The S.W.A.G. Project Continues

This project will continue from what has already been created last semester. You can see the full summary of the project here.

===
The S.W.A.G. (Secretly We Are Girls) Project

This project derives from my hobbies within the Cosplay (a term short for "costume play") Community. Although I have only been active in cosplay for a little over a year, I have been attending anime/comic-book conventions and admired cosplay for nearly 10 years. So I was able to witness the growing changes within the community concerning female cosplayers. 
 
It is an ongoing project, a series of photographs of females crossdressing as males. I have used my own experiences and understanding of gender roles and gender portrayals in the cosplay community today to fuel the concept behind this project. I asked females that I know (who almost always crossplays as male characters) to "portray their own male character". However, this does not fall under the Cosplay category (not entirely, at least). This is something a little more towards performativity, where the model takes on the male role and appearance as a response to the social conditions of a community where they are not always safe.

===

For the rest of this semester, I will continue with this project, drawing more inspiration from Judith Butler's book, Gender Trouble, blogs about issues in the Cosplay Community, and create more photographic works. However, I'd like to take it a step further and bring my models out of the photography studio and into locations that would be ideal or "fitting" for their characters. 

Topics of gender roles, androgyny, cross-dressing, and identity will fuel the concept for this project.

Here are some photographic samples of the direction I will be taking:

When time permits, I will document/film scenes throughout the rest of the semester (and during photoshoots) to create a mini short-film for the S.W.A.G. Project.