G is for It is Good Enough! (Perfection vs. Finishing)

illoria
Apr 7, 2018
2 min read

This post goes out to cosplay crafters like me who don’t want to declare a cosplay complete until every last detail is perfect. In other words, perfectionists. Are you one? Do rush jobs or slightly crooked seams bug you? Does uneven bias tape make you want to scream? Do unclipped threads or off center designs make you shudder? Do wrong fabric choices or color make your eyes bleed? Then yes, you are one.

Perfectionism can be viewed as such a dirty word since it is often mentally associated with the Elitism I discussed earlier this week. At its core, it’s not dirty however. It’s just a need or desire to have things done in the best way possible. The closer to perfect, the better. However, there is another side to perfectionists: stress and fear. Stress at how much work is required to be perfect and fear that we can’t ever achieve it. Both are every present in my life, sadly, and it’s a struggle to overcome them.

The thing is, perfectionism isn’t always healthy. It becomes a huge burden and prevents us from moving on to the next cosplay or task. And in cosplay it may prevent someone from ever completing a cosplay or they might even trash it when it doesn’t turn out perfect. This sucks the joy out of cosplaying. I’ve struggled with it a lot. My reluctant compromise is that I take forever to complete projects and accept that I won’t complete many each year but I never, ever trash them. But I also free myself partially from the burden and stress by allowing myself to buy or thrift cosplays at times. That gives me the time to craft while still having new cosplays to debut at cons and take to photoshoots. It was definitely a huge burden off my shoulders when I decided upon that. Now it doesn’t matter if I take a year to complete a cosplay, I’ll still have new cosplays in that time period to have fun in while waiting for that longer project to be completed. But I still make sure there is an ending point at which I declare the project finished.

Perfectionism cannot be achieved for every project and there needs to be a point at which we declare a project “good” or “finished”. Unless we have a good reason for it needing to be perfect (for example, a competition) there is no reason a cosplay has to be taken to that point. Relax, sit back and say “it is good” when possible so you can enjoy cosplaying instead of being stuck in an eternal loop of crafting the same cosplay over and over again. We have to know when to turn perfection both on and off.

Do you struggle with perfection getting in the way of moving on to other cosplays? Or do you struggle with the opposite of not knowing how to turn it on when needed?