Steampunk, Tech, and TARDISes: A Cosplay Tale

Cross-posted at Geek Feminism.

So the idea of my cosplay project (which I have completed a big chunk of, but am putting on the shelf for a bit, so that I can mull it over in my subconscious) was pretty simple. Most people give these very simplistic answers about their motivations for their cosplay: it's fun, it's for the pure love of the show, it's about hanging out with other fans, I like the character, I like the character's costume, etc. I suspect, like most fan scholars, that something more complicated than those reasons go into cosplayers' decision-making. So I chose a particular cosplay trend—women cosplaying as the Doctor—and tried to get beyond those reasons, both through interviewing and by "reading" the costumes. Which, of course, has all got me thinking about my own motivations and decisions in the cosplay I wore to Gally. Obviously, the premise of my project is that cosplayers don't necessarily consciously know all the reasons they make the decisions they make in their cosplay, and I don't consider myself an exception to that premise. In fact, I knew I wasn't sure what it was about a steampunk TARDIS dress that held such a fascination with me. I only knew, as I told a friend at the time, that if I could dress as the TARDIS and wear a bustle at the same time, I'd be a happy lady.

Bustle time! Me in my steampunk TARDIS dress at Gally 2010. The dress consists of a white button up shirt, navy blue corset with appliqued windows, navy blue skirt with panels and a screen-printed "POLICE TELEPHONE" sign, navy blue bustle, and black headband with "POLICE PUBLIC PHONE BOX" painted in white.

When I started this project, I thought that my motivations for the TARDIS dress were mostly gender-related. After all, gender is something I think about a lot. When I met another TARDIS dress cosplayer at Gally, Niki la Teer, we chatted about how many TARDIS cosplays are not just women, but women wearing very femme costumes. I asked her if she interprets the TARDIS as female, and she said the TARDIS would be 

"definitely female. [...] The way the Doctor talks about the TARDIS, talks to the TARDIS. Assuming the Doctor is straight, of course, you never know." 

My own cosplay was very femme, and I share Niki's interpretation. Obviously, the TARDIS as female (and romantic companion of the Doctor) is now canon, with the wonderful Neil Gaiman episode "The Doctor's Wife." But this is an obvious example of one of my hypotheses in my project: namely, that cosplayers' costumes and choices reflect their personal interpretations of Doctor Who. In this case, we can surmise that women dressing as femme TARDISes interpret the TARDIS as a femme woman.

Me and Niki la Teer at Gally 2010. Niki is wearing a bright blue 50s-style flare dress, with repeating panels on all sides, topped by a navy-trimmed white cropped jacket. Not pictured is her cute hat, which is a pillbox designed to look like the light on the top of the TARDIS.

Niki dressed as a 50s-style TARDIS because that's the period from which the police box originated. As someone whose research interests mostly lie in the contemporary manifestations of the 19th century (mostly contemporary Jane Austens and neo-Victorianisms), steampunk is naturally fascinating to me. But I don't think this fascination is the reason I chose steampunk, or a Victorian-esque design for my TARDIS cosplay. What is it about steampunk and Doctor Who that seemed to combine so deliciously? And why the TARDIS? Why didn't I opt for a steampunk femme 10th Doctor (an option I considered briefly)? The answer seems to lie in the steampunk aesthetic itself.

So what is steampunk? What defines its aesthetic? Annoyingly, steampunk defies definition. One part Victorianism, one part science fiction, one part magic, and found in literary and material manifestations, in costuming/fashion, in film and in graphic novels, steampunk seems easy to identify and hard to define; á la Justice Potter Stewart, we know it when we see it. Or when we are faced with an overabundance of cogs.

Brass and wood steampunk laptop with turn key and brass pedestal feet, modded by Datamancer.

