Geek Girl Costumes

[Thaurismunths]

Shwankie and I are taking our geeky pastimes to a whole new level: Con Costumes.

I have a couple costumes in mind, and in truth I have more options than I have time to make them happen. Shwankie, however, has been having no end of trouble coming up with something. We've been wracking our brains and ransacking the shelves, but it seems that fictional females of a suitable nature are in short supply. That is, unless you're up dieing your hair orange and wearing a few tow straps. Alas, she isn't.
Kaylee is either a greasy chick in a jumpsuit, or a slightly funkier than average female.
Ripley chick in a  greasy spacesuit.
Selene, pasty chick in clubwear with guns.
Trinity pasty chick in club wear, with guns.
So, is it just us, or is there a lack physically distinct female characters?
Are female characters differentiated more by body type than clothes and accessories?

[Russell Nash]

That is, unless you're up dieing your hair orange and wearing a few tow straps. Alas, she isn't.

If it's just the hair, she can wear a wig.

I have a similiar problem coming up.  Fashing (German Halloween) is coming up and my kids' kindergarten always has all the kids dress up.  This year the theme is "outer space".  I need to come up with something for a 2 1/2 yo girl and a 4 1/2 yo boy. 

[Tango Alpha Delta]

That is, unless you're up dieing your hair orange and wearing a few tow straps. Alas, she isn't.

If it's just the hair, she can wear a wig.

I have a similiar problem coming up.  Fashing (German Halloween) is coming up and my kids' kindergarten always has all the kids dress up.  This year the theme is "outer space".  I need to come up with something for a 2 1/2 yo girl and a 4 1/2 yo boy. 

Little kids are easier to doll up;
1. cut head-holes (arm-holes, too, if you must) in a couple of kitchen garbage bags (white for "icy comet" and black for "moon rock"),
2. stuff with child (by slipping them on poncho-style) and squashed up newspaper;
3. spray with hairspray and toss a few handfuls of glitter (blue shades for "icy comet" and white or metallic for "moon rock"). 

For the comet, you can string crumpled foil, cellophane wrap, or other shimmery detritus to trail behind them as the toddle around.


Shwankie could probably use that idea, too, if only to thumb a nose at the lack of tastefully recognizable female visuals.  Personally, I thought Kaylie was gorgeous.

[Tango Alpha Delta]

Shwankie and I are taking our geeky pastimes to a whole new level: Con Costumes.

I have a couple costumes in mind, and in truth I have more options than I have time to make them happen. Shwankie, however, has been having no end of trouble coming up with something. We've been wracking our brains and ransacking the shelves, but it seems that fictional females of a suitable nature are in short supply. That is, unless you're up dieing your hair orange and wearing a few tow straps. Alas, she isn't.
Kaylee is either a greasy chick in a jumpsuit, or a slightly funkier than average female.
Ripley chick in a  greasy spacesuit.
Selene, pasty chick in clubwear with guns.
Trinity pasty chick in club wear, with guns.
So, is it just us, or is there a lack physically distinct female characters?
Are female characters differentiated more by body type than clothes and accessories?

My lovely bride has awakened, and suggested Taura from the Miles Vorkosigan series (Lois McMaster Bujold).  Or a quaddie - if you pull that one off, I'd like to see it.      (I thought she was done... she's now ranting about any number of cosutmes that you could pull from that series... and now she's getting mad that it hasn't been made into a movie.  My God, what have I done?  Why do I drag her into these things....?)

My thought was, turn any male character/superhero/icon into a female costume as a way of thumbing your nose at the establishment.  "Indianna" Jones?  Or go crazy and go as Starbuck... oh, wait...

[Russell Nash]

That is, unless you're up dieing your hair orange and wearing a few tow straps. Alas, she isn't.

If it's just the hair, she can wear a wig.

Shwankie could probably use that idea, too, if only to thumb a nose at the lack of tastefully recognizable female visuals.  Personally, I thought Kaylie was gorgeous.

So did I, but how do you dress as her?  Her outfit wasn't very distinctive.  You can't even go as River (especially with your beard).  Except for carrying some weapons, there's no real visual grab. 

[Heradel]

So did I, but how do you dress as her?  Her outfit wasn't very distinctive.  You can't even go as River (especially with your beard).  Except for carrying some weapons, there's no real visual grab. 

The cake dress maybe? Otherwise it's a greasy mechanic's overall. Or you could try to find/make that parasol she had in the pilot and use that or a wrench as a prop — she wasn't a shooter.

