since I would use them to cosplay my fav historical characters :p).

But until I can do cosplays in real life, I'll continue doing "cosplay" with my Sylestia avatar :p

But I look forward to see all your cosplays =)

_{I know this is offtopic, but I couldn't just walk past your post >w<}

please don't say you hate anything about yourself! you can of course be dissatisfied with something, but negative emotions get you nowhere. I think you're a wonderful person and deserve to be loved. so please, please don't say "hate" even if it's not serious and all that...

*sighs* sorry for bothering, I know it's not my business, but I love Sylestia community and it makes me sad that someone in here might have negative feelings for themselves. TwT

Don't feel bad about yourself. I use to think the way you did. I had medicine that slowed my metabolism and made me hungry. I used to be in the exact position as you. You need a little self-confidence, that's all. I've heard that if you smile, you can start to feel happy. BTW, there are some pretty awful cosplayers I've seen at my cons.

(Lord halp me.)

@naf
Sorry to interject, but I don't think trying to tell someone 'all you need is a little confidence' and then immediately going on to post a picture of an overweight person and shame the person in the photo for showing it is exactly helpful. Especially when you're trying to encourage someone to get into cosplay despite their lack of self-esteem in that department. Body shaming that person is horrendously rude of you, and I very kindly ask for you to remove the photo from your post as you're no longer 'showing off your cosplay' but mocking another person.

@enyo
As for you, please, if you have a passion for something follow it! Even if there are no nearby cons, you can still pose where ever you can nearby and have photoshoots in just nice, scenic areas. I have a cosplay friend who would just go to parks, or nice areas in cities that matched the character a little. Even just setting things up nicely in your own house can end up being a good photoshoot!

And coming from someone else who also hates their body, I really do understand a lot. I am also short and overweight. : p But if it's a passion you love to do I really believe it's worth chasing. I'm sure as you grow into doing it you'll grow more confident in your skill level! Hey, maybe even dressing up and pretending to be someone else will help with the body image issues a little. Who knows. All I know is that if you really want to do cosplay and have the means to get started in it, then Go for it. c:

Thanks you for your nice comments =)

Yes, unfortunately, even if I don't hate myself as a whole, I don't like my body.
Standard beauty in my country for women is to be very tin, and some people can be VERY intolerant with people who are even only a little bit overweight... (While my body size is average worldwide and even in my own country according to statitcs!). Not everybody fortunately, there are nice and accepting people too, but still a lot of people...

They think overweight is equal to unhealty life habits, I hear that I should eat more healthy food (I don't eat unhealthy...); that I should do more sport, and suggest very easy sports because they think those are the only sports they think I can do. This really unnerves me! Just for you two now, saying that I don't do any sport is wrong, right now I'm coming back from an almost three hour walk! I'm probably more sportive than some of the people who say that, but I find most fitness and gym sport quite boring, so they assume I don't do any physical activities... I'm adventurous, I like outdoors, or at leasts sport that are a little bit exciting! I'm a good swimmer, I can swim for few kilometers in the ocean, when someone told me that I should do aquagym because it's easy, It made me want to punch them (even though I'm a nice girl and I hate violence).

Last year, when I was just starting to have a little bit more confidence and esteem about myself, a doctor told me that "you should loose weight, it's not directly for your health as you're not obese according to your Body Mass Index, but you will be able to have esteem about yourself". It was as if due to my body for her I could'nt have any self-esteem... This comment instantly made all the self had a regain. And I never went to see her again... Doctors are supposed to help you being healthy and feeling good, not to make you feel worst and go in depression! Especially since my weight is due mostly to my constitution, and some light hormonal problems, not a very unhealthy lifestyle.

If the lifestyle of my family was soooo unhealthy, how it is that my 4 granparents who have the same "unhealthy" lifestyle as mine are still alive, and that I got to know my great-grandparents?! How is that that my grandfather good-mother who is 100 is still alive?! (And most on my great-uncle and great-aunt in my mother side who are dead died after 90 years old, and on my father size, all of my great-uncles and aunts are still alive)... (Sounds like I'm going to die young due to my constitution, my genes and my unhealthy lifestyle, true? x) )

So now, due to this long rant you know why I'm not feeling confident about my body, it's mostly because of intolerance in my country...
And there is intolerance against people who have "weird" hobbies such as cosplay too... So overweight + cosplay... Ewwwww. (Seriously, why everybody seems to want to come to visit this country? There are a LOT of place in the world that are as beautiful and where the average inhabitants are nicer!)

In the US or even some other countries, I would dare to do cosplay, but here... I wouldn't dare for example to do it in a park full of people, or in the city, especially if I'm alone.
Your true that there's still the possibility to do cosplay inside and take pictures =), or maybe even in a forest, or a castle or in some other place like that where there are not a lot of risk of meeting too many intolerant people...
But the thing that is great in a con is that you can really show and share your cosplay with other people, and meet people with same interrest =) (and that I wouldn't be the only one to not be perfectly fit for cosplay, so it would be easier...). To be honest I wished I had the same confidence as that woman (though I admit that I wouldn't choose a cosplay that would make me reveal that much of my body.)