My favorite (non) definition of steampunk comes from Rachel A. Bowser and Brian Croxall, in their introduction to the special issue of Neo-Victorian Studies on steampunk. They claims that steampunk "seems precisely to illustrate, and perhaps even perform, a kind of cultural memory work, wherein our projections and fantasies about the Victorian era meet the tropes and techniques of science fiction, to produce a genre that revels in anachronism while exposing history's overlapping layers" (1). What does that mean, exactly? Steampunk is, firstly, not about the Victorian era (or the American 19th century, an increasingly popular setting in steampunk), but about a nostalgic vision of that era, populated by our "projections and fantasies." That's why steampunk costumers do things that would seem utterly bizarre to actual Victorians, like wear dresses made of all one fabric and color, or wear their corsets on the outside. Steampunk presents a romantic view of the past. Further, steampunk is not just historical fiction, a category that's been around for a much longer time, but Victorian nostalgia mixed with the "tropes and techniques of science fiction." This is appropriate, since science as an institution and science fiction as a distinct literary category both came into being in England in the late Victorian era. But the key part of this definition is this: "a genre that revels in anachronism while exposing history's overlapping layers." Steampunk is, according to Bowser and Croxall, anachronism, temporal hybridity. Steampunk, in all its manifestations, is about blending historical time periods. According to Bowser and Croxall, it

"asks us, perhaps via its material culture even more than through its fictional instantiations, to consider the apparent disjunction of a turn-key starter and a laptop computer. Then steampunk asks us to look harder and apprehend their aesthetic compatibility. Calling it aesthetic compatibility may, in fact, understate the point. In the laptop, modded by the technical artist Datamancer (Richard R. Nagy), the compatibility is operational: turning the key actually boots the machine. We might say steampunk takes the paradigm one step further and asks what happens when the markers of various time periods are estranged from their contexts and made simultaneous. [...] The point of modding your laptop to look like a turn-of-the-previous-century machine is not to create an object so radically mashed-up that one cannot discern its functionality, but to discover their aesthetic commonalities, to blend them in a way that verges on cancelling [sic] the difference" (6-7).

Basically, then, steampunk takes the past and combines it with the present, precisely to erase the differences between the two. "This approach to temporality," Bowser and Croxall claim, "has the simultaneous and paradoxical effect of minimising the categorical differences between time periods. Steampunk illuminates the compatibility of laptops and brass, of steam engines and nanotechnology. Steampunk insists, in other words, on our continuing status as 'other Victorians' and does so in part through a manipulation of temporality that in its very machinations invokes the temporal revisions and reversals of the Victorian era" (10). Our belief that we are like the Victorians is what makes steampunk so very appealing; it projects a compatibility between us and the Victorians, between our culture and the (Western) culture(s) of the 19th century, between our technology and the inventions of the Victorian era.

Promo shot for "The Next Doctor," picturing Mrs. Hartigan in a red Victorian gown with parasol, the Doctor, the "next" Doctor (Jackson Lake) in a red patterned vest, gold cravat, and tan overcoat, and Rosita (his assistant) in a brown and gold patterned dress over white shirtsleeves.

Doctor Who is a show that, similarly, revels in temporal anachronism. This is a show that likes to take us back to the past and remind us of our compatibility with that past. Russell T. Davies's era, in particular, rather enjoyed jaunts to the past, and had a love affair with the Victorian era. Notable examples of traveling into the past in the RTD era are "The Unquiet Dead" (1869), "The Empty Child" (London, the Blitz), "The Girl in the Fireplace" (France, 1727), "Tooth and Claw" (Scottish moors, 1879), "The Shakespeare Code" (London, 1599), "The Daleks in Manhattan" (New York City, 1930), "Human Nature" (England, 1913), "The Fires of Pompeii" (Pompeii, 79), and "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (England, 1926). Going back in time is not intended to alienate the audience from the past. Rather, these episodes are characterized (like steampunk) by multiple anachronisms, multiple simultaneous meanings, and play.

Giant steam-powered Cyberking, rampaging the city of London and coming into contact with the TARDIS hot air balloon.

Further, the hero/ines of steampunk are usually tinkerers, inventors, and adventurers, all categories into which the Doctor undoubtedly fits. The compatibility of steampunk with Doctor Who is something that even the writers seemed to recognize in the production of "The Next Doctor," set in London in the 19th century, in which the Doctor finds himself once again fighting the Cybermen, who construct a giant steam-powered Cyberking. 

