STGCC: Power Girl Cosplay

The event is over *sobs* and we’re still feeling the after effects of the awesomeness that was the Singapore Toy, Games and Comic Convention (STGCC) 2012. Not surprisingly, we’re also getting a lot of hits relating to the gorgeous, jaw-dropping, brilliant, words-fail-me cosplay of Power Girl, who made her debut (and only appearance) on Day 1 of the Con.

In a perfect world, these search engine hits means that people appreciated the effort in making such a costume from scratch and then having the courage to wear it proudly at an event that is all about appreciating, even idolising, such creativity. I would honestly like to think that the silent majority feels this way – but the cynic in me is only able to focus on the face-to-palm, palm-to-face reactions of a few.

Check out Power Girl’s heartfelt response under the cut.

Now, Power Girl’s costume alone has always attracted a fair bit of controversy and notoriety, and for better or worse, those who cosplay her tend to elicit the same kind of embarrasingly sexist, neanderthal-like response from all and sundry. I’ve personally always believed that it takes a really gutsy, daring person to portray her, so when I heard via Twitter that someone was getting a costume ready for it, I was excited.

Seeing her in person at STGCC was all kinds of amazing – her costume was pitch perfect, the exuberance in her poise was palpable, she was pretty much all you could hope for (and considering I was already accompanying the most awesome Oracle EVAH~! by this time I was pretty much on a cosplay high by this point). You can’t even begin to imagine how I felt when I saw the whole DC cosplay crew later.

Unfortunately, the very next day, the first nasty reactions to the Power Girl costume were starting to pop up on the one site where Singaporeans are often found at their worst – the Eat Drink Man Woman (EDMW) forum on HardwareZone (HWZ). This was the cosplayer’s initial response on Facebook – soon after she had trouble creating an account on HWZ.

The comments didn’t subside when she finally managed to create an account, even reaching to a point when she was expected to prove she was “real” – when asked how, this poster wrote: “u write edmw+date on a paper, take pic, upload to imgur and post the url / use as avatar”. Seriously?!?

Proving she was made of much sterner stuff than they expected, she went through with it, and eventually shut her detractors up. (I <3 this woman so much.)

Now that she’s on STOMP (front page pic too!), though, expect the inanity to continue. Sigh.