
POM Wonderful / Cosplayer: catcancraft
I decided to bring the Pom Wonderful bottle costume to life after years of joking about sharing the same body type. “Hourglass? More like Pom Wonderful bottle!” The overall aesthetic was inspired by retro cigarette girl costumes, hence the off-center hat that amusingly irritated so many!
Like most of my costumes, the process was all about the details. Everything on the dress was cut, stitched and written/painted by hand. Since I don’t have a dress form, I had to fill trash bags with Polyfil to roughly fit my measurements. I even bothered to work up the math for the accurate serving size information for my weight & “liquid volume”. As for materials, the dress details are all done in felt & puff paint. (I wanted something that wouldn’t crack when stretching over my body!) The hat is made from cardboard, paint, netting, and phonebook paper. The bottle I’m holding is a fully functional purse that was dyed with alcohol ink, lined in cellophane with a ribbon strap and button closure. Purses are a must with all of my costume designs, as the function is as important as form!
The response was INCREDIBLE! My costume went viral and FAST. I posted the original photos on my Facebook page around 6pm, and by 8pm, I was getting messages about being on the front page of Reddit. (I didn’t post it there, but many others did!) By the next day, my phone battery couldn’t stay full as I was receiving an unbelievable amount of messages thanking me for my body positivity, fan art (!!!), and (uncredited, grrr) memes, etc! There was a bit of a backlash (re: my size) from some darker corners of the internet, but far and away the positive reaction overshadowed the bad. Pom Wonderful’s PR team re-posted my costume and sent me an amazing gift basket filled with all the Pom goodies a bottle could ever want. Over the years, I’ve had many people message me thanking me for my visibility, as well as sharing recreations of their own versions of the costume.
The night after I posted the costume, I was handing out candy on Halloween night and I was recognized IN PERSON! Many of the parents had apparently seen me on Reddit. I was floored. Within the first few days of posting, I’d been interviewed for a podcast, featured on Buzzfeed and numerous body-positive articles, so you can imagine the response since the initial posting. It’s been three years since I posted the costume, and every Halloween since, the original post and the uncredited meme re-circulate.
I’m still humbled by the massive response to a costume I ultimately made for my own amusement. But, I think that in itself sums up the spirit of Halloween and cosplay. You can be anything you want, and the joy in what you’ve made will shine. Many people commented on how genuinely happy I looked in the photos. Because I was! A silly vision come to fruition.
The Pom costume checked off so many boxes: silliness, body positivity, creativity and more, that it resonated with a wider audience than I’d ever conceived it could, and continues to do so every Halloween. And the fresh pomegranates in my gift package weren’t so bad either.
Disclaimer: All images and videos used, do not belong to FnC and belong to their respective owners.
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