In this episode, Doctor Who becomes translated in a steampunk version of itself, in which the Doctor carries an actual screwdriver, flies in a hot air balloon, and wears a spiffy vest and cravat. He fights the same enemies, but they are now steam-powered. Doctor Who works in the steampunk mode because that mode and its own normal operations are very similar; the tinkerer/inventor Doctor is not that different from most steampunk hero/ines and anachronism is definitional to both.

But, as I pointed out, a steampunk TARDIS seemed so much better to me than a steampunk Doctor (although I'm still considering a steampunk femme 10th Doctor for another con). That may be because the most important thing in steampunk is not the bustles or the brown, but the tech. Steampunk has been described as a response to modern technology that has become sleek, small, and boring, exemplified by the iPhone or iPod. Contemporary technology is not only boring, it's a black box. It's outside gives no clue as to what it does or how it works, and it's impenetrable. Not literally, obviously, but our own culture makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the layman to tinker with hir own tech. DRMs, EULAs, and warranties all reflect a certain attitude about how appropriate it is to bust open your technology and mess around with it, and the non-mechanical nature of tech like iPods, computers, and cell phones make it difficult for most people to learn how to tinker with it anyway. This isn't just frustrating, it alienates people from the tech that literally shapes many people's lives. As I mentioned before, steampunk hero/ines are usually tinkerers; Bowser and Croxall argue that the high-adventuring hero/ines of steampunk "not only [...] build their own devices, but also [...] discover and develop the science behind them" (20). Steampunk "stages a rejection of received notions about how technology should be treated and who should discover, make, or modify it" (21).

The inside of the TARDIS from the Russell T. Davies era of the show.

Steampunk, then, remakes and reimagines technology. The cogs everywhere in steampunk art and attire are not merely decorative (even when they are decorative), but signal to the importance that mechanical and visible tech in the steampunk aesthetic. Steampunk tech is big, bulky, and its works are highly visible, with cogs, gears, and inner workings proudly on display. This tech is no black box. Scott Westerfield, author of Leviathan, claims that "the Internet is global and seemingly omniscient, while iPods and phones are all microscopic workings encased in plastic blobjects. [...] Compare that to a steam engine, where you can watch the pistons move and feel the heat of its boilers. I think we miss that visceral appeal of the machine" (qtd. in Grossman). Tech in steampunk becomes not just visible and workable, but difficult. Sean Orlando of Kinetic Steam Works claims that steampunk is for "people who want to struggle, lift and heave their technology" (Farivar). Apple gives us toys that are silver, slick, easy to use, and difficult to tinker with. Steampunk gives us something different: tech that is bronze, dirty, difficult, dangerous, and endlessly tinkerable. 

The inside of the TARDIS for the current Doctor Who era.

If that's the case, then my choice of the TARDIS is no surprise, particularly when I think about how important I thought it was to sew some gold and silver clock parts onto the skirt and the white shirt. (I finished the costume right before the con, literally in the hotel, so I haven't finished this detail yet.) The TARDIS is not a perfect example of the steampunk aesthetic, since its many visible parts are a bit inscrutable to human companions, but it is steampunk to the Doctor. It's a very manual machine, requiring a lot of running around the console and pushing buttons, flipping large switches, and occasionally giving it a good thump, and it's parts are all highly visible, with so many knobs, buttons, and curiosities about. (This is true about both the TARDISes from the new series, though the 9th and 10th Doctors' TARDISes have more of a steampunk aesthetic in color scheme, since the machine has more faded, rather than shiny, colors, and is more navy, rather than bright, on the outside and bronze on the inside..) Further, we can see it work in the same way we can see the steam engine's pistons work. When the Doctor finally flips the switch, the movement in the center of the console and the loud noise the machine makes are both radical departures from the way our modern technology works. The TARDIS is certainly visceral, dangerous, and tangible in a way that a smartphone simply can't be.

This is not all to argue that Doctor Who is steampunk. In fact, I don't think that is true. Rather, I think Doctor Who is compatible with steampunk, and shares some of its aesthetic concerns. The Doctor is easily reimagined as a steampunk hero, and the TARDIS as steampunk technology. They both use the past to understand the present and future, and tend to collapse the categorical differences between time periods. 

