Title: Joined
Date: 2016-12-19 22:17
Category: other
-Tags: cosplay, Star Trek
+Tags: anecdotal, cosplay, Star Trek
_(This post was originally published elsewhere, and has been retroactively cross-posted, with slight edits, to the_ Scintillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought _archives.)_
Okay, not _exactly_ the right body type. You know what I mean.
+<a href="/images/dax.jpg"><img src="/images/dax.jpg" width="240" style="float: left; margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
+
So I ordered some cheapo Sciences-division [uniform pajamas](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M056DXO/), thinking of going to some comics convention next year, but when I queried the Overmind in its gopher aspect for actual _Star Trek_ conventions, it turned out that there was one _that very weekend_ in the area. Online ticket sales had stopped, but allegedly "[a]vailable tickets [would] be on sale at the convention", and there was still time to upgrade my uniform order to one-day shipping.
The uniform I got (just the first suitable thing I found querying the Overmind in its Amazonian aspect; it would be possible to do better for more searching and money and shipping time) was problematic in that it's the [_TNG_-era design](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(late_2360s-early_2370s)) _and_ has commander's rank pips, whereas Jadzia was a lieutenant when she last wore a _TNG_-era uniform and (spoilers!) [died](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Tears_of_the_Prophets_(episode)) in 2374 as a lieutenant commander. I considered trying to play a post-series Dax who actually faked her own death (and got Dr. Bashir to use an experimental technique to copy the Dax symbiont's memories to Ezri Tigan), then later got promoted to commander and assigned to a different post where they still wear the _TNG_-era uniforms for some reason. But I decided that it would be simpler to just cover the third pip with electrical tape and play Lt. Dax in 2369, just before her reassignment to Deep Space Nine. (Beyond body type, at 28, I'm even just the right _age_ for this role, Jadzia having been born in 2341!)
(I couldn't find the liquid eyeliner myself and had to ask a store employee. She asked if there was any particular brand I wanted. "No," I said, just a eyelash hair too forcefully, "this isn't my usual area of expertise.")
-So I got up early the morning of Sunday the eleventh, shaved, applied the makeup in my _inexpert_-would-almost-be-too-charitable way (smear on foundation, haphazardly dab eyeliner on sides of face to make Trill spots, waveringly bring lipstick to lips), put on a bra and my foam breastforms under the cheapo uniform top, and used [my PADD](http://www.samsung.com/us/explore/galaxy-s7-features-and-specs/) to [summon a taxi](https://www.uber.com/) to the convention.
+So I got up early the morning of Sunday the eleventh, shaved, applied the makeup in my _inexpert_-would-almost-be-too-charitable way (smear on foundation, haphazardly dab eyeliner on sides of face to make Trill spots, waveringly bring lipstick to lips), put on a bra and my foam breastforms under the cheapo uniform top, and used [my PADD](http://www.samsung.com/us/explore/galaxy-s7-features-and-specs/) to [summon a taxi](https://www.uber.com/) to the hotel hosting the convention.
-I arrived way too early for check-in, and walked up the road (wearing my black jacket over my uniform top) to the Mariott, which, unlike the Hyatt, has an outpost of the raktajino hegemon, and ordered a breakfast sandwich and the [vanilla sweet-cream iced raktajino specialty medicinal](https://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/brewed-coffee/vanilla-sweet-cream-cold-brew). I gave my name as _Jadzia_, but the barista wrote _Jetsy_ on the cup. (Maybe my voice was a little shaky, but _maybe_ she needed to recalibrate her [universal translator](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/11/still-yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/).)
+I arrived way too early for check-in, and walked up the road (wearing my black jacket over my uniform top) to a different hotel that had an outpost of the raktajino hegemon, and ordered a breakfast sandwich and the [vanilla sweet-cream iced raktajino specialty medicinal](https://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/brewed-coffee/vanilla-sweet-cream-cold-brew). I gave my name as _Jadzia_, but the barista wrote _Jetsy_ on the cup. (Maybe my voice was a little shaky, but _maybe_ she needed to recalibrate her [universal translator](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/11/still-yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/).)
A little bit of lipstick rubbed off on the sandwich and the straw.
-I waited in the Hyatt lobby for a while, still with the jacket over my uniform, reading the Janet Mock autobiography on my PADD, until it was time to check in. After buying my Sunday wristband ($70), I wandered over to the photo-op/autograph ticketing table and bought a ticket to get a photo with Michael Dorn at 11:10 ($40). (Nana Visitor or Terry Farrell herself would have been my first choices for a celebrity photo, but they weren't there that day.)