[Russell Nash]

So did I, but how do you dress as her?  Her outfit wasn't very distinctive.  You can't even go as River (especially with your beard).  Except for carrying some weapons, there's no real visual grab. 

The cake dress maybe? Otherwise it's a greasy mechanic's overall. Or you could try to find/make that parasol she had in the pilot and use that or a wrench as a prop — she wasn't a shooter.

The weapons crack was about River.  I like the parasol idea, but I think she'd have to do a wig and then it still wouldn't be that great.  Zoe was a little move distinctively dressed.  Shwankie would need some make-up and a wig for that.

[Darwinist]

That is, unless you're up dieing your hair orange and wearing a few tow straps. Alas, she isn't.

If it's just the hair, she can wear a wig.

I have a similiar problem coming up.  Fashing (German Halloween) is coming up and my kids' kindergarten always has all the kids dress up.  This year the theme is "outer space".  I need to come up with something for a 2 1/2 yo girl and a 4 1/2 yo boy. 

We made a robot costume for one of my sons when he was 5.  Took a box, cut arm holes and hole for head, covered it with tinfoil, punched small holes in it and put some battery powered christmas lights through the holes.  We made a tinfoil hat and did a little face painting and off he went.   He thought it was cool. 

[Russell Nash]

That is, unless you're up dieing your hair orange and wearing a few tow straps. Alas, she isn't.

If it's just the hair, she can wear a wig.

I have a similiar problem coming up.  Fashing (German Halloween) is coming up and my kids' kindergarten always has all the kids dress up.  This year the theme is "outer space".  I need to come up with something for a 2 1/2 yo girl and a 4 1/2 yo boy. 

We made a robot costume for one of my sons when he was 5.  Took a box, cut arm holes and hole for head, covered it with tinfoil, punched small holes in it and put some battery powered christmas lights through the holes.  We made a tinfoil hat and did a little face painting and off he went.   He thought it was cool. 

Right now I'm thinking Fake patches on jumpsuits, so they look like astronauts on the shuttle or ISS.

[Anarkey]

Shwankie and I are taking our geeky pastimes to a whole new level: Con Costumes.

I have never been to a Con.  That's my caveat.  I have only Halloween experience, and it's my understanding that con costuming is a completely different level of costuming from the usual Halloween stuff.

I actually dressed up as Trinity and enjoyed it, but that was a long time ago and I don't know if I'd do it again now.  The hardest thing about that costume was getting the fake gun.

Before that, and before I had a digital camera, I did Jadis from "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe".  It could be steam engine time for a good Jadis costume, because when I did it I had to tell everyone who I was, but now she'd probably be recognizable, since the movie.

A friend of mine has done Lara Croft, a costume which is both easy and recognizable.

I like the idea of Zoe from Firefly, mentioned upstream, but she was my favorite character, so maybe I'm biased and again, that's girl with guns.

There's plenty of strong, distinctive women characters to choose from in the Buffyverse, or in something like "Alias" but those might not be SF enough for you.  (Personally I'd go as Anya in a bunny suit if I was going to dress as someone from Buffy).

Your examples (so far) have been visual media only, but if you go to books there's tons to choose from.  As TAD points out, the Vorkosigan universe is wealthy in distinctive women from Cordelia to a Cetagandan noblewoman to Elli Quinn and the aforementioned Taura.  The Vorkosigan universe also has strict and detailed descriptions of dress (especially uniforms), which could be helpful when it comes to making a costume.  There's obviously plenty of Tolkien openings (but again fantasy, not sf).   I'd probably choose someone like Jenny Casey from Elizabeth Bear's novels to dress up as for a con because she's a strong character, old, and distinctive looking with her artificial limb and I'd probably be the only one dressed as her.

Shwankie could go old school too, as the original Bionic Woman, frex, or someone like Rydra Wong from Delany's Babel-17. 

Anime and comics can give you ideas, too.

Ultimately she's going to want to choose someone from a fandom that she has really loved a lot because costuming is a lot of work and just not worth it for something you aren't all jazzed about.

There's also no rule against crossdressing, I don't think.  She doesn't have to go as a girl.

[DDog]

Nice Trinity costume, Anarkey.

Re: Jadis, I helped my mom make me a Bilbo costume when I was eight or nine for Halloween. I even had furry feet. Nobody knew who I was, or even that I was a hobbit. And now you can buy Frodo outfits with plastic rings in the Safeway.