The best part is not that they are compatible, though, but that my interpretation of them as compatible is visible in my cosplay and my thought process as I constructed it. Every choice I made reflected the ways in which I thought steampunk and Doctor Who meshed and the ways in which I thought they didn't. (For example, I didn't wear spats or heels, but black TOMS shoes, since the 10th Doctor wears Converse shoes, and that, at least for footwear, function and comfort are more important in Doctor Who than prettiness.) Cosplay has the potential to show us much more than what characters a cosplayer likes, identifies with, or appreciates the costumes of. It can tell us more than "I love Doctor Who." If we look hard enough, we can read whole arguments and interpretations in cosplay. Fashion, after all, speaks volumes.

Works Cited

Bowser, Rachel A., and Brian Croxall. "Introduction: Industrial Evolution." Neo-Victorian Studies 3.1 (2010): 1-45. Neo-Victorian Studies. Web. 17 June 2011. 

Farivar, Cyrus. "Steampunk Brings Victorian Flair to the 21st Century." NPR. All Things Considered. National Public Radio, 6 February 2008. Web. Accessed 17 June 2011.

Grossman, Lev. "Steampunk: Reclaiming Tech for the Masses." Time Magazine. Time Inc., 14 December 2009. Web. Accessed 17 June 2011.

la Teer, Niki. Personal interview. 19 February 2011.

Volunteers needed for a study on Doctor Who cosplay

squirrely TONKS as a femme!Eighth Doctor, photo by The Ricketandoo

The image of the obsessive, socially inept, immature science fiction fan is a familiar one. Popular conceptions of fans (in particular "Trekkies") are generally unflattering: the fan is incapable of separating reality from fantasy, a brainless consumer of program merchandise, and devoted to the memorization of worthless knowledge and trivia. Of course, fans know that this stereotype, while partially based in reality (we all have known one of those fans), does not represent the vast majority and extraordinary diversity of most science fiction fan communities. In particular, scholars like Henry Jenkins have overturned the stereotype that fan activities are fundamentally non-productive. What I mean by this is that this stereotype paints the SF fan as slavish to the interpretations and idea produced by other authors, namely the authors of the SF program. Even the fan activities that seem obviously productive and creative, like writing fan fiction or cosplaying, are usually depicted as mindless copying or appropriation of others' creative products. Fan fiction is not considered "real literature;" it's merely the re-mix of others' ideas. Cosplay is merely the copying (sometimes obsessively) of the work of costume designers. However, work has shown that fan activities like the writing of fan fiction are creative and productive, even if they are not necessarily counter-cultural or counter to the ideas and interpretations put forth by the program's authors.

I'm interested in how fan activities are productive, and how they create readings of the primary text (in this case, Doctor Who) and/or the fan community. In this study, I will focus on cosplay, which I see as reflective on both Doctor Who and the fan community/ies to which the cosplayer belongs. Because of the small scale of this current project, I will be looking in particular at the axis of gender in Doctor Who cosplay, focusing on the trend of "femme" Doctors (and the related trend of female fans crossplaying as the Doctor). The purpose of this research is to identify the rhetoric of femme Doctor cosplay and Doctor crossplay. My main research questions are: How are these cosplayers reflecting on and talking back to Doctor Who? How are they reflecting on and talking back to the fan community/ies? What does their cosplay have to say about gender in both of those spheres? How does the cosplay communicate these ideas and interpretations?

In order to complete this research, I will be conducting interviews with cosplayers about their creations, as well as collecting pictures of their cosplay. The interviews can be over the phone, Skype, or email, whichever you prefer, and are designed to last 15-20 minutes. If you've ever done a cosplay that you believe to be relevant to my research, in particular a femme or crossplay Doctor, I would love to interview you! Please contact me at austintotamu@gmail.com or in the comments to volunteer.

(Your identity in all write-ups of this research will be protected. You can choose how you are identified, whether by your real name, your online handle, or a pseudonym chosen by you.)

Cosplay: The sincerest form of flattery

LOOK, I'M IN THE GUARDIAN! Part of agreeing to write there, however, is agreeing to reply to comments. And they're sort of ugly. Like, oh! I remember why I moderate ugly. So please go write smart things! I'll be eternally grateful.

