The Miscellaneous Adventures of Margaret

Greetings everyone! My name is Margaret. I am a lover of travel, learning art and history, as well as language. I am a twenty-one year old girl that has a bit of quirkiness. Then again, I tend to say that to forewarn the fact that I am someone who is pretty open about various ideas and topics because I like to learn and understand things to gain more knowledge. I also give that quirky, or weird preamble sometimes before people really get to try and understand my world.

I live, breath, and eat any form of the arts possible and there is never a moment in time where the visual and performing arts has ever left me. It is my companion, just like history. Originally, I had joined the B.F.A. program with the intention to go into the Fine Arts with a concentration of Graphic Design. My family--more like father--was adamant with the idea that I did not want to be a "professional." Pretty much, he wanted me to be in the "mainstream" of vocations that consisted of either education, science, or medicine. Through the previous years in college, after some courses in art history and visual arts, my love for Art History as a major was born.

My two strong points have been art and history, apart from languages. It was not until a few months ago through the stages of re-arranging my life choices, I settled on switching majors. That moment was pretty much the heart attack of my life, considering I already was enough of a black sheep by going into the arts. Since I was very young, when I think about it now, the societal and cultural conditions I lived and dealt with in my life influenced my art from a young age. Looking at a bigger picture, whatever goes on within society that holds some tie and connection to politics will creep through the visual arts--even performing arts. Culture and society is ever-changing. Just as the times move, so do thoughts and views that are made due to what is happening in the current time period of an individual artist.

My love for the arts lead me to the world of costumes or costumery--a hidden realm to me in American culture. I was aware people made costumes but only for things of the media. Never in my younger years did I expect to find the costume world alive in another form: through conventions. Something I found out through my young love of comic books and anime (Japanese animation), was the capability to be allowed to go travel to areas where there were people like me who wanted to dress up. The great thing about this is that not everyone has to dress up to these events. But, there is opportunity for a variety of cultures to meet and understand each other, regardless of differences. Excuse my long intro and though process, now enjoy an image of my decent skills in costumery with a group of people I met.

Location: Boston, MA
Event: Anime Boston 2012
Cosplaying/dressed as: Robin! Stephanie Brown

To get a bit of a taste of what others do, I will link you to a videos created by a few cosplay (costume play) videographers:

MLZ Studio -- Otakon 2012 Day 3/3 
The above has a variety of ages of ages of everyone who dresses up, more visible in the end.

Acksonl -- Katsucon 2012 2/3
This video above, in the beginning, sort of shows the process a person goes through (from one person at least) to put on their costume. It varies from person to person and the complexity of a costume.