I am heading to the 10th annual Talking Bodies Conference in the UK next week to talk about Cosplay!

Specifically, I’ll be sharing my research into superhero genitalia- the subject of several blog posts here, and (in my academic hat) an issue of ongoing research. Cosplay is, after all, about how we manage our bodies to present and perform a specific image.

I’ll be presenting as a professor, but for at least one day, I’ll be doing what cosplay daughter would call “casual cosplay.” This is because – in the notes from the conference organizers- participants are invited to wear “your country’s traditional dress” to the conference banquet.

This got me thinking (and probably overthinking) what IS “my country’s traditional dress?”

What IS traditional or national dress or costume here in the USA?

Does it, (sadly but appropriately) include a gun, like above?

Would it, for me, living in the Midwest of the US, include a bonnet and calico dress?

(I grew up with the television program Little House on the Prairie, set in the US midwest in the 1800s)

I don’t know that there is widespread agreement about what “National Dress” is in the United States. There are a variety of reasons for this:

• Regional Diversity: We are a BIG nation, and what may be traditional in one area (such as the ballgowns below still worn as a signal of Alabama’s cultural heritage) is not relevant to other areas of the nation. No one in the north, east or west would look at what the Azaela Trail Maids wear and recognize it as “traditional” for their part of the USA.

• Ethnic Diversity: We stole most of the US from the indigenous folks living here. We took other parts from Spain and later Mexico. As a descendant of very white German folks, however, it would not be appropriate for me to claim either Indian or Latin dress as my traditional dress. This would be cultural appropriation, and frankly, further theft from those groups.

As the featured image, you’ll see what Miss USA 2023 wore in the Miss Universe pageant in the “National Costume” portion. I think she’s wearing the moon as a hat? As a reference to our pride in the moon landing? She’s cosplaying….American dominance of space exploration?

I will NOT be wearing something similar to the conference banquet.

The Miss Universe National Costume Competition is the source of joy, hilarity and widespread mocking across internet spaces (scroll through the link I’ve posted here and see Miss Netherlands as a stroopwafel!).

However, the Contest can be beautiful and quite moving. The costume worn by Miss Ukraine in 2023, a “Warrior of Light” directly referenced the invasion of her homeland and the strength (and hope) of the Ukrainian people in their fight.

I think about beauty work, dress and costume a lot. I’m very aware that we express our identities (both who we are, and who we want to be) through what we wear. And the more I thought about national dress, the more I wanted to do SOMETHING to try and suggest what US traditional, national dress would be for ME.

I don’t identify with cowboy culture or the romanticized mythos of the deep south. What I do aspire to, and what I hope for in the US is that we can live up to the symbolic power of a different lady.

I do love my country, but I mourn for the terrible steps away we have taken from the ideal of the Statue of Liberty. I work with immigrants and asylum seekers. I want us to be a nation that accepts all “yearning to breathe free.”

Maybe this is mythology as well. I’m aware that we’ve never been an ideal nation. But I can hope for that. I can aspire to live in a country that is symbolized a symbol of justice, and hope and welcome.

So I’m going to the banquet in what cosplay daughter would call “casual cosplay” of Lady Liberty.

I’m not building a full-on Statue of Liberty costume because I do not want to trivialize the national/traditional dress of other attendees. I fear that a “costume” of the sort we associate with Halloween might suggest that other nations’ traditional dress is “not real clothing.”

I think nothing of the sort. And I want that to be clear.

So. I’m working intentionally to build this cosplay to be a true representation of aspirational identity- who I am, who I want to be, and how that relates to where I come from.

Ideally, I would have thrifted a dress or sewn it. Pressed for time, I resorted to the evil empire (which, sadly, I suppose, does represent where I come from). I ordered a dress from Amazon as a base for the look. Fancy enough for a banquet and the right color.

Next, I thought about the elements that would make the look identifiable as Lady Liberty: the crown, the tablet, and the torch. I decided to focus on the tiara and the tablet- again wanting this to be a casual look. I thought I could make a headband that suggested the crown and could decorate a clutch for the tablet.

I started by buying a cheap headband. Then I looked through materials that I already had for what might work as the rays, or points, shining from it.

I am lucky enough to have inherited my grandfather’s jewelry-making supplies. And in them, I found pieces of raw jade, crystal, and malachite. These I affixed to the headband with every cosplayer’s stand-by glue, E6000.

Then I added ribbon and a few crystals for glam (again, not going for a PERFECT copy of the crown, but more of a study, a reference to it). I think this achieved my objective. Made with found and budget items. Some pieces, (as with so many costumes) were inherited from my wonderful family who have always supported cosplay daughter and me in our artistic endeavors.

I bought a length of stretch velvet ON SALE (yay me!) and hemmed it for a wrap/toga.

The wrap will be practical (as well as a part of the cosplay), as it promises to be chilly in the evenings. I can wear it all week at the conference.

And then I turned to the purse. This is another element that will be both practical (to hold things) and part of the look. I wanted one side of the purse to have the date of US independence (as the statue does), but wanted to honor Emma Lazarus’ poem about the statue, a “Mighty Woman with a Torch”…

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Yeah, so it turned out that all of my ideas about how to do this lettering NEATLY AND EFFECTIVELY did not work.

I’m contenting myself with the “July IV, MDCCLXXVI” part. (This is where I could really use cosplay daughter, who has AMAZING attention to detail and patience). Just like a normal kid though, she’s moved out on her own.

So I’ll be taking this look to the conference- better hair and makeup, but basically this:

I hope that the other attendees get it. And even if they don’t, it was a good artistic, intellectual, and ideological exercise for me. I’m from the USA and this is what I identify with: welcome, freedom, liberty, inclusion, and bad-ass women.