What Does A Bears Look Like ?

In gay personal ads, two words were sometimes enough to tell you who the encounter was for : “No fatties.” It had the brevity of a personal preference. Repeated from one ad to the next, it took on the force of a rule. Before he had even written to anyone, a man could learn that his body alone was enough to disqualify him. What happens when the men told to stay away begin looking for one another, finding one another and organising gatherings of their own?

On 26 July 1979, The Advocate published “Who’s Who at the Zoo?”, George Mazzei’s animal glossary, illustrated by Gerard Donelan. There were gazelles, owls and cygnets. Somewhere in this menagerie stood the bear, with his substantial build, abundant body hair and particularly muscular legs. The joke relied on a shared knowledge. For the caricatures to work, readers had to know how to recognise those silhouettes and the ways of carrying oneself that went with them.

The bear had a life beyond the glossary. In the United States in the 1980s, men began using bear to describe themselves and seek one another out. The word circulated in personal ads, at private parties and in clubs. A category once used to describe someone became a name you could introduce yourself by. Around the same time, across the Atlantic, that wish to meet was taking shape in Cologne.

Carnival was already part of the city’s gay life. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the balls and parties had their regulars. That social life grew in a West Germany where Paragraph 175, first reformed in 1969, still criminalised certain sexual acts between men. The stigma surrounding AIDS put the gains of the gay movement under renewed pressure. Carnival was a time when you knew you could find familiar faces from one year to the next. The Bartmänner would make a place for themselves in that calendar.

It began with a birthday. In November 1984, Michael Zgonjanin and Henning Marburger invited bearded friends and men who liked bearded men. Thirty or forty people came that evening and decided to meet again. The Bartmänner would later recall wanting a group people could join in with easily, free of the formalities they associated with many leather and fetish clubs of the time. Outings and walks gave them a chance to get to know one another beyond the occasions on which they had first caught each other’s eye. In February 1985, during Carnival, people came from the Netherlands, Britain, France and Belgium for their first Bärennacht. Three months earlier, the invitations had circulated among friends. Now the party gave people living in different countries a reason to make the journey to Cologne.

In San Francisco in 1987, Richard Bulger and Chris Nelson put bear on the cover of their new publication, BEAR Magazine. A reader could now open an entire magazine and find men to whom the glossary had devoted a few lines. He might recognise a silhouette he liked, or recognise his own and discover that others liked it. The word took on a life of its own as it moved from an image to an ad, from an ad to an encounter. You could call yourself a bear without ever having read Mazzei. By then, the name had become a way to find people and be recognised by them.

In 1989, the Bartmänner of Cologne elected their first Mr Bear. In five years, a group that had begun with the pleasure of getting together had come to choose someone to represent it. The leather scene had already begun to give that role substance. In the midst of the AIDS epidemic, Scott Tucker, elected International Mr. Leather in 1986, continued the work of his predecessor Patrick Toner and helped turn the title into a leadership role. In 1988, Michael Pereyra used the attention the title brought to support HIV activism and raise funds. Through what they did with the sash, these titleholders made public the responsibilities they felt came with belonging to the leather community.

The Suzan Daniel Fund preserves a record of what was happening in Belgium at the time. In June 1990, the first Girth & Mirth Belgium flyer asked a question : “Are you fat?” Where personal ads had told men to stay away, the flyer gave them a reason to answer. Philippe Genion, who helped set up the club, recalls that the first issue of its magazine set out to help fat men “live their sexuality more freely” and meet men “who appreciate them for who they are and as they are.” The club held international gatherings where fat men and the men who desired them could meet. The very body that had been enough to rule someone out was now the reason others made the journey.

In 1995, some members wanted gatherings more explicitly centred on the bear look. Genion and three others started Brussels Bears. For several years, the group operated as a branch of Girth & Mirth. A more defined aesthetic took shape within a social world that was already there. The gatherings for fat men and the men who desired them continued. As late as 2009, an announcement invited people to Brussels for several days of the European Big Men’s Convergence. Long before the city had a Bear Pride, people were already coming from abroad for gatherings where fat men were at the centre of the party.