+At the convention hotel, I waited in the lobby for a while, still with the jacket over my uniform, reading the Janet Mock autobiography on my PADD, until it was time to check in. After buying my Sunday wristband ($70), I wandered over to the photo-op/autograph ticketing table and bought a ticket to get a photo with Michael Dorn at 11:10 ($40). (Nana Visitor or Terry Farrell herself would have been my first choices for a celebrity photo, but they weren't there that day.)
There was still a lot of time to hang out before the theater opened for the actual convention programming, but that was fine, because actual convention programming is kind of boring; the actual point of conventions is to have an excuse to dress up and wander around and talk to people and get vanity photos of other people who are using the convention as an excuse to dress up.
"You're so cute," she said.
-I appreciated that. On the _whole_, however, I feel like I was less enthusiastically received as Jadzia that day than I had been as Pearl at San Francisco Comic-Con—providing what could be seen as a disconfirmatory data point against [my hypothesis that incompetent MtF crossdressing gets socially-rewarded more than same-sex cosplay](/2016/Sep/is-there-affirmative-action-for-incompetent-crossplay/) (cisplay??) at these sorts of events. There are too many uncontrolled variables to make a fair comparison—this was a different (I think better) costume, of a different character, in front of a different (notably smaller, possibly older?) crowd—but a darker, more specific hypothesis comes to mind.
+I appreciated that. On the _whole_, however, I feel like I was less enthusiastically received as Jadzia that day than I had been as Pearl at "Portland" Comic-Con—providing what could be seen as a disconfirmatory data point against [my hypothesis that incompetent MtF crossdressing gets socially-rewarded more than same-sex cosplay](/2016/Sep/is-there-affirmative-action-for-incompetent-crossplay/) (cisplay??) at these sorts of events. There are too many uncontrolled variables to make a fair comparison—this was a different (I think better) costume, of a different character, in front of a different (notably smaller, possibly older?) crowd—but a darker, more specific hypothesis comes to mind.
As Pearl at Comic-Con, no matter what catchphrases I shouted during photo ops, I _read_ as "unapologetic man-in-a-dress not pretending to be anything else," which is cool _faux_-subversive gender variance. (So brave! Man Pearl is best Pearl!) Whereas Starfleet uniforms are properly unisex: the only gender cues indicating that I was trying to be Jadzia Dax rather than a male Trill lieutenant were my breastforms, the lipstick (a much weaker cue), and the foundation hopefully hiding any residual beard-shadow (a weaker cue still). That put me out of the "man merely wearing _clothes_ reserved for the other sex" category and into "man ineffectually pretending to be a woman" territory.
-Maybe that's _not_ cool. Maybe that's just creepy to some people. Even at a science-fiction convention in the Bay Area. (Even if people in "Portland" are not [dumb enough to say what they're really thinking](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941).) I didn't see any other crossplayers at the _Star Trek_ con, and the only other _highly visible_ MtF crossplayers I saw at Comic-Con were the guys with beards wearing _Sailor Moon_ outfits (and as for the people I _thought_ I clocked on the ten-second timescale, who can say?—maybe they were real).
+Maybe that's _not_ cool. Maybe that's just creepy to some people. Even at a science-fiction convention in "Portland." (Even if people in "Portland" are not [dumb enough to say what they're really thinking](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941).) I didn't see any other crossplayers at the _Star Trek_ con, and the only other _highly visible_ MtF crossplayers I saw at Comic-Con were the guys with beards wearing _Sailor Moon_ outfits (and as for the people I _thought_ I clocked on the ten-second timescale, who can say?—maybe they were real).
I _want_ to be able to say with the unquestioning moral certitude of my youth that none of this should _matter_, that distinguishing "crossplay" from cosplaying a character that happens to be the same sex as you is discriminatory (and therefore, it need not be said, bad). I chose to play a _character_ that I _genuinely admire_, and because this character _happened_ to be a woman, I decided to wear the breastforms that I coincidentally happened to already own, in order to make the costume more realistic (given that I am a man and, unlike Jadzia Dax, don't have breasts), in _exactly the same way_ that because this character _happened_ to be a Trill, I decided to paint spots on the sides of my face using liquid eyeliner that I happened to not already own, in order to make the costume more realistic (given that I am a human and, unlike Jadzia Dax, don't have spots on the sides of my face).
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff