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" Black, latex booty shorts. That&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s in the bag Alexia Jean Grey drops on my coffee table as she walks in, fresh from a meeting of assistant directors from Supercon, one of the largest anime convention in the state. &amp;quot;I hope you don&amp;#039;t mind,&amp;quot; the 21-year-old says, shrugging at the bag as she drops into an armchair. &amp;quot;I thought if I left them in the car they might melt.&amp;quot; The shorts are for a fetish party this weekend and even though Alexia&amp;#039;s fallen into the scene lately, her focus these days is less on kink and more on her current gig as a professional superhero. Yup, that&amp;#039;s a thing. Alexia&amp;#039;s a respected face in the underground industry of cosplaying\u2014a shortened term that stands for &amp;quot;costume play,&amp;quot; a trend among the Japanese anime-watching, manga-reading, video game-playing enthusiasts who flock to multiple conventions across the country to connect, socialize, play, and display their often intricate and handmade costumes. Basically, it&amp;#039;s Halloween 24/7 for cosplayers. And although most aren&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;in character&amp;quot; all day, half the fun is being photographed by other fans in their character&amp;#039;s power pose. Photographers and conventions fly Alexia out all over the country to get a signature pose in any of her elaborate get-ups. This niche career can lead to a major payout and capitalizing on these smaller, more dedicated markets can lead to bigger opportunities for model-actress types. It started about three years ago when, as a teenager, she moved from Wisconsin to South Florida and made friends with a group of cosplayers. Dressing up for her first few conventions was fun, but it wasn&amp;#039;t until she had graduated high school and was trying to land on a career choice that she started to analyze her talents. &amp;quot;I wanted to do something creative,&amp;quot; she recalls. &amp;quot;I was in beauty school for a while, learning how to style hair and do makeup, but it wasn&amp;#039;t enough. I wanted to put together the whole picture.&amp;quot; And on weekends during conventions, she felt like she finally had that chance. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re emulating a whole new person and you get to use every tool in your arsenal. I was doing hair and makeup, sewing together outfits, crafting armor\u2026You could see the hours of work I put into every piece and people were taking notice.&amp;quot; Her Big Break  But being a superhero meant more than just wearing the armor. You had to look the part. &amp;quot;I was out of shape,&amp;quot; she admits. &amp;quot;I think I was one of those girls who didn&amp;#039;t know how heavy I was until I lost 50 pounds and was like\u2014&amp;#039;oh, so this is what my body would look like if I stopped drinking soda!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Now svelte and strong, she picked up jogging and switched to a vegetarian diet. &amp;quot;It was a gradual thing, getting healthier and I realized that if I started eating badly again I was going to gain weight. I&amp;#039;m wearing these suits like a second skin\u2014and that makes life pretty tragic, because I love being a super hero but I also love macaroni and cheese.&amp;quot; So, what she did next was like jumping into a freezing river butt ass naked. &amp;quot;I wanted to take things to the next level and separate myself from the crowd. So I decided to start by doing a semi-nude photo shoot. My friend Jesse Melero is a great artist and he was able to arrange a shoot for me with a photographer named James Holmes,&amp;quot; she says as the two of us Google search the image that by now has been passed around to every cosplay related site on the &amp;#039;net. The plan was to do a picture of her dressed up entirely in body paint. (Think: the painted ladies at Hugh Hefner&amp;#039;s mansion.) Originally she was going to be painted into jeans and a superhero T-shirt\u2014but then they came across a picture of Spiderman&amp;#039;s girlfriend, Mary Jane. &amp;quot;I knew immediately that&amp;#039;s what I wanted to do,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It was a drawing of her in Spiderman panties and a T-shirt.&amp;quot; So Jesse took her into his garage and for five hours she stood naked and freezing as he painted a blue and red shirt, panties, and thigh-high stockings. &amp;quot;Not going to lie, it was awkward when we started. There I am standing in this dude&amp;#039;s garage with a photographer, butt naked except for a double bandage across my lady parts\u2014and when the paint soaked in? That had to come off too.&amp;quot; Her discomfort didn&amp;#039;t last that long though. &amp;quot;At some point I was just like\u2014aw\u2014fuck it. I&amp;#039;m here. I&amp;#039;m doing this. I think I might be the only body painted model who ever ate a slice of pizza in the middle of a photo shoot.&amp;quot; The pictures became the recipe for fandom&amp;#039;s instant wet dream. When the photos leaked online later that week\u2014all hell broke loose. &amp;quot;Oh my god,&amp;quot; says Alexia, thinking back to the day. &amp;quot;I was already iffy about putting it online, but as soon as I did it went viral. It started getting a ton of likes and comments\u2026 .&amp;quot; \u2026But not all of them were positive. &amp;quot;You have to have a tough skin about this kind of stuff. And I think that was my wake up call. I don&amp;#039;t remember what site it was, but some guy put it up on this Facebook page and started calling me out as a skank. I messaged him to take it down and he replied, &amp;quot;well\u2014you shouldn&amp;#039;t have put it up if you didn&amp;#039;t want to be called a slut.&amp;quot; She had a moment of panic. What had she done? &amp;quot;But there was really no turning back. I could take it off my page but it was already out there. I had to own it.