And let me know what you think!

Also, since the word limit for this article was, like, crippling, I'll be writing a longer version on the blog soon, and include some of the great stuff I got from my interviews with cosplayers. (Real, live ones! Who aren't my friends!)

Counter protest at Comic Con; or, God hates Jedi

So, the Westboro Church is protesting Comic Con this year, for "worshipping false idols." You can't make this shit up; apparently God hates geeks. So, geeks, being awesome, held a hilarious counter-protest. From Comics Alliance:

Unbeknownst to the dastardly fanatics of the Westboro Baptist Church, the good folks of San Diego's Comic-Con were prepared for their arrival with their own special brand of superhuman counter protesting chanting "WHAT DO WE WANT" "GAY SEX" "WHEN DO WE WANT IT" "NOW!" while brandishing ironic (and some sincere) signs. Simply stated: The eclectic assembly of nerdom's finest stood and delivered.

Which is the best thing ever. More pictures below the jump.

Amanda Hess and being a feminist geek

So, I have an interview up at The Sexist! It's here. And it was also linked on Border House! (If you are feminist geek and don't follow Border House, get on it. Yesterday.) I talk about being a feminist/lady geek, subversive cosplay and how male geeks sometimes just want you to be their sex objects. It's exciting!

There's also a rather fabulous bit about the complicatedness of "sexy" cosplay at Sexy Geekery:

The issue is something that Courtney mentions–can any of this be reclaiming of female sexuality and femininity, which is pretty much not allowed to exist on its own terms in scifi? I feel like the opportunity is there. Women can be sexual, and even in a “mainstream sexy” kind of way, on their own terms. It’s so hard to define so much of this, though–where are we are genuinely enjoying this, and where are we enjoying the attention? (Because yes, attention can be fun.) I find this relevant because it’s an issue I have when dating–I have often considered punching a boy in the jaw for pushing too hard for me to buy “sexy” undergarments, even though it so happens that black lacy skivvies delight me. Just, like, let me buy them on my own terms, dude. Do I feel hypocritical? Sure. Does it change the fact that one motivation (and often different shopping location) makes me feel skeezy, while the other doesn’t. Likewise, can one girl wear the same costume and feel both of those feelings? Of course. Can two girls wear the exact same costume and one be motivated by feminism and the other by self-objectification? I don’t see why not. Does this become a tangled mess of how do we define and how do we express? Oh fuck yes.

Yes! It is possible, I think, to be progressive, to be feminist, and dressed "sexy" in cosplay. Because dressing sexy is also being a sexual agent (not all costumes are, obviously, but some certainly), which is a radical thing as a geek lady. The reason I find the less "sexy" femme Doctor cosplays more encouraging is that dressing sexy in geek culture is always within the context of the fact that for many male geeks, the only way women being in their communities is okay is if they are objectified, sexy versions of their geek obsessions. That is slightly less true in mainstream culture, where the ability to be objectified second and sexual first is easier (though not easy) and more fruitful. But! It is a conversation feminist geeks need to have, because while I find certain femme Doctor cosplays happier than others, I also don't want to claim categorically that only certain cosplays are feminist and others simply not. That's just incorrect.

Post your comments about cosplay or the interview or just being a lady geek below!
(For those that commented elsewhere because I was slow as shit getting this up, thank you! I appreciate all your insight and sister/brotherhood. Seriously.)

UPDATE: Part Duex; or, Make Your Dude-Dominated Subculture More Accessible to Women

Cosplay, race, ability, and gender; or, who gets to dress up as whom?

Caitie over at Shakesville started this really interesting conversation about cosplay and race (specifically for Doctor Who fans, but the comments go beyond that).*

The issue is this: there are, as ever, fascinating new characters, some of them at first glance eminently suitable for cosplay; the character around whom this discussion arose was the delicious Liz 10, HRH Elizabeth X of the UK&NI, as portrayed by the lovely and talented Sophie Okonedo.

