Bear in LGBT communities is a metaphorical reference to the animal of the same name with similar notable features. These features include the animal's hairiness, its solid proportions, and its physical power. The bear is both fat and powerful, and the reconciliation of these two qualities is at the heart of the Bear concept's appeal. Bears are typically very similar in appearance to the ideal of the North American lumberjack. A romantic conflation of the bear and the lumberjack image provides the Bear trope its metaphorical appeal.
Lumberjacks were romanticized and fetishised in gay culture long before the arrival of the Bear concept, and the Bear concept retains strong traces of this older ideal. Lumberjacks appealed to gay men at aesthetic levels but also for reason of their homosociality, the fact that they were working class, and for the fact that their isolation from urban society (and hence from mainstream gay culture) opened up a fantasy of both secrecy and liberation, within an idyllic, rural, North American setting. These metaphors also lend themselves to the idealization of natural physical appearance and preferences over more glamorized ones despite the convenience many bears may find living in urban settings.
The self-identification of gay men as Bears originated in San Francisco in the 1980s as an outgrowth of gay biker clubs like the Rainbow Motorcycle Club, and then later the leather and "girth and mirth" communities. It was created by men who felt that mainstream gay culture was unwelcoming to men who did not fit a particular "twink" body norm (hairless and young).[citation needed] Also, many gay men in rural America never identified with the stereotypical urban gay lifestyle, and went searching for an alternative that more closely resembled the idealized blue collar American male image.
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