Plus Size Cosplay

Okay so, @ pkmnbreedertianna asked me to do a tutorial on how I made my Splattershot Pro. I want to preface this by pointing out that I am brand spanking new to cosplay. This was the first prop I built so I was definitely learning as I went. I also ran out of time, took a bunch of shortcuts and left parts off of the prop. As it stands now I still view it as a WIP. I also took progress photos for myself never intending to make a tutorial out of ii so the photos aren’t especially instructional. 

Point being? This is about to be the worst tutorial ever. But if it helps anyone it’s worth typing out.

So for anyone not overly familiar with Splatoon, here’s the Splattershot Pro I was making (but filled with purple ink of course):

And here’s what I ended up with:

Cut for length, click to see how I made it;

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.

So, I get asked a lot how I put all of my hair underneath a wig. So here’s a small picture tutorial on how I do this.

The first photo is me with my long hair down.

The second photo is me splitting my hair into two sections and braiding it. I use small rubber bands to tie it up.

After I do that, I then wrap the braids around my head, sticking Bobby pins in the braid where it feels like it should be secured. I do the same thing with the other braid too. After that, I put my wig cap on and then pin that to my head.

When I pin it to my head, I make little X shapes with the pins and place the wavy side down. I also put them at the front, back and sides of the wig.

Finally, I put my wig on. I pin the wig to my head by finding the little X shapes I made and placing a Bobby pin | up and down like the simbol.

If the wig is short, I pin any loose parts of the wig down in X shapes where needed.