You could try Farscape or Andromeda. They had some pretty fantastic female costumes--some of them a little makeup-heavy and maybe difficult to construct but still cool. Aeryn's mostly girl-with-gun again but Chiana is rocking.

You're kind of warring between "simple costume" and "distinctive appearance" for girls. Not that guys don't have the same problem, but the guys more often have distinctive scars or weapons or you can slap an ID patch on them or whatever.

If you're not "meh" about anime, you could try someone from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Nausicaa, Vision of Escaflowne, Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, Bubblegum Crisis... There are lots more that aren't coming to mind at the moment.

[Russell Nash]

Have you thought about being a pair of stormtroopers?  Or the biker guys from Jedi?

   





This one is actually body paint.

[DDog]

Yeah, 'cause I totally want my gut wide open in a fight... Not that all that armor helped most of the regular Stormtroopers I guess. The body paint one is super cool though.

[Russell Nash]

Just search for dragon con on flickr.  There was no end to the pictures of girl costumes.

[gelee]

Always plenty of Klingon Ladies.

[Thaurismunths]

Sorry, I didn't mean to orphan this thread. Life's like that.

My lovely bride has awakened, and suggested Taura from the Miles Vorkosigan series (Lois McMaster Bujold).  Or a quaddie - if you pull that one off, I'd like to see it.      (I thought she was done... she's now ranting about any number of cosutmes that you could pull from that series... and now she's getting mad that it hasn't been made into a movie.  My God, what have I done?  Why do I drag her into these things....?)
My thought was, turn any male character/superhero/icon into a female costume as a way of thumbing your nose at the establishment.  "Indianna" Jones?  Or go crazy and go as Starbuck... oh, wait...

Shawn's read the first book of the Vorkosigan series, but says that most of the people wear jumpsuits or regular cloths. I had to look up who Taura was and for the record Shwankie has been forbidden to ever wear a costume with facial or butt hair again.

The cake dress maybe? Otherwise it's a greasy mechanic's overall. Or you could try to find/make that parasol she had in the pilot and use that or a wrench as a prop — she wasn't a shooter.

The cake dress would be a definite 'Yes' but with just over a month before the con it would be very difficult to pull off. The parasol and outfit from the series premier is actually one of the costumes she's going for.

The greasy coveralls and Taura the werewolf get us back to the issue of recognition, which is kind of where I was going with this. If you take the actress out of the outfit (insert wolf whistles here) the clothes alone aren't identifiable on their own and so people in them might not be recognized.
Admittedly, dressing up should not be about whether someone else gets your costume, but for your own enjoyment of dressing the part. I just think it's odd that I (we) find male costumes so much more recognizable than female costumes. Is it because men have fewer wardrobe changes than women do and therefore have more staple items? Is it social?

[Thaurismunths]

Your examples (so far) have been visual media only, but if you go to books there's tons to choose from.

True. That's because the odds of someone visually recognizing a character from a book (or even a podcast) is so much less likely that we don't really consider it reasonable that anyone would. If we chose someone that has only appeared in text, not matter how intricate the description or memorable the character, it pretty much goes without saying that we'll be doing it purely for our own amusement and the amusement of the select few who have read the same book and remember the one character.

Anime and comics can give you ideas, too.

Also something we've considered, but that gets quickly in to T&A, cliche, or our unknown.
We are only novices in the Anime realm. Can you recommend some that might have a female lead that has a distinct outfit?

There's also no rule against crossdressing, I don't think.  She doesn't have to go as a girl.

See the butt hair comment above.

Great Trinity outfit, btw.

[shwankie]

Thanks for all the ideas! I opt out of the T&A costumes as much as possible, which unfortunately often leaves me feeling a bit at a loss for ideas. I've done a good bit of costuming over the years for a variety of venues (re-enactments, etc.), and am pretty open to branching out. Strong, weak, simpering, or badass, I am not so concerned. Mostly, it's: 1) Is it something I can reasonably do without breaking my bank account (I can sew and am a bit crafty, which helps), 2) Is it recognizable enough that I am not going to have to explain this *all* day, 3) Is it tolerably comfortable enough to wear for at least a few hours at a time, 4) Am I at all, even kind of, a bit close to looking like this person, and 5) is it covering enough that I am not going to spend all day using whatever weapon I may be carrying to fend off weirdos. Okay, so #5 isn't a complete qualifier--you get weirdos at a Con if you're a woman no matter what; but, minimization is good.

