Columbus-Like Discovery # 34E22: Put On Your Sunday Clothes
I can't recall how a conversation with Naughty Ninja about Masakazu Katsura's bizarre fusion of the pre-pubescent and post-pubescent ended up becoming a discussion of J-fetish, but then just about every discussion we have while watching Animax usually devolves into J-fetish.
In any case, Naughty Ninja informed me that the desire to articulate the strange bio-physical crossroads that most female anime characters exist in has resulted in a fetish that is, in my opinion, infinitely more interesting than bukkake: anime girl suits, a concept so bizarre that it compelled me to Google like crazy.
Known as kigurumi, its a fetish for full body suits and masks that allow the wearer to pretend he/she is a pretty anime girl. It's hardly realistic stuff, and pretty much resembles the Susy and Geno mascots that we Pinoys may have met during the days when they toured almost as heavily as Bon Jovi.
What distinguishes it from cosplay, is that there is a heavy use of unitards, stockings and masks. The eroticism lies mostly in its transgressive appeal, but with the layers of cloth required to enact it, there's a kind of bondage sensibility to it as well. According to a writer at japattack.com, some wearers claim that:"[...] their mask is not there to hide their face. They are not pretending their own existence. The person who is inside of the character is there to actualize the character's motion and thought. The mask is the character's head and the tights are their skin. The feeling is similar to playing a simulation video game. [They] are not wearing a costume. Rather, they are physically and psychically entering a character."
Naughty Ninja insists that there're also people who equip their costumes with orifices and other features designed for erotic options, though I'm not sure if I really want to Google that hard for evidence on that. In any case, that thought is hardly surprising. There're enough lemony pieces of literature on the net out there in which characters transform genders after donning transvestite apparel.
Interestingly enough, a large amount of them involve Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson using transgenderism as a means to attain the heterosexual means to consummate their homosexual desire. I'm sure there're sexual intellectuals and gender studies experts with better minds than mine that can analyze this.
In any case, this is the future of cross-dressing and transvestitism. And for some reason, it makes me remember something Greil Marcus said about how rock as a single genre of music no longer exists. He suggested that the genre has been separated, divided, mutated and segmented to such a point that rock no longer speaks to all of its fans in the same language because there is no single rock. Transvestitism is doing the same.