When I still lived at my mom’s, she would typically make Valentine’s Day about my siblings and I since she has been single for significant portions of our childhood. So, she would usually buy us a heart full of chocolates and take us out to eat and/or to see a movie. One Valentine’s when I was in high school, we went out to an Olive Garden by the mall and we had to grab something at a Walgreens in the mall before dinner. It was in that Walgreens when I saw a man that I found attractive for reasons I couldn’t exactly comprehend at the moment.
This man had short, neatly styled red or dirty blonde hair and a cropped beard, which was rare in my hometown because 80% of the population there is Hispanic. He was wearing a pink, black, and white plaid dress shirt that was tucked into a pair of jeans that were a dark wash. He was also wearing a black vest, because vests were in in the early 2000s, and a medium-brown leather belt that matched his dress shoes. Although this neat style of dress was something that typically aroused me, especially when the guy was handsome and his styling was well-executed, there was something different about this guy who looked to be on his way to some sort of date. I found him extremely attractive, but not in the way that I found most conventionally hot guys on TV or in movies attractive because he wasn’t somebody that Hollywood would subliminally tell me to find attractive. He was a bear.
At that point of my understanding about the gay world, I might have understood that bears were generally big, hairy, rambunctious gay men who primarily dressed like bikers. Since I was barely being introduced to the gay world, bears seemed like too much for me. I found the excessive use of black leather and any kind of gay sexual aggression intimidating. Not to mention, my exposure to gay men was limited to the handful of gays I knew at my high school, who haven’t all reached the out of the closet, much less gay bear, status yet. And when you factored in attractiveness, it was fairly slim pickings for me. So, my understanding of what gay men were was completely skewed and the only guys in high school that I had crushes on were conventionally attractive straight guys, which should explain why I couldn’t understand my attraction to the guy I saw at Walgreens.
The Taboo of Being Attracted to Fatness
To my teenage knowledge, there were only particular guys to find attractive, and they were usually straight, had model-esc faces, and physiques that showed some kind of athleticism. I have always had a fetish for men who wear dress clothes, so that always kind of factored into my standards of attraction. But, as most teenagers do, I was mostly just obeying what my friends and the media told me what constituted an attractive guy, which was pretty much the male protagonists and love interests in the movies I watched. So, I wasn’t really exposed to many guys with bearish qualities in the media I consumed and when I did see them, they were usually framed as somebody I shouldn’t find attractive. Usually, aside from Jonah Hill and Seth Rogan, fat male characters in movies during this decade were the protagonist’s obnoxious, fat sidekick, some invisible background character, or some dorky Kevin James type that needed to be made lovable by a wise black man. To sum it all up, the gay world made me fear bears, and my friends and television convinced me that fat men are mostly there for laughs or pity and aren’t really meant to be desired. Therefore, I wasn’t aware that guys like the one I saw at Walgreens existed.
It hadn’t dawned on me that bears probably don’t always wear leather because they probably have day jobs and that they probably only act loud and sexually aggressive when they’re around their buddies and have alcohol coursing through their veins. It also didn’t occur to me that women must find bearish guys attractive because how else would these guys become dads and husbands with such conventionally attractive women? It’s not like every man has a skinny start, then balloons out once he reaches marriage and adulthood. Although this might happen quite often, it’s actually a myth to believe that this always happens due solely to a lack of exercise and poor diet because it ignores genetic predispositions and other bodily complications that can’t be controlled, which lead to obesity. There are many factors beyond diet and exercise that affect people’s weight, but it’s easier to hold every fat person accountable for how they look by criticizing their eating and fitness habits. Of course, poor diet and lack of exercise will ultimately lead to some fatter version of yourself, but other more complicated factors dictate how fat somebody gets. Not to mention, since our culture is obsessed with thinness, not many people spend a lot of time worrying about what kinds of predispositions make lazy people who overeat skinny. Some people are just lucky, which is life.
The Taboo of Being Attracted to Male Femininity
Not only have I been socialized to not find big men attractive, I have also been conditioned to not find femininity in men attractive. All the way into teenhood, the only gay men I have seen on television and met in person were guys who were “obviously” gay, and I remember feeling repulsed by them. Societally, as little boys, we’re often taught directly and indirectly that we shouldn’t behave like sissies and we also shouldn’t encourage those who do. So, even though all of us weren’t bullies, most of us probably avoided other kids who were rumored to be queer and reinforced how men and boys “should” act with our male friends whenever they showed femininity.