She's a fun character, with a few great lines ("...higher alien intelligence, hair of an idiot." and "I'm the Queen, mate. Basically, I rule."), and a great easy costume to pull off: red dress, red hooded robe, boots, porcelain mask, all finished, right?

So one of my friends was a little surprised when, after mentioning how easy it would be to do, I stated that I'd never do it.

I have a feeling this will be a thing during this year of cons; Liz 10 was pretty damn awesome, and I can see how white fans, not really thinking about it, might be tempted to cosplay as her. But it would be really problematic to do so, as Caitie points out:

I don't think one can be a serious sf/f fan and not have heard about RaceFail last year, the huge explosion in fandom after some truly unfortunate and highly privileged statements by various authors and sf/f publishing industry people.

One thing it did for me was to point out to my own over-privileged eyes something I should have noticed earlier: the conspicuous lack of visibility of POC in sf/f, and a consequent lack of roles for POC [people of color] in screen-media, as well as a concomitant lack of representation of POC in fandom (or FOC [fans of color]). I make no excuses for that failure to notice: it was privilege, pure and simple.

But it's meant I've had to look a little harder at cosplay, and how easy it is for white fans to appropriate the few roles that POC have won. We all know the roles, because there are few enough of them: Dr. Who's Martha Jones and her family, or Mickey Smith (and what was with Nine's bizarre and unsettling dismissal of Mickey from the moment they met?); Toshiko of Torchwood; various Klingons of TNG and more recent vintage (generally - but not always - played by POC); Storm of the X-Men; Teal'c of Stargate; Zoe, Book, and Fanty & Mingo from Firefly; the entire cast of Avatar: The Last Airbender; and a few others (mostly unnamed because I don't watch the shows in question; I don't even watch Stargate, but I know of Teal'c just from endless commercials thereof - though I didn't know his name!).

And it occurred to me that if I want to see more FOC out to cons and events, then one of the most elementary steps toward that end would be to make sure I don't tread on any of the small number of cosplay options that should, I believe, only be open to FOC. To do otherwise is to tread perilously close to "blackface" (or yellowface or redface or whatever other nasty replacement is happening).

We in the privileged seats have many, many options open to us: by far the majority of the roles continue to be given to people who look just like us, and even then, certain directors feel the need to "whitewash" their casts for the usual Hollywood bullshit reasons: that white fandom won't go see movies built around the lives and stories of POC, that there aren't sufficient quality actors of colour. This is the spurious and racist reasoning behind the horrendous miscasting of the live action version of Avatar TLA, or of whitewashing Ged and others from a broadcast of U. K. Le Guin's Earthsea.

So no, as I told my friend, though the character is delightful and I'd adore playing her, Liz 10 (and Zoe, and Tosh, and the few others) won't be someone I'll be cosplaying in this lifetime.

I hope no Shakers need to be told why it's not an equivalent problem if FOC decide to cosplay roles originally given to white actors.

I think Caitie did a good job pointing out why it's problematic to cosplay as characters of color as a white fan, so I want to talk a little about how this conversation links to other kinds of minority cosplaying (namely, disability and gender). At the end of that passage from Caitie, she mentions that it's not the same problem for FOC to cosplay as characters originally played by white actors. My immediate reaction to that mental image (namely, a POC cosplaying as the Doctor) was, "Fuck yeah. That would be badass." Some of the comments in Caitie's post mimic my enthusiasm for minority fans cosplaying majority-played characters. Beppie, for example, pointed out that this is also an issue with disabled fans and disabled characters:

I'm thinking that there could be similar issues in play in terms of non-disabled people cos-playing characters with disabilities; though of course this is often complicated by the fact that characters with disabilities are often played by actors who do not share that disability.

And of course, this is another issue that does not work in reverse; I think it's great to see people with disabilities cosplaying characters who normally aren't portrayed as disabled. I was at Melbourne Supanova two weeks ago, and I saw a blind woman cosplaying Captain Jack; her guide dog's leash had a Torchwood logo on it and everything. This woman didn't hide her disability in order to play the character, she made it part of the character.

