Girls who are boys who like girls to be boys: BL and the Australian cosplay community

Since the late 1990s, interest in anime and cosplay in Australia has grown to the point that in 2010 there were fifteen anime and Japanese popular culture conventions held throughout the country, with more than twenty planned for 2013. This article will investigate the attitudes towards Boys Love or BL narratives within the Australian cosplay community, both in terms of the consumption the production of BL narratives. Also known as shōnen ai or yaoi, BL narratives, such as those found in manga and anime, depict same-sex love affairs between (usually) beautiful boys or young men. As part of this research, an online survey has been conducted using Survey Monkey. This survey was live between November 2010 and January 2011 and was open to Australian cosplayers over the age of eighteen years. Additional data has been collected from various networking sites frequented by cosplay practitioners in different cities around Australia.