When watching movies like the Birdcage (1996), notice how Val’s attempt to sell his parents as straight and normal to a conservative politician, there isn’t much in the movie to frame his homophobic actions as bad. Even though some audiences might sympathize with Albert’s and Armand’s heart break from their son’s embarrassment of his gay dads and their failed attempts to butch it up, the film didn’t really aim to make anyone sympathize with them. Mostly, the movie just encourages audiences to laugh at Nathan Lane’s flamboyance and failure at performing masculinity. The gay characters in this movie were essentially just expected to fold for other people’s homophobia, while nobody folded for them. This portrayal of gay people and homophobia wasn’t that controversial in 1996 not only because gay people must have just been happy to see themselves in a big movie, but also because nobody was really expected to empathize with or relate to gay people, especially when they were queeny and feminine.
So, it is no surprise that I was surprised to find myself attracted to a bearish guy who appeared somewhat effeminate. Now, I wasn’t sure if the guy I saw at Walgreens was gay or even effeminate beyond just wearing pink and looking neat because I just saw him for a brief time and didn’t interact with him, but what I saw and felt reflected how we weren’t often exposed to that type of man in media. And when we were exposed, they are usually framed as some kind of spectacle that we aren’t expected to find attractive. Indeed, fat and effeminate seems to be a challenging intersection to overcome when you would like to be thought of as sexually desirable because at least effeminate twinks seem to get some in this post Glee and RuPaul’s Drag Race era and heavy set masculine guys never seemed to have a significant deficits with sex and romance, which brings me to our current state of bear culture.
The Narrow Understanding of Bears
If you aren’t familiar with what a bear is, they are typically big, hairy gay men who have recently started being recognized as sexually appealing to wider audiences. Traditionally, bears have been understood as masculine, even hyper-masculine. I mean, real life bears would never be considered feminine animals because they are large, lumbering, aggressive, and predatory. Typically, masculinity has been associated with bears and that association has influenced our narrow understanding of bears as bikers and lumberjacks.
In fact, bears have kind of served as a foil to the assumption that all gay men are slim, clean cut, fashionable and flamboyant. Even though it is good that bears have subverted one stereotype, they reinforced the ideology that fat effeminate men aren’t desirable. Even though it is very possible and common for men to have traditionally masculine, God-given physical traits (largeness, broadness, facial and body hair, deep voices, etc.) along with traditionally effeminate personality traits (being well-groomed, and well-dressed, not having stereotypically blue collar mannerisms, having a lisp and a “limp wrist”or traditionally feminine occupation [like teaching, nursing, childcare, flight attendant, etc.]), it seems as though mass media as well as gay media kind of pretends that these types of men don’t exist. I guess it must be difficult for content creators to effectively package and sell such a complex and un-stereotypical type of person, but I think the root of the issue is that these types of men aren’t expected to be desirable in a world that’s so obsessed with pure masculinity and thinness.
Today, there seems to be more effeminate bearish guys in the media, but they aren’t really framed as sexually appealing. There are gay men like Tituss Burgess and Ross Mathews, and also, strangely, a few big, straight-identifying, flamboyant guys like James Corden and Adam Conover in recent media. However, there doesn’t seem to be an expectation for any of these men to be any more than funny or charming. If someone in the audience finds them sexually attractive, they’re pretty much on their own because whatever outlet these men are on won’t sell them as sexy since all of us are only expected to cream over men like Ryan Reynolds or post Parks and Recreation Chris Pratt. And when we’d prefer the chubbier guys, we’re thought of as freaks with a fetish as if fat people are rare in this country. Isn’t it fucked up that we think of heavy set people as exotic and “alternative” when they’re actually close to the majority in America, but we tell ourselves that the U.S. is fit and thin because that’s what we see in movies and on T.V.?
I hate thinking of my attraction to bigger guys as a fetish because it situates them as abnormal when they are actually about as normal as people of different shapes, but I continue to see it as a fetish because it’s a subcategory in porn I watch and I live in a world that’s largely in denial about how fat it is. However, current media is showing some recognition in the fact that America isn’t as white, thin, or male as it thought it was.