Caitie remarks after this that this costume sounds pretty awesome. And that seems to be a common reaction. Shortly after this, Time-Machine linked to a pretty good blog post about the new-ish trend of dressing as a femme!Doctor:

In regards to Femme Doctor Who cosplay (where a woman cosplayer recreates an existing masculine character into a feminine one) there's a really great post on it over here that dissects it pretty well. I agree with almost every bit of it (except the authors personal opinion on whether we should have a woman Doctor ever in the future). I definitely was entranced with the idea, when I'd never been interested in cosplay before. (It helps that I have the nose and the hair to REALLY pull off a femme!Four).

My reaction to the idea of a racial minority cosplaying as an originally white character (badass!) is reflected in the celebration of this Jack Harkness cosplay and the femme!Doctor trend. I think the excitement about these cosplays is related, but I'll use the femme!Doctor trend as my point of departure. In the femme!Doctor post, she argues that femme cosplay is a way for women to be feminine and Doctor Who fans. She recounts growing up as a geek, when she experienced something most geek women face: the necessity of being an honorary guy, of having to renounce femininity in order to be accepted by other (male) geeks.

But it came at the price of being an honorary guy. Their clubhouse, not yours. Their rules. Honorary guys must keep to the rules of guydom, and one of the first rules of guydom is to disavow and abjure all things girly. Cute is an epithet. [...] If you'd asked me when I was fifteen, I'd have said I didn't mind, that I was used to it, and I just kept my yap shut about the stuff I liked that they didn't. But today, I wonder about the after effects of this kind of cultural programming: I was an honorary guy until I was twenty-two, for heaven's sake. (Computer science major in college.) I didn't buy anything pink until last year--no reason, I just didn't like pink. I thought. Forswearing all things feminine just because they were feminine... well, wasn't that kind of sexist? I called myself a feminist, but aspired to masculinity because I thought it was better, in some vaguely-defined but hugely important way? Screw that. But the prohibition against anything not masculine was deeply ingrained in me, practically a reflex.

This is definitely a part of the femme!Doctor trend; female fans are taking their place in Doctor Who fandom, and they're making it clear that they are unwilling to pretend to be men to be accepted there. But there's something more going on here, and I think the reason that Nightsky doesn't see that is that she is personally against an actual female Doctor:

Nor do I think that the Doctor should regenerate into a woman: not only because there's no precedent for it in the show, but also because it implies that the Whoniverse has a dearth of kickass female characters, which isn't true.

Nightsky dismisses the idea that part of the reason that women want to dress as femme!Doctors is because they want to see themselves in the lead role, despite the fact that femme cosplay is dominated mostly by women cosplaying the Doctor (the lead role). There may be some kickass female characters in Doctor Who, but the companions are definitionally merely sidekicks to the Doctor (even the ones who stand up to him, hold their own, or even exceed him are still sidekicks). And the non-companion female badasses, like River Song, only show up every once in a while. They're not on the same level as the Doctor, if only because the show isn't about them.So I do think that fans doing femme cosplay are not only taking their place in the fandom, but in the show. Doing cosplay as a femme!Doctor (or a black Doctor, or a visibly disabled Doctor, etc.) is part necessity (as in, I am in a lady-body, so if I want to cosplay as the Doctor, he would have to be a lady-body-Doctor, like a person in a wheelchair would have to be a wheelchair-user Doctor, or a black person would have to be a black Doctor). But it's also a way for fans to see themselves in the Doctor, as the unquestioned protagonist of the show. Doctor Who fans can say all they like that DW is progressive enough in its way, but it's still dated by its insistence that the main character be a white, cis-gendered, abled British man. It reminds me of Sady Doyle's commentary about the Star Trek movie:

[J]ust imagine! [...] A crew of diverse nationalities, races, genders and points of planetary origin! In which a white, straight dude from Iowa magically ends up in charge! - and good old-fashioned lecturing ("...and now, the mostly-white crew shall visit the Planet of the Racists to show them the error of their ways"). The problem with writing about the future is that it always catches up with you, and is usually not what you expected: 1966 - the year that the original series began - is not 2009, and one of the chief problems facing JJ Abrams in his brand-new reboot of the franchise is that he has to make us buy a future world that looks so, well, dated.

