As I mentioned before the last reblog came to my attention from a few different directions but I was struck by Ms. Hall’s spot-on portrayal of what that sort of thing feels like. I myself have been overweight for my entire adult life and it’s been something that I’ve struggled to conquer for much too long. It wasn’t until I moved to the East Coast and fell in with some very loving and supportive fannish friends that I grew the courage to dress how I wanted, especially if it means dressing up as Wonder Woman. I do have a thing for dressing up as Wonder Woman, there’s something very empowering about it, everyone should try it some time.  I’ve been lucky, when I’ve dressed up at cons I’ve mostly gotten positive comments and if there were those unsavoury types lurking in the background making disparaging comments, I didn’t hear it in person.  Of course, I did end up on the receiving end of something particularly nasty online.

 Years ago Yahoo had a comic book chat room that I used to frequent. All sorts of people used to come to this room and after a while we came to know each other fairly well through our mutual love of comics and related pop culture. One night a new user came in and greeted us by saying “Hey everyone, look at the Wonder Whale!” then posted a link to something from Encyclopedia Dramatica. That something was a picture of me in my Wonder Woman costume attached to an entry called “Female Comic Book Fan”. The entry then went on to say some awful misogynist things about girls who like comics. I don’t remember much of it now, but it was some pretty foul sexually themed stuff. There were a few reactions in the chat room to the link, one of which was probably exactly the opposite of the troll’s intentions. “She’s really cute for a big girl.” But even with that one kind of nice remark I was still horrified by what was going on. Ultimately after a struggle to get the post removed was successful the troll disappeared, but not before taking a few more mean jabs at other people in the chat room.

Even though I was able to shrug this miserable troll off and even when I still had friends in the chat and in real life that have always been supportive of my love for dressing as the Amazing Amazon, what this person did hurt. To this day I have no idea what I did to that troll to make him want to attack me, other than being overweight and wanting to dress up as my favourite super heroine. And frankly, that is a lousy goddamn reason. I hope this jackass got his comeuppance for what he did and I hope he burns inside every time he sees a fat girl cosplaying and having fun at it. Because that’s how we beat these guys, we do what we want and hold our heads high and we enjoy it every step of the way.