New York Times focuses on the Bear Culture

Photographer Alan Charlesworth captured interesting pics about my fellow cousins, the bears.

Here is some of the article:

“It’s not perfect body, gym-toned, and no facial hair,” said Mr. Charlesworth, who recently completed a Master’s of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design. “That’s what society deems as being a normal, stereotypical gay male. That’s not what I identify with.”

Mr. Charlesworth, 30, definitely doesn’t look like that ubiquitous image of the stereotypical gay man, but he’s not large or hairy, either. For him, identifying as a bear is more about taking pride in his attraction to men with bodies that look as though they were formed by years of chopping trees, and not by years of running on treadmills and drinking protein smoothies.

But Mr. Charlesworth said his lack of heft made it hard to immediately identify with a group predominantly made up of large men. He said, for all their disdain for superficial gay culture, Bears can be obsessively body-focused, too, just on bigger bodies. So he used photography as a way in.

Check out the pics and article here.