MEDIUM RARE
Certain that “cosplay” would not appear in my well-thumbed dictionary, I turned to “play” and discovered there are more or less 18 different meanings, used as a noun or verb.
In the time of Coldplay – “fantastic” entertainment, quoting PBBM describing their concert at the Philippine Arena in Bulacan – and with ourselves as a typically playful audience/participants, let us celebrate the spirit of fun, having fun and sharing fun.
As I started out to say, cosplay is not yet in the dictionary, not mine, anyway. In my limited knowledge, cosplay involves costumes and playacting, which means the player assumes a personality based on the imagination, anime or cartoons. So there we stood before the mirror in the ladies’ room, just unimaginative me and a cosplayer in full costume, with a pink wig of pigtails and knee-high black patent leather boots.
She was maybe between 15 and 18, and when I commented on her all-black attire (though her lipstick was blood-red), she said, “My mom made it.” How lovely to have a mom just as playful and understanding of one’s need to assume a second or third personality once in a while. Outside, other cosplayers, solo or in twos and threes, walked up and down and around the Circuit Theater. Were they here for a parade or just to indulge their cosplay selves?
Just the day before, at another Ayala mall, Trinoma, a Drag Den caught my attention. A bevy of guys – tall and broad-shouldered, or slim and almost effeminate – glowed in full splendor, glittering in fully sequined gowns for a competition of some kind, as a curtain-raiser for a TV show. What fun they seemed to be having, buzzing like bees, setting the stage, checking the lights.
Drag Den is a long way from the old Malate which the “fairies” – how they were called then – considered their home. In the district occupied by a handful of high-fashion couturiers, the queens ruled the roost, eventually setting the tone for Makati, Pasay and elsewhere to follow, until they were no longer ridiculed as a different race of Filipinos.
Someday someone should produce a pictorial history of Malate not only for its fashion background but as the cradle of drag queendom. What do you say, Vice G and Paolo B?