I am an anime' fan, and have a few characters in mind. We'll see if I can find anything resembling those wigs without breaking rule #1 :-)  It's hard to stay away from school girl outfits or T&A in manga, even non-hentai, so I am limited. I'm working on a good way to do a Power Puff girl, Yurine from Karas, and there are one or two others who are slipping my mind.

I've been planning the Kaylie costume for quite a while. I'm repainting an old paper parasol, cropping a lovely blue kimono-type thing into her blue mandarin jacket, and have the brown overalls. I still need to get the t-shirt and boots, but those should be easy.  I am space-efficient, so taller women like Zoey don't work so well.

My second costume is Aes Sedai from Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series. I may go ahead and do Elaine Sedai as Amrylin Seat, or I may just go as random Aes Sedai #47. Their garb is distinctive enough to make it a reasonable costume.

And, I am out of ideas. I need to go through my library this weekend, and see what I can dig up. Thanks for all the input!

[DDog]

If that is you in your avatar and your hair still looks like that, it'll look great in those little bun things Kaylie's got in that episode.

[shwankie]

Awww...thanks! It's me, and my hair is the same color but about 4-6 inches longer (which only makes the buns easier to do, thankfully). Kaylie is, of course, a brunette; but, my hair doesn't take dye and I've only found those colored hair sprays in neons (I have green and purple, but I've never found brown). So, I'll be a very blond Kaylie unless I wear a wig, which I am leaning away from. They itch. Fortunately, I think the rest of the outfit should do enough toward recognizability. And hey, I get to carry a parasol!

[Russell Nash]

5) is it covering enough that I am not going to spend all day using whatever weapon I may be carrying to fend off weirdos. Okay, so #5 isn't a complete qualifier--you get weirdos at a Con if you're a woman no matter what; but, minimization is good.

Isn't #5 Thaur's job?

[Anarkey]

My second costume is Aes Sedai from Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series. I may go ahead and do Elaine Sedai as Amrylin Seat, or I may just go as random Aes Sedai #47. Their garb is distinctive enough to make it a reasonable costume.

This is a great idea.  I like it a lot.  If you do it, I'd definitely like to see pics.  I also think doing a powerpuff girl would be a good idea.  You'd make an awesome Bubbles!

[shwankie]

You'd make an awesome Bubbles!

Hm...I am not sure if that is a compliment or not....but, thank you  The biggest problems are the HUGE head and the HUGE eyes. The outfit itself is easy with a bit of fabric and some boning/wiring. My head is not, fortunately, that big and I am not sure I could wear a paper-mache' noggin for that long. I could likely paint large, blue circles around my eyes to simulate the big anime eyes, but I am going to have to experiment with that a bit to see how it looks. Then, of course, I have to find two other lasses interested in dressing up as not-at-all-sexy-no-curves-at-a-con-where-women-wear-2-bunny-furs little girls. Anyone out there game? Heck, you don't even have to be girl as long as you can pull off the dress!

I'll definitely try to get some pics up of the costumes. I hope to work on getting the Kaylie finished in the next two weeks (not much to do, but need nicer weather for the painting).

I'd like to go with 4-5 costume possibilities, because something *always* happens to at least one of them (seams rip, someone spills wine on your white stripped shawl, the guy behind you steps on your tail, etc.). My other idea is "The Flying Squirrel" from Decoder Ring Theater, with Tall and Lanky as "The Red Panda." That I should be able to get together no problem, though I am still iffy on the idea of wearing a cat suit. 'Munths, however, is not iffy on it. He thinks looming and being imposing is fun, and looks forward to--as Russell mentions--doing his job. And, of course, to me calling him boss. 

[Tango Alpha Delta]

... 'Munths, however, is not iffy on it. He thinks looming and being imposing is fun, and looks forward to--as Russell mentions--doing his job. And, of course, to me calling him boss. 

It's fun when they let us pretend to be in charge for a while, eh, 'Munths?

[Thaurismunths]

... 'Munths, however, is not iffy on it. He thinks looming and being imposing is fun, and looks forward to--as Russell mentions--doing his job. And, of course, to me calling him boss. 

It's fun when they let us pretend to be in charge for a while, eh, 'Munths?

What do you mean "for a while?"
I do anything I damn well please, any time I damn well want.
Isn't that right hun?