Lots of people like to play dressup. I'm not entirely sure why. Arguably everyone with an interest in fashion beyond doing the bare minimum to stay warm and keep your job does. Until recently some kinds of playing dress up - what we do call Cosplay - was thought to be weird and nerdy, but even dressing up as your favorite superhero or a hobbit or whatever is now, at least at the right place and time, fairly respectable.
Before that we had all types of "manly" cosplay which were perfectly socially acceptable. Dudes wearing football jerseys. Dudes dressing up like soldiers and pretending to shoot each other on Civil War battlefields. That kind of thing.
And of course there's long been the militia costumes. Guys in camo and fake military uniforms (often designed convey the idea that they were in the military despite not necessarily being veterans). Also guns. Real guns. So that's a bit more scary.