I can't know how bold and challenging it felt to see a central, friendly Russian character on TV at the height of the cold war, or a central, friendly Asian character at the height of the Vietnam war (Sulu was originally written as non-specifically Asian, and later made Japanese-American - which was still quite a step, considering that Star Trek aired only 20 years after the last internment camp in the US had closed). I can't feel, on a visceral level, how many boundaries Nyota Uhura crossed simply by being there, on the bridge, let alone by kissing Kirk. Those things, to me - a woman born in 1982 - just are not shocking: we seem to have made more progress, identity-politics-wise, in the last 40 years than Star Trek predicted we would in the next few hundred years. Nope, what I notice, looking at the main crew of the Enterprise in the original TV series, is that most of them are white dudes, there are only two people of colour, there is only one woman - who has to do her job, unlike everyone else, while navigating the problematic confines of a miniskirt - and that all of them, unlike George Takei, are straight.

Doctor Who suffers a little from the Star Trek syndrome. Sure, there are women there, and POC, and they are sometimes even awesome, but the white guy is still in charge. Magically! So I find it difficult to believe that FOC cosplaying as the Doctor, or female fans cosplaying as a femme!Doctor, or disabled fans cosplaying as a disabled Doctor, aren't making up for a deficiency. And perhaps our excitement for this kind of play is the result of our recognition of this deficiency and the creativity of the fans in dealing with it. Yay fans!

A tangent: Sady's article takes me to the thing that bothers me a bit about femme cosplay: mainly, the miniskirts and the corsets. There's nothing wrong with a corset in itself--I'm going to be wearing a corset at Gally next year myself (as a steampunk TARDIS)--but there's something a little disturbing about the fact that femme!Doctor almost inevitably means high heels, short skirts, and binding clothes. Uhuru has to navigate the bridge in a miniskirt (a difficult task indeed), but I can't imagine how the Doctor could do such a thing on the bridge of the TARDIS. He already has issues flying it, in pants and with tennis shoes. (Case in point: River Song takes off her heels to fly the TARDIS in "The Time of Angels.") Johanna Mead touches on this in her essay in Chicks Dig Time Lords, "Costuming: More Productive Than Drugs, But Just as Expensive:"

Stomach sinking, I reconsidered the "Femmy Ten" costume. On the one hand, it's a silly little joke. On the other hand, I'd neatly suggested that a female Doctor would be completely useless. Have you ever tried running down a corrider in a tightly laced corset whilst wearing heels? I have (I was late for a panel) and it nearly crippled me. There's be no racing to save the day in that ensemble. All I had considered, initially, was that I look good in a corset (plus, I wanted the challenge of making one with pinstripes.) I can get away with a short skirt, and for heaven's sake, you don't wear flats with a skirt above the knee. Much, much later, I realized that, as a woman who has long ranted about fashion as a conspiracy to weaken women, I'd shot myself in the foot. (59)

Indeed.

*If you go over there and comment, read the first paragraph and don't be spoilery! Here, however, be as spoilery as you like.

UPDATE: For the commenters veering in the "But I totes identify with characters of color! Don't make me have to consider race when making the decision to cosplay!" direction: Stop it. I'm not discounting your identification with characters of color. But your cosplaying doesn't happen in a racism-free vacuum. Don't forget that cosplaying as characters of color problematically whitewashes those characters. And don't act like race isn't important, especially in shows where the characters of color are few and far between.

UPDATE: Because I said it so elegantly in the comment section, I'm reposting some more of my thinking about HOW FUCKING WRONG this:

What [white fans cosplaying as minority characters] does is *appropriate* characters of color as yet another fucking realm into which white people have colonized the black/brown experience. Which may turn off fans of color from cosplaying those characters, quite understandably.

You'll notice I'm all about crossplay when ladies dress up as male characters. (I don't have anything really against dudes crossplaying, as long as the series has a number of bitchin' ladies to choose from and it doesn't turn into "haha! dude in a dress! cross-dressers are hi-larious!") Just like I'm all about cosplay crossing race lines when fans of color cosplay as white characters, etc. The problem arises here when the privileged class thinks it's entitled to claim the experience and bodies of the non-privileged class. Not fucking okay. [emphasis added.]