In a study published in the late 2000s, Eric Manley, Heidi Levitt and Chad Mosher interviewed men who identified as bears about what being around men of different shapes and ages had changed in their relationship with their bodies. Their accounts give some sense of how taste takes shape in the company of others. A belly you have grown used to holding in can become something you love about someone else. You may begin to look at your own differently. Part of what you learn in these encounters is how to see your body through eyes you had rarely had the chance to see it through before.

In the early 2010s, the Belgian scene took on a more public form. Associations and local businesses came together around the idea of electing a Mister Bear Belgium. The first election took place in 2011. It grew into a weekend in 2012 and 2013 and took the name Bear Pride in 2014. The social group Belgium Bears keeps the scene active throughout the year, with gatherings in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia. The festival gives that collective life a public occasion. The 1990 flyer asked readers whether they recognised themselves in the invitation. The election asks those who did to choose, in turn, someone in whom they can recognise themselves.

A beard, a stocky build, body hair. Theodore K. Gideonse identifies these traits in the familiar portrait of the bear and notes how much the definition is still debated among bears themselves. We learn to recognise a silhouette. In the company of others, we also learn what that recognition allows us to expect from one another.

In his research in Britain between 2018 and 2020, geographer Nick McGlynn heard from fat men who felt at ease in bear spaces. Kevin recalls one evening when he brushed past a man in a narrow passage and the man mocked him for his size. “You’re at a Bear event!” Kevin replied. He was reminding him where they were. He had counted on that shared history to be able to cross the room without watching how much space his body took up. His reply says something about what he had expected of the evening and of the people who had come to spend it with him.

Onstage, the question of who can claim a community as their own becomes public. In Chicago in 2019, Jack Thompson spoke before the International Mr. Leather audience about people in the room who doubted his right to stand there. He introduced himself as a biracial trans man living with HIV. After his victory, the president of a federation of leather clubs publicly challenged the result on the grounds that Thompson was trans. Former contestants and titleholders spoke up. Members of the federation filed complaints, and its president was removed from office. In an interview with Them, Thompson said what he wanted people to see : “I need people to see that I’m trans and to see that we exist in these spaces, whether or not you find us attractive.”

The following year, Kylar Maldonado offered another example of what a title can make possible. Elected Mr. Connecticut Bear 2020, he spoke about the importance of showing up in other queer scenes, including drag and leather, by volunteering at their events. He and his mother also speak at conferences and educational institutions about how their family experienced his transition. The sash travels with him from one setting to another. It gives him opportunities to speak about his experience to people who might never have attended the contest or heard of the bear scene.

Thompson’s words bring me back to intimacy. We are drawn to a man. Later, we learn he is trans. His voice, his laugh, the way he looked at us are all still there. If the attraction shifts, what has moved? The idea we had of his body, what we had imagined happening between us, what we thought being attracted to him said about us? That question can stay open in an encounter. It calls for a collective answer when the same assumptions begin to determine the place we recognise as his among us.

In October 2026, in Brussels, Lou was elected Mister Bear Belgium 2027. In introducing himself, Lou spoke about being trans and about how hard it had been to feel he belonged in the bear community. Then he described himself : “I’ve got body hair, muscle, fat, and a lot of tenderness too.” I hear in that sentence an echo of the two words that opened this story, “No fatties.” In the ad, someone had decided in advance what a man’s weight could tell them about his place in the encounter. In Lou’s sentence, fat sits alongside muscle, body hair and tenderness. He gets to choose what he says about it. By electing him, the community gives his words a public weight that implicates the community itself. Lou says he wants “to be a voice for minorities.”

