The popular online dating service eHarmony.com has published a troubling article about “Photos that Make you Look Undateable.” [link]

Their advice? If you want to find love:

1. Don’t post a picture of yourself in a bar.
2. Don’t post a picture with your Ex obviously cut out.
3. Don’t stand next to a celebrity or something expensive.
4. Don’t wear a costume.

Huh?

We get that some people really like to dress up in costumes even when it isn’t Halloween. However, while your friends may understand your penchant for dressing like the original Superman at Comic-Con, most people perusing your profile won’t.

Since when does a little cosplay interfere with finding love? And if someone is turned off by your cosplay, why would you want to date them anyway? Is the goal to get as many dates as possible, or to find someone compatible? I think we have a Quality vs. Quantity issue going on here.

eHarmony says, “When you’re putting yourself out there, it’s best to save the fun photos for later on down the road.”

So… the key to getting dates is to be fake and boring. Nice.

Funny enough, cosplay tends to be one of the more prominent subject matters here at MD. There seems to be a huge internet community that supports the practice. And, well.. since the Internet is so global the international popularity makes it much more significant.

Still, to this day cosplay is somewhat of an underground subculture that doesn’t see a lot of mainstream daylight. I’m immersed in costume information every day, so I can tend to get a fuzzy idealistic view of just how many people are interested in this sort of thing.

Today, I stumbled on the top 100 costumes as updated daily by Costumezee. Now, I’ve been told to not believe everything the intertubes pump out at me. Therefore I can be skeptical as to how Costumezee has decided these facts. But, what’s in it for them to lie on this matter? Maybe it’s true?

So why all the fuss? Well, as it turns out, “anime” costumes made the bottom of the list. I’m sure a likely explanation is the nature of cosplay, and that most good cosplay is homemade. If this list was truly accurate, the DIY stuff should go in there too. It does beg answers to some questions. How many people who are into cosplay actually make their own outfits? Is Anime and cosplay still too small to notice? Why did disco costumes make number 1!?!

I’d say, so far Anime has made leaps and bounds when it comes into crashing on the American market. Although it’s still a lesser appreciated form of entertainment in comparison to the prominence it retains in Japan, cosplay costumes should be a tad higher on the list, no? What do you think?

I grew up on old XTC records. A multilayered experience from every side, the music is about exploration and human creativity more than anything else. To be categorized would be limiting.

The chorus of “Garden of Earthly Delights”, one of my favorite songs:

Welcome to the garden of earthly delights.
Welcome to a billion arabian nights.
This is your life and you do what you want to do,
This is your life and you spend it all.
This is your life and you do what you want to do,
Just dont hurt nobody,
And the big rewards here,
In the garden of earthly delights.

My mind runs wild on those words. It invites you open your mind completely and explore your own interest. Explore your own imagination.

The point of dressing up in a costume is to indulge this idea. To become something out of the ordinary. “Dailyness” is the prime suspect in the suppression of our most creative concepts of who we are and who we could be. Joining in the fun of dressing up is primarily driven by the desire to enter into our own garden. The meaning is different to each of us.

Enter your own garden. Around every corner you see the products of your most vivid imagination. How do you see yourself? What are you wearing? What do you look like?

Unmasking The Community is a segment where we ask you, the readers, to give us your ideas and input on some common questions surrounding the world of costumes.

Costume enthusiasts are like sports fans. They come from all types, have their own tastes, but typically appreciate all things costume. However, one trait they don’t all seem to mutually possess is the agreement on how much to spend on costumes.

Think about it for a second. You may be a Bob Mackie Barbie collector and may be willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a rare vintage Barbie costume to complete that piece of your costume. Or you may be a cosplayer and be adamant about completing your own collection without any sort of aid. It’s part of the culture.

It begs the question, how much is too much? If you’re doing a homemade project, is there a limit? What about a collection piece? What’s the limit? How much would you spend before you settled?

Do you think you could ever be fanatical enough to actually permanently wear a costume. I mean, change the way you look “surgically” to have a costume? Well, I didn’t think it would ever go as far as this new form of plastic surgery.

Apparently if you really like the “elf” look, you can have your ears surgically changed to have points infused in them. Perfect for Renaissance Faires, Cosplays, D&D Meetings, or anything else fantasy-esque. According to site Massively.com, the page is almost “certainly” a fake. You could have had me fooled. I can see the fanatics lining up now for a chance to be a part of this one. It’s a bit over the top in my opinion, but who ever said that mattered.

How much would you take to get this done to yourself?

This weekend I was talking to a friend of mine about relationships. She told me that when it comes to fashion, women primarily dress up to impress each other, not men. The first thing to hit my mind was, “huh”?

According to her philosophy, getting “cute” for a guy isn’t that hard because men aren’t picky. But women want to be noticed for their fashion sense, and it’s other women that will notice. Of course, this probably doesn’t apply to ALL women, but it’s a new notion for me. I proceeded to explain to her that if men didn’t have to impress women, then they’d be wearing clothes until the fabrics ran thin and there was no other option. Can’t compare apples to oranges, right?

So then what about with costumes? I look back on the costumes I’ve dressed up in, and they’ve always been to get a laugh or comment from someone else. I figured, “well, Halloween is all about dressing up to get attention, right?” For the most part, this is true. BUT, not everyone dresses up only on Halloween. Then I had the question in my mind as to whether people make their costumes to impress others or just for themselves.

With a pen and paper in hand, I did a small survey of people in my local area. According to the 100 people, I found that 66% of them claimed they dress up just to impress themselves. They don’t seem to care what others think. They just like to do something that they thought would be cool, and if people like it, that’s fine. Hmm, interesting..

My resources were limited, but I did hit some forums on the Internet to ask people why they like to dress up.  I had similar results. So then what about everyone reading this blog? Who do you do it for?