a pKoenix rising
Bears in gay culture yearn for wider cultural change
by Matt Comer :: matt@goqnotes.com
It was the spring of 2008. I’d just
moved to Charlotte a few months
prior, to take my role as editor at
this publication. Through the fall of 2007 and
the following winter, new friends introduced
me to the area's nightlife scene: Scorpio and,
at the time. Liaisons arid Velocity.
But, I didn't dare venture to the Charlotte
Eagle, and definitely not alone. On this night,
ail that changed: My friends dragged me
nearly kicking and screaming into the club.
"My god," I exclaimed to my friends. "I'll
get eaten alive."
My remark then, so obviously ignorant
and overwhelmingly shallow, exposed
my lack of knowledge of and exposure to
many portions of my own community, in
particular the bear, leather and Levi com
munities. Surprisingly, by the end of the night
I'd adjusted, become more at ease and left
feeling more comfortable there than I had in
any other gay nightspot in town. I'd spend a
great many nights atthe Eagle. Simple trips
out for fun. Southern Country Charlotte's
monthly barn dances and the annual Queen
City Stomp. Eventually, it became one of my
favorite watering holes.
The Eagle is now closed, and my forays
into the leather, Levi and bear communi
ties are limited mostly to close friends who
happen to identify as such or in interactions
with their friends at cook outs, during my
9jS5^
ffwSSE
IN
VMan ami Details ate just two mags moving away
from old modeling trends depicting young, slim
boys to older, more mature and weathered men.
very rare visits to The Woodshed, in coffee
houses, community gatherings or elsewhere.
So, it was refreshing to have the opportunity
to meet with three bears at Caribou Coffee on
Charlotte’s East Blvd. recently. Although no
longer new to these particular communities, I
readily admit I still don't know nearly enough
about them as I should. It's one of the reasons
I decided to undertake this feature and jotted
it into our editorial calendar over a year ago.
Secondly, I have a sense a great many gay
folk also don’t know much about leather, Levi
or bear communities. They certainly aren't the
trim, trendy guys most gay publications put on
16 qnotes Oct. 30-Nov. 12.2010
their covers or businesses choose to put in
their ads, and talk about what it means to be a
bear or a leatherman is few and far between.
Tor Froland and Marc McFarland are
the "unofficial, official" organizers of the
Charlotte Bear Dinner group, a non-member
social group that gets together at least once
a month for dinner and sometimes more often
for special hiking trips, outings to.Carowinds
or other around-town amusements.
McFarland says the group was formed
out of frustration with the internal politics that
can naturally develop inside any organized
community group. There are plenty of bear
organizations—the largest is the Carolina
Bear Lodge;with chapters (or "dens") across
both North and South Carolina. Dinner group
member Jake Absher says he rarely gets
involved in any community group, save the
small part he played in volunteering fbr
Hickory’s Catawba Valley Pride in October.
Froland and McFarland explain that
identifying as a bear is more than a mere
classification of one's sexual identity, desires
or attractions. Like race, gender or sexual
orientation, identfying as a bear can also be
symbolic of one's personality, social rela
tionships and even world view. Froland and
McFarland identify chiefly as "regular guys,"
or "the Average Joe."
But the stereotypes about bears — ste
reotypes, and dare I say prejudices, I once
held — make it hard for people who
identify as such to exist in the wider, so-
called mainstream gay culture.
"Typically I think people associate
the typical gay man as being fit trim and
boyish, which
leaves a lot of
people out"
McFarland
says. "You
don't get
looked as
as much if
you're a little
overweight or
have too much
body hair."
The two
say these
preconceived
notions
plague bears,
including ideas that bears are lazy or
unhealthy. Froland says some even
consider bears uneducated.
"That exists because of our body
type," Froland says, cautioning that
it isn't always true. "I think we have more
educated people at our dinners than a lofof
other groups."
I asked Jeff Reeves, a former president
of the Carolina Bear Lodge and owner of
Hickory's Club Cabaret, if he thought the
existence of a separate bear community con
stituted a counter- rather than a sub-culture
or simple awareness of differences with the
larger LGBT community.
"I think maybe a little of both," he says.
"It's about being yourself. The fact that I'm a
hairy man, and I'm not a twink by any means.
I'm able to express myself with like-minded in-
/
dividuals, be able to be seen in
public with the hair on my face
or the way I carry myself."
Making commentary on
mainstream gay culture. Reeves
adds, "I thinkthey could learn a
huge lesson from the humility
of leather and bear folks."
Froland and McFarland
don't believe in that same
"counter-culture" Qoncept.
Neither have ever experienced
all that much rejection from
larger gay society.
"You're only excluded if
you put yourself into a situation
where can feel excluded,"
McFarland says. "If you know
where you like to hang out,
who you like to hang out with,
you’re never going to feel like
you're being excluded."
But when it comes to
the larger American culture
— specifically media culture ■
. — McFarland, Froland and
Reeves all agree: something
needs to change.
As a journalist. I'm con
stantly surrounded by media
images. At times, it's too much
to bear — no pun intended.
There are too many "beautiful"
cover models. Too many skinny
boys and girls. Sometimes it
begs the question, "Do real people look like
that?" If your photographer has Photoshop;
yes they do.
" Froland welcomes the new trends in
female modeling popping up in magazines and
TV. "Something that's taken off most recently
is plus-sized models," he says. "You're no
longer looking at anorexic girls. Now you're
gettmg plus-sized women models."
And while the same trend hasn't yet
caught the same steam in male modeling, that
too is changing bit-by-bit.
The New York 77mes recently profiled such
changes in male modeling. Their October ar
ticle, "From Boys to Men," gathered together
the ideas and opinions of the male fashion
world's top designers and trend-setters.
"It has been almost a decade since Hedi
Slimane, then the designer for Dior men's
wear, jump-started an aesthetic.shift away
from stiffly traditional male images that long
dominated men's fashion," 77mes writer Guy
Trebay reported in the paper's Oct 17 Sunday
edition. "Since then, season after season, de
signers, editors and photographers alike fell
into unconscious lockstep with Mr. Slimane's
tastes in men.... On catwalks and in advertis
ing campaigns the prevalent male image has
long been that of skinny skate-rat, a juvenile
with pipe-cleaner proportions. Designers as
unalike as Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada
developed so pronounced an appetite for the
jailbait type that at some model castings in
Milan and Paris the new faces often showed
up chaperoned by Mom."
The article isn't Trebay’s first profile on
male modeling-trends. In 2009, he delved
into the same-issue, practically blaming the
r
m
Beats are sometimes the epitome of 'blue collar' and
'Average Joe.’ That traditional, rough-and-tumble look might
just be seeing a comeback.
Photo Credit Coyote2024, via Flickr. Licensed under Creative Commons.
skinny-boy modeling phenomenon for what
authors Harrison Pope, Katharine Phillips and
Roberto Olivardia call a "secret crisis of male
body obsession"—the Adonis Complex.
That's notriewsto McFarland. In fact, it's
quite obvious.
"A lot of people aren't comfortable with
themselves in America," McFarland believes.
"They hang on to these ideas—these re
ally skinny or built or clean shaven images
— because maybe they don't like how they
look. If people were more comfortable with
themselves maybe they could let that go."
But in his most recent article, Trebay
reports fascinating changes.
"The twink thing seems over," GQ editor
Jim Nelson told the 7/mesfashion writer.
"When people open GO, I don’t want them to
feel like they're looking at clothes on 16-year-
olds."
Male-targeted advertisers, movie produc
ers and magazines are falling in line. VMan,
which long played to the prevailing trends
of youth and slenderness, has even broken
out of the mold. Their latest issue — entitled
"Coming of Age" — kicks the skinny skate
boarder to the curb. In his place steps the
slightly-weathered, mustache-and-goatee-
clad, 44-year-old Josh Brolin.
For Reeves, it’s a welcome change away
from the day of the "pretty, twinky runway
model."
"All these years, we've been pushed aside
and to the back corner," he says. "In 1984,1
was a skinny man but I grew up and my body
developed. My dad and my uncles, they are
bears. They go hunting. They have beards and
goatees. It's good to see we're being more
appreciated now than we used to be."::