Crossplay
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Crossplay is cosplay in which the person dresses up as a character of the opposite sex.
In America, female crossplay (male cosplayers dressing as female characters) is much more popular than male crossplay, perhaps owing to the fact that the majority of anime and manga fans in America are male. Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura are popular crossplay characters, athough in Japan, Maria-sama ga Miteru has recently become a popular crossplay character
In Japan female crossplaying as males is much more common and is now so widespread and accepted that it does not receive much special attention as a "sub-genre" of cosplay. Handsome bishonen characters from games like Final Fantasy or hollywood movies like Harry Potter are most popular with female cosplayers. Possibly this is because the number of female cosplayers greatly exceeds the number of male cosplayers; and because of the popularity of yaoi-friendly characters with female otaku.
In Japan, male photographers will often ask male crossplayers to pose sexily. Curiously, the female photographers don't. You may find this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/video/39966000/rm/_39966185_manga20_head_vi.ram) BBC interview of interest (Realvideo link).