&amp;quot; Now that she&amp;#039;s had some distance from the moment, she says she&amp;#039;d do the shoot again in a heartbeat. &amp;quot;The pictures came out beautiful and I&amp;#039;ve seen a lot of other cosplayers replicate the idea since then. It&amp;#039;s become a little more popular and a lot more acceptable. I also know to expect the criticism now. If I don&amp;#039;t like the comments I delete them or I ignore them. I&amp;#039;ve seen and heard it all and not much can offend me now.&amp;quot; The point, she says, was to put herself out there\u2014to celebrate both her body and the culture of fandom that was becoming a true career for her, &amp;quot;and I&amp;#039;d do it again in a heartbeat.&amp;quot;   The Art of Cosplay  She still has part-time jobs in retail to pay the bills, but Alexia&amp;#039;s cosplaying has taken off (any money she makes from prints, posters, and appearances goes straight back into creating her next design). And she&amp;#039;s found that it&amp;#039;s no joke. &amp;quot;This a serious art form to the people who create it. It involves so many different skills\u2014you need to learn to sew, to sculpt, to shape wigs. You have to be able to do make-up and pose and you should know more about your character than just what they wear. You&amp;#039;re representing someone else&amp;#039;s creation\u2014so you&amp;#039;re responsible for doing it justice.&amp;quot; She credits her fellow cosplayers for how she learns new techniques. &amp;quot;This isn&amp;#039;t a secret society sort of thing, there&amp;#039;s no urge to keep our costumes to ourselves. There are tons of tutorials online and if you ask at a convention, most cosplayers are happy to tell you how they made their pieces. I mean\u2014it&amp;#039;s an art, you want to be original in your execution\u2014but I think that, for the majority cosplayers, are there to make friends with a common interest. It&amp;#039;s a community, not a competition.&amp;quot; Learning the craft takes time. &amp;quot;I already had a sewing machine since I was younger, but I had never really used it. I started buying fabrics and patterns, making a lot of mistakes along the way. But at that point, mistakes were fine. Over time as I started working with wigs and armor\u2014mistakes were a lot more costly and on a frozen yogurt server&amp;#039;s salary\u2014I couldn&amp;#039;t afford to make them.&amp;quot; To ease the financial burden she&amp;#039;s accepted sponsorships from different companies\u2014including Cosplay Wigs USA which supply her with the kind of high-end hair pieces she has to sculpt her looks from. &amp;quot;I just did a Flame Princess costume where the hair piece had to be like two feet high. I had to use everything from a newspaper cone to heated hair spray and super glue. It&amp;#039;s obviously not your typical updo, but it&amp;#039;s worth it in the end.&amp;quot; Wigs aren&amp;#039;t they only expense, though, and while her costumes in the beginning may have been as cheap as $50\u2014the majority of her outfits today can land anywhere between $500 to $1000. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m definitely interested in branching out to mainstream acting and modeling\u2014but cosplay is the real test of my talents,&amp;quot; she says. She&amp;#039;s planning on taking the leap to full time superhero in the next few months.   There Are Creepers &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re dressing as a sexy superhero\u2014so yes, you&amp;#039;re going to have run-ins with socially awkward nerds. And if you can&amp;#039;t handle that stuff-you can&amp;#039;t handle the cosplay world. Because even if you don&amp;#039;t dress as something sexy, they&amp;#039;ll still come at you.&amp;quot; She brings up her Web site to show me an example. &amp;quot;So that&amp;#039;s a full on, oversized Pikachu jumpsuit,&amp;quot; she says, bringing up a picture of herself in costume. &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t see anything revealing, right? Well, that&amp;#039;s where I get the creepiest comments. I have no idea what that&amp;#039;s about.&amp;quot; And yeah, some people are total creepers in person, too. &amp;quot;Most of them are really nice, but I still get the ones with really bad pick-up lines who buy a picture and then ask for my number. Which is super awkward because I have to be like, &amp;#039;oh\u2014well, thank you for helping me crawl my way out of minimum wage jobs\u2014but no.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; And while the pick-ups are common, some fans can quickly get out of hand. So much so that one girl started a campaign called Cosplay Does Not Equal Consent to bring awareness to the mistreatment of costumed women at conventions. &amp;quot;You would expect it from 14-year-old assholes, right? But in my experience it&amp;#039;s more often the creep who owns the comic book store you&amp;#039;re posing at that thinks it&amp;#039;s okay to slap your ass while you&amp;#039;re taking pictures with fans.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;The worst is that they probably don&amp;#039;t even want you. They just want to bang Batgirl.&amp;quot; She also gets bummer over how they miss the point. &amp;quot;This isn&amp;#039;t a contest for who can wear the sexiest outfit. I&amp;#039;m a fan of these books and games and shows. I&amp;#039;m excited to spend a day pretending to be this character. &amp;quot; And as far as actual candidates she&amp;#039;d date? &amp;quot;Over the last year relationships have been harder. It&amp;#039;s hard to find a boyfriend who isn&amp;#039;t jealous, who is okay with the fact that I&amp;#039;m gone, traveling all the time.&amp;quot; She says that she had to draw a line between her personal and professional life. &amp;quot;You have fans that don&amp;#039;t want you dating, it hypothetically ruins the image for them. But frankly who&amp;#039;s touching my Pikachu at night shouldn&amp;#039;t matter at all.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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