How My Fetish Factors In
I think what wound up drawing me to these types of men is the fact that they seem to provide the best of both worlds. Just like how there is no definitive way to explain a person’s taste for particular types of people because physical attraction is highly subjective and emotional, I can’t find definitive answers for why I find bears attractive. I do think that it has something to do with my attraction to physical masculinity because I do like my partners to be larger than me and I am also really drawn to things like beards, body hair, short hair, big hands, broad faces, and big shoulders. However, I eventually learned that I don’t find masculine personality traits that appealing. Although I’m not that assertive or outspoken, I hate when guys interpret that as a preference to be dominated or controlled by someone who is more assertive. Obviously, after realizing that I was not into “bad boys,” I noticed that what makes these kinds of guys “bad boys” was self destructive behavior (recklessness, excessive drinking and drug use, being impulsive, etc.), a lack of commitment or direction in life, and self-centeredness that not only makes him the center of the universe, but also makes it difficult for him to reflect on the bad that he does. Pretty much all of the things that construct a “bad boy” is stereotypically masculine and usually fairly toxic, which I haven’t found appealing after I dated my first boyfriend. I also look down on men who give absolutely no thought or effort towards their appearance. I mean, I don’t require men to constantly be in three-piece suits to get my attention, but it doesn’t take much to be clean, groomed, and wear more than just a T-shirt every day. It’s not like you’re expected to wax your entire body and put on makeup.
Seeing as how I have an apparent bondage fetish, which I am comfortable with calling a fetish, it might be important to note how it relates to my attraction to bigger effeminate men. In general, I think that part of the appeal of seeing bearish men in bondage is the idea that these are the kinds of men who people don’t expect to see overpowered or even desired, which makes it even sexier when they don’t expect or understand that kind of attention when they get it. Regardless of the guy’s personality, heavy set men are typically expected to be more masculine and powerful, so seeing them overpowered is visually stimulating because it shows that even more physically intimidating people are capable of being subdued and made helpless. Furthermore, seeing as how heavier men aren’t typical subjects of lust or desire, they would probably be more oblivious about any sexual desire that would be directed to them in the occasion that they are kidnapped out of lust, which is also appealing. This is appealing not only because we tend to find it attractive when people don’t seem to think of themselves as attractive, but also because bondage fantasies tend to involve subduing unsuspecting straight men who think that they’re being held for ransom when their captors actually just want the guy tied up and gagged. Since straight men are socially pressured to not show vanity and fat people aren’t usually framed as desirable, it seems even less likely that a kidnapped man with a rounder frame would immediately understand that he’s being abducted out of lust and nothing else.
After observing different kinds of male bondage porn, I’ve noticed that heavier guys who are bound and gagged seem to look more defiant. Maybe it’s from the general discomfort of having more weight to be forced down and/or what a gag physically does to a rounder face, but there is also just general perceptions of masculinity and ruggedness that play a part in this. Since bears are typically framed as masculine, they tend to put on a defiant, bad boy act in bondage porn. In addition to the bad boy act, tied up bears are usually naked, in leather, or plainly dressed, which contributes to the typically masculine perception of bears. On most bondage websites like Captured Guys and Bound Guys, I’ve only seen token bearish models featured. On Bondage Jeopardy, Kevin, the cute, bearish creator is occasionally thrown into the mix. Unfortunately, Bear Bound is no longer a thing, so we are left with some of the remains in different pockets of the internet. Woof Bound seems to be carrying Bear Bound’s torch for softcore bear bondage porn, but there doesn’t seem to be many dapper bears featured on the site. I think the reason why we don’t see a lot of this is because part of the expected package involved with bears is hyper-masculinity and leather, while scenario-based/softcore bondage is more on the feminine side, but the scope of bearishness, as well as softcore bondage for that matter, should be more diverse than that.
The thing is, I am drawn to a particular type of man and niche category within the male bondage world, so any media can’t please everyone. I have encountered so many cute effeminate bears in my life time. Some were just in some uniform, others in office attire, and they have made me thirst for some kind of visual that includes these kinds of men in bondage fantasies. After all, bondage porn is an audiovisual version of our fantasies and desires, but it should cater to more than just mainstream desires. It is more profitable to give the masses what they want instead of trying to satisfy everyone’s obscure preferences. However, I don’t think that I’m particularly alone here. Considering how I use to recoil at the sight of feminine gay men, but eventually grew to relate to other gay men and learn to see those who are different from me as people, I think more could learn to appreciate bears who are more effeminate. Attractions to various types of people needs to become more normalized, so there aren’t groups of people who are shamed for settling whenever they date or hook up with someone who isn’t conventionally attractive. We should also stop categorizing particular groups of people as alternative, making attraction to them understood as fetishism, especially when these groups are fairly common.
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