Who do we picture in that role before the candidates have even been announced? This is where age enters the question. Bear culture made room for bodies that certain gay ideals had left to grow old out of sight. Does having a place in the life of desire also open up the possibility of representing the scene? We might turn to a sixty-year-old man to ask how the movement came together. Do we think of him as readily when it is time to choose where it might go? And when a younger person speaks, how long do we expect them to wait before we give their experience any weight? Ageism sometimes lies in the way we hand out those roles before hearing what anyone has to say.

I hope Lou’s year as Mister Bear opens up this conversation beyond the bear scene. I would like to hear trans people of different generations talk about what they have built within Belgium’s queer scene, the places they have made for themselves and what they would like to change. Their accounts will probably diverge, even in what they expect of someone elected to represent them. Part of bear history began when men whom others had described on their behalf found ways to meet and publish words of their own. I would like that history to continue in the decisions we make together, with people we had yet to get into the habit of turning to.

Crafted in conversation with AI (ChatGPT), then shaped by queer hands and lived context.

Sources and references

1. George Mazzei, “Who’s Who at the Zoo?” Illustré par Gerard Donelan, The Advocate, 26 juillet 1979. Republication dans The Advocate et galerie du glossaire dans Out.
2. Francisco I. Surace et Heidi M. Levitt, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer: Bear and Leather Subcultures.” International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2ᵉ éd., 2015, p. 887–892. University of Massachusetts Boston.
3. Les Wright, “Bear Culture.” Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, 2000. Notice numérisée, p. 162.
4. Bears of Cologne – Bartmänner Köln, “Unsere Geschichte” et “Geschichte des Mr Bear Germany.” Archives du groupe sur sa formation en 1984, la première Bärennacht en 1985 et sa première élection en 1989. Histoire du groupe et histoire du titre.
5. Homochrom, “Couchgespräche” sur le Rosa Karneval, et Herbert Potthoff, “Mit Leidenschaft in die Vergangenheit.” Le premier revient sur l’histoire du carnaval queer à Cologne. Le second retrace la création du Centrum Schwule Geschichte dans le contexte des années 1980. Homochrom et Archivar, nº 2, 2017.
6. Leather Hall of Fame, “International Mr. Leather.” Chronologie du concours et des mandats de Patrick Toner, Scott Tucker et Michael Pereyra. Leather Hall of Fame.
7. Philippe Genion, “Girth & Mirth Belgium: la solution à toutes les frustrations des gays gros.” Témoignage publié dans Het ondraaglijk besef, nº 22, à partir de la p. 18. Il reproduit le tract de 1990 et cite le magazine du club. Fonds Suzan Daniel.
8. European Big Men’s Convergence, annonce de l’édition de Bruxelles en 2009. Annonce d’époque archivée sur Google Groups.
9. Eric Manley, Heidi M. Levitt et Chad Mosher, “Understanding the Bear Movement in Gay Male Culture: Redefining Masculinity.” Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 53, nº 4, p. 89–112. Article.
10. Belgium Bear Pride, dossier de presse 2016, et Belgium Bears, “About Us.” Le dossier retrace le passage de l’élection de 2011 aux Bear Weekends, puis à la Bear Pride. Dossier de presse et Belgium Bears.
11. Theodore K. Gideonse, “Bear Culture.” The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, 2016. Notice.
12. Nick McGlynn, “‘Fat boys make you feel thinner!’: Fat GBQ Men’s Comfort and Stigma in UK Bear Spaces.” Gender, Place & Culture, vol. 30, nº 6, 2023, p. 876–895. Le témoignage de Kevin figure p. 885. Article.
13. Jack Thompson, entretien dans Them, juillet 2019. Source de la citation sur l’attirance et la place des personnes trans dans les espaces leather. Pour l’élection et les réactions qui ont suivi, voir aussi les articles de Out et de GCN. Them, Out et GCN.
14. Jane Latus, “Breaking Barriers.” Entretien avec Kylar Maldonado, Mr. Connecticut Bear 2020, Connecticut Voice, 20 juin 2020. Entretien.
15