Agents of Cosplay: Jessica Nigri: Better Know A Cosplayer

LetalisK

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Zen Bard said:
Imper1um said:
Factual Fixes:
1:06
Jessica Nigri was standing in a HALLWAY where a lot of other guests were, and, of course, Jessica's "fans" were blocking the way as they were taking pictures of her, basically causing a fire hazard. She was told to go to the booth she was assigned or change her clothes to make less of a problem.
Also, PAX has a strict "No booth babe" policy, which she was in clear violation of.

http://kotaku.com/5900134/skimpy-outfit-gets-lollipop-chainsaw-cosplayer-asked-to-leave-pax
Liana does not allow mere facts to stand in the way of her recurring narrative that attractive women who cosplay are an oppressed sub-culture against whom society constantly discriminates!
I see the opposite in her writings: women in general struggle with insecurity and confidence regardless of how appealing their body type is supposed to be.
 

Ralancian

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Furnicula said:
You do realize how ridiculous you sound, right?

I can't really figure out if this is satire or the usual Tumblr-dweller talk.

http://www.historybyzim.com/2012/06/bathing-suit-arrests-chicago-1922/
Let's be partially fair her second outfit left very little to the imagination (not that her first one was hardly covered up) and the convention has rules against it specifically tied in with the promotion of a product as they want to create a 'family' event.

Specifically they ban promtional models your not allowed to promote a product just by standing there and looking good. You have to be able to talk about the product in some level of detail.


Personally I think the real issue is cause by 'allowing' people to dress up as provactive characters at all, yes this include cosplayers. I don't belive in one rule for one group and not one for another based on your knowledge (which I think of as fake-geek-shaming and totally unfair not everyone has the same level of knowledge about things). My wife could dress up in a Lollipop Chainsaw costume and attend the event knowing nothing about it but she it not allowed to attend said event if she is paid to do that by the makers of the game.


If PAX were to say this a family orientated event so we ask people to refrain from provactive costumes that's totally cool. But they don't.


Nigri in all this (from what I've read), wore a costume on Friday that caused some compaints, wore a diffrent one on Saturday that caused further complaints, she was asked to change, returned with Friday's but in light of those complaints and Friday's was told that wasn't good enough. Wore a third costume (which is where the Agents of Cosplay video is talking rubbish as it still had her navel showing but covered up her boobs) and everyone carried along happily.
Like I said where I think the problem is was she not being paid she'd have been allowed to wear all of them and that's what is actually wrong.
 

ThriKreen

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Ralancian said:
Were you there? Because your original link doesn't describe that chain of events at all.
I was, there really wasn't that many people around taking photos of her whenever I walked by the WB booth. But it's not like I was there all the time though.
 

Imper1um

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http://penny-arcade.com/news/post/2012/04/09/my-big-pax-post
(at the bottom) Gabe goes over why the policy was instituted and what was going on.

Just talked to one of my friends, he told me that there were plenty of people that were just as revealing as Nigri, and they didn't get kicked out. He did say that they were aggressively dispersing any people that just sat idle in a walkway. He was there on Day 3, so this was after the event.

The big thing behind this I believe is the policy on Booth Babes. This was the year after the big hissy fit that everyone threw with the Duke Nukem Booth Babes, so they instituted this policy:
http://prime.paxsite.com/safety-and-security#booth-babe-policies
Later, they added in the last part that says "Cosplaying playable characters is fine, but we need to approve anything that might be objectionable." Probably a direct result of this problem that popped up.

Either way, this was a complex and should have been a private situation between PAX/Nigri, that Nigri made public for her own benefit.

I'm also not kidding on the fire marshal stuff. I've heard the stories of D*C Fire Marshals basically bringing ops to a halt due to overcrowding and people sitting idle in emergency paths.
 

Ihateregistering1

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LazyAza said:
...because of her chosen profession. I have nothing but respect for the women like her who do what they do.
Wait, profession? She gets paid to do this? I thought cosplay was just a hobby people did for fun. Who pays her?
 

Kanatatsu

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I don't really care (hell, I'm not complaining about her hobbies), but if you're built like a fitness model, it's a little ridiculous to say "oh if I don't wear make-up I totally look like everyone else!".
Ehm, she's not built like a fitness model. Not in nearly good enough condition.
 

ThriKreen

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Ihateregistering1 said:
Wait, profession? She gets paid to do this? I thought cosplay was just a hobby people did for fun. Who pays her?
She won a contest to represent Juliet for Lollipop Chainsaw, so was paid to be a model at various tradeshows and exhibitions during the promotion of the game. I'll guess she's done other modeling jobs like that given her popularity. Plus cons will pay for guests to come to their convention to drum up interest and such.
 

LazyAza

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Ihateregistering1 said:
LazyAza said:
...because of her chosen profession. I have nothing but respect for the women like her who do what they do.
Wait, profession? She gets paid to do this? I thought cosplay was just a hobby people did for fun. Who pays her?
Yes she is a professional cosplayer and gets hired by various companies all the time to work trade shows, photo shoots etc. She's no different to a model who is hired for various things but gets to do way more fun stuff like show off her own personal hand made outfits as she produces literally everything she wears herself. She works incredibly hard to do what she does, probably much more so than the vast majority of idiots slagging her off in these comments.

The "controversy" of her pax thing was due to a costume she wore to represent lollipop chainsaw and the idiots at the con made her stop cause some anal-retentive asshole parents probably didn't want their kids knowing that GASP boobs exist. Never mind that the game company paid her to be there and to wear said costume and all this had to have been approved by pax beforehand.
 

Ihateregistering1

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LazyAza said:
Ihateregistering1 said:
LazyAza said:
...because of her chosen profession. I have nothing but respect for the women like her who do what they do.
Wait, profession? She gets paid to do this? I thought cosplay was just a hobby people did for fun. Who pays her?
Yes she is a professional cosplayer and gets hired by various companies all the time to work trade shows, photo shoots etc. She's no different to a model who is hired for various things but gets to do way more fun stuff like show off her own personal hand made outfits as she produces literally everything she wears herself. She works incredibly hard to do what she does, probably much more so than the vast majority of idiots slagging her off in these comments.
So she's a booth babe who makes her own outfits? Cool beans.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Bitter_Angel said:
Johnny Novgorod said:
Bitter_Angel said:
Oh boy, another article about the LCD of cosplay.
The liquid crystal display of cosplay?
For the sake of my mental health, I'm going to assume that you're joking. For the sake of clarity though, "Lowest Common Denominator".
I was joking, though I didn't know what you meant by LCM.
 

unsafeideas

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Imper1um said:
unsafeideas said:
Imper1um said:
Factual Fixes:
1:06
Jessica Nigri was standing in a HALLWAY where a lot of other guests were, and, of course, Jessica's "fans" were blocking the way as they were taking pictures of her, basically causing a fire hazard. She was told to go to the booth she was assigned or change her clothes to make less of a problem.
Also, PAX has a strict "No booth babe" policy, which she was in clear violation of.
Your outfit caused fire hazard must be the dumbest argument I ever heard in relation of telling people what to wear. I get that calling safety is supposed to be complete trump card, because people are afraid to argue against "safety". But seriously, this is a bit too much even for usual loose safety pulls.

Does that policy really extend to all popular cosplays? If everyone takes my pics of my sword in the doors, will I be told to make sword less cool too?

Also, "booth babe" is supposed to be someone who does not know anything about what the booth is about. Looking good does not make you booth babe, not knowing stuff while looking good does.
I can tell you, that the "Fire Hazard" is the biggest problem that you can run into running a convention. See, the Fire Marshal understands and knows about these events months in advance. For example, Dragon*Con. The Fire Marshal has the right to shut a show down because of people blocking entrances, and making it impossible for EMS to access all areas of the event. Seriously, the biggest fear people have at D*C is the Fire Marshal. If he says, "Clear them out or I'll stop the event," they are not playing around.

The same argument would be given for any other cosplayer, in fact, I bet its happened a dozen or so times with other cosplayers during the EXACT same event (even ones with "a cool sword" as you mentioned). However, Nigri, in her "I'll use this benign event which was made a decision to protect the event from being shut down to elevate my position," goes ahead and accuses PAX that they told her to change because "she was too sexy." She failed to mention the policy on No Booth Babes. She failed to mention that the fans were causing a blockage in a major intersection. She kept all of that out, because, hey, everyone got up in arms about Nigri having showy-them-boobs cosplays, so they told her to leave. No, that didn't happen. She told a half-truth, and used it to elevate her position, which I find is despicable. I don't care what she wears, I care that she elevates herself with these kinds of things.

See, this was complex event. Nigri was there to promote a product, and she was being paid by the product team to be there. Nigri decided to step out onto a major intersection, and people started taking pictures, because, hey, its a hot woman with almost no clothes on, that's weird, right? That's not too much of a problem, but people started hanging around, taking lots of pictures as Nigri continued to pose in different ways (you know what I'm talking about). It soon turned into a wall of people, which meant that anyone attempting to go through the intersection had to basically bump photographers, which are firmly planted in their "I'm taking a picture pose." I can tell you, as a photographer, if I'm in a pose like that, I'm like the fricken Earth Kingdom. Bumping me doesn't change where I am, but it does annoy me. Nigri's handlers just stood by and watched, and failed to disperse the crowd, or move Nigri to a better location. Nigri also failed to take charge and require handlers to move the crowd, or move herself, and, instead, enticed the crowd to stick around longer. I'm betting at one point, security tried to disperse, but, you know, people probably would do the party pooper aww, and now security is the evil, but everyone continued to take pictures, and Nigri continued to entice more to take pictures, and not move. It wasn't until security got fed up, that they invoked their right to disperse the crowd and gave Nigri a warning about the "No Booth Babes" policy, and told her to change or go back to her booth.

Did Nigri incite the event? She might have. She had the full opportunity to control the crowd, either by moving to a less-travelled location (which the event staff would have been fine with), or just asking people to move along or open up a path for people to travel through.

Did event staff act unruly? Probably not. They probably had to do the "alright, disperse you guys" thing at least a dozen times that day, with less-known cosplayers, but you didn't hear them complain, or raise an army against PAX.

Did Nigri overreact? Yes. That was obvious. Her tweets and social posts highlighted the fact that she left out information to gain followers, and raise an army. It was used to incite and is completely despicable.
Why do you think she is a booth babe? She knows her stuff which makes her not booth babe despite her looking good. Looking good and knowing stuff are unrelated. Besides, if you want to stop blockage, tell them they are blocking doors and tell them to move further away from doors. There is no reason to mention cloth at all. You do not have to tell them to leave convention till they change pants. This is just using safety excuse to achieve unrelated goals and you are giving the pretense away every time you call her booth babe.

Want events to be more secure? Do not pull "safety hazard" excuse for "booth babes". People will be more likely to trust you that you really have security in mind.