We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Gage Gerardi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Gage thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
I remember when my friend first told me to come to a convention with him in 2006 and said that I would stand out if I didn’t have a costume. I bought a grey rain coat from Good Will, some black fur, and threw together my first official cosplay – Kiba Inuzuka from Naruto. I didn’t even wear a wig then! Just pulled back my hair under the hood. I remember going to the convention, and feeling a sense that I was HOME. Just being surrounded by a bunch of nerds all celebrating being nerds. It’s what pushed me into becoming a cosplayer as my main hobby, and helped me to learn about my craft. I am blessed that I have a mother that we joke “learned everything right out of the womb”, so her seamstress skills are beyond amazing. Not everyone is so blessed to have a mentor like that, but we are thankfully also in a great place of technology where YouTube is everyone’s best friend.
No one ever recognizes everything that comes from being a professional costumer. Sure, there’s the costume piece itself, but there’s also wigs/hair, makeup, shoes, and then if you want to take it a step further from costuming to cosplayer, there’s the roleplay aspect that really brings the character to life. Not to mention the hundreds of skills needed for various prop making. I can’t say one was more essential than the other, because everyone is going to have their thing they’re most proud of. For me, it’s the fabrication of the costume itself. Wigs? Oh heck nah. I use them, but they’re my least favorite thing, hands down.
As for obstacles that got in the way, I can’t really think of any, other than myself and my own feedback. I think there’s a lot of comparison in a community like this, especially when social media is so accessible and the amount of “likes and comments” we get can fuel us to keep going. It’s hard to see someone else cosplay the same character as I do and not feel a little jealous, or not feel like “they did this so much better than me, what’s the point?” It took me years of self-love and therapeutic discovery to get over that hurdle of negative mentality, which was honestly my biggest obstacle keeping me from moving forward.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
As mentioned in the previous question, I have been cosplaying since 2006 when I was first invited to a local anime convention by a friend. Since then, I have over 300 cosplays in my repertoire, from various genres ranging from anime to Broadway. I’m a big believer in never limiting ourselves, that we only have one life to live, and if we see a character that inspires us and we want to personify? Go for it. My cosplay equality platform helped get me on my feet to start guesting at conventions, in which I attended my first guesting appearance in 2016 in Pueblo, CO at a small library convention called IdeaCon. Ever since then, my guesting opportunities have really kicked off, landing me as far west as Reno, NV and as far east as Virginia Beach, VA. I am incredibly blessed that when I am not doing my full-time job as a mental health therapist, I get to more or less travel the country spreading cosplay awareness to multiple communities. I get to educate through running panels, and I get to inspire and build up esteem through the ability to judge the contest and talk to people at my booth to really get them motivated. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.
I’m honestly most proud of using my own story to inspire others. Cosplay was the thing that really helped me to recognize my own gender identity as a transgender male. With the world right now being what it is, and laws reverting every day to protect the rights of my people, we need safe spaces like this more than anything. I like being able to travel and use my voice to talk about the platform and fight for LGBTQ+ rights. I love that I get to use my degree as a clinical mental health counselor and combine it with my hobby in order to help individuals fight off negative intrusive thoughts they may have while exploring this hobby and help them realize that they are badass no matter their skill level. I love that I get to combine advocacy with my hobby and passion.
Honestly, I just want everyone to know that I am a safe space. And that my work is consumable by anyone and everyone. There is no exact genre or niche. I’m sure there’s a little sprinkling of something for everyone in my portfolio somewhere. Whether that be the nostalgia factor that someone may connect with, or seeing a character that they love brought to life, or seeing a trans guy like myself portraying characters that people never thought men could cosplay and being inspired and encouraged to say, “If he did it, why can’t I?”
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
This is a challenge, because creativity has always been around, and with the expansion of technology it is a lot more easily consumable. But that’s exactly the thing – we need to constantly consume. I was in a panel the other day about Cosplay: From Concept to Character, and someone asked where the best place was to get fabric. Someone on the panel mentioned JoAnns, and me and a few others from the panel were like, “No, no, we’re going to stop you there!” Not because JoAnns Fabrics is bad by any means, but because it is a chain that profits all over the country. What about the mom and pop shops? Our local fabric store shut down (RIP Colorado Fabrics) because it was getting overtaken by the “big boys” like JoAnns. I feel like it’s the same with creatives.
Is there anything wrong with supporting famous cosplayers like Yaya Han and Jessica Nigri? Of course not. They are popular for a reason, and they inspire a lot of artists. However, my point is that we need to expand our consumption, and especially reach out to the “little guys.” Yaya Han has 605K followers on Instagram (I know, I just checked, ha). Supporting her isn’t bad, but she doesn’t need the support – she’s doing quite well for herself, you know? We have to support the people who have less than 5K. The ones that aren’t considered “popular.” And people think support only comes in the form of money, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. It takes half a second to share someone’s art to your own feed, to get it seen by more people, and that is how consumption works. A fad doesn’t take off if one person creates it and keeps it to themselves. It takes off because of a community. We need art to spread like wildfire.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Just the amount of people that tell me how much I have impacted them continues to keep me going. I know, it seems like a ridiculous hobby – spend hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours designed a costume to look just like a character from a fictional concept. Nerdy, right? But, it’s crazy how much we can really touch people with our art. I run a Cosplay and Confidence panel almost every convention that I guest at, and the amount of feedback I have gotten that has touched my heart is just insane. People that told them that by me hosting that panel, it gave them the courage to go out and try something new that scared them. That a year later, they still remember things that I said in my panel.
I will always remember an experience I had at Marscon in Virginia. I do a Crossplay and Genderbend panel, and one person had told me that they were really into drag/crossdressing and that they had brought a Star Trek cosplay they wanted to wear, but they were scared of what the response would be. After talking at my panel, I encouraged her to just go out and be herself, and sure enough there he was dressed as this beautiful woman from Star Trek, sitting at the bar, getting so many compliments! When I went up to tell him how great he looked and how proud I was, he said he never would have done that if not for my panel. And in fact he felt so confident after, that he wore it all day the next day too!
It’s the little things like that. We have the power to use our voices for change. We have the power to speak up and tell someone they look beautiful and encourage them to get themselves out there. That’s always the most rewarding part to me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://semetarycosplay.tumblr.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/semetarycosplay
- Facebook: facebook.com/semetarycosplay
Image Credits
All Things Lauren Studios Nastasia Zibrat Photography Noelle Peterson Photography D20 Photography CJ Birb Photography