The Bear Book
The Bear Book brings together an impressive range of bear—usually big, hairy men who favor full-face beards and prefer to wear jeans and flannel shirts—viewpoints to explore this unique social and cultural phenomenon that stretches from America to western Europe to Australia! On the personal level, you learn what beardom means to different people in their daily lives, and on a broader level, its cultural implications for not only the gay community, but also society as a whole. As this book...
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The Bear Book brings together an impressive range of bear--usually big, hairy men who favor full-face beards and prefer to wear jeans and flannel shirts--viewpoints to explore this unique social and cultural phenomenon that stretches from America to western Europe to Australia! On the personal level, you learn what beardom means to different people in their daily lives, and on a broader level, its cultural implications for not only the gay community, but also society as a whole. As this book moves across the wide spectrum of bear identities, you learn about the defining forces of identity, the significance of differences among masculinities, and the shapings of the bear movement from different viewpoints.The Bear Book is the first compilation of sociological and cultural analytical investigations of the contemporary gay bear phenomenon. To this end, Editor Les Wright brings together both objective and subjective viewpoints to create a forum where bears can speak for themselves. Through their voices, you’ll learn about:bears and sexual identitygay male iconographysocializing on the Internetsexual politics (gender, class, “looks-ism,” and body image)gay mass media, the single most powerful force in the current construction of ”bears”bears, power, and glamorbear-as-image vs. bear-as-attitudeGays, lesbians, lesbigay scholars, bears, and social scientists are sure to find The Bear Book thought-provoking and insightful as it broaches questions such as: Are bears caught up in a utopian-romantic impulse to reinvent themselves? What was radical lesbianism’s impact on the bear movement? To what extent are bears only another group of exploited consumers in a fragmented market system? And, is it possible to establish social liberation through enslavement to your sexual passions? For both your pleasure and your education, The Bear Book examines nearly every corner of beardom, including bear history, identity, social spaces, iconography, and its constituency abroad.
About the EditorContributorsForewordAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Theoretical Bears1Ch. 1A Concise History of Self-Identifying Bears21Ch. 2Bear Roots41Ch. 3The Bear Clan: North American Totemic Mythology, Belief, and Legend51Ch. 4Aroused from Hibernation65Ch. 5Bearaphernalia: An Exercise in Social Definition83Ch. 6Academics as Bears: Thoughts on Middle-Class Eroticization of Workingmen's Bodies89Ch. 7Male Images in the Gay Mass Media and Bear-Oriented Magazines: Analysis and Contrast103Ch. 8Beardom141Ch. 9The Natural Bears Classification System: A Classification System for Bears and Bearlike Men Version 1.10149Ch. 10John Rand, Photographer: An Interview with Les Wright157Ch. 11The Original Bears Mailing List: An Interview with Steve Dyer169Ch. 12Front Range Bears: A History187Ch. 13The Bear Essentials of Country Music191Ch. 14The Bear Hug Group: An Interview with Sam Ganczaruk201Ch. 15BEAR Magazine207Ch. 16Bear Mecca: The Lone Star Saloon Revisited219Ch. 17Bears in the Land Down Under225Ch. 18Kiwi Bears239Ch. 19Atlantic Crossing: The Development of the Eurobear251Ch. 20A French Bear Asks: Are Bears an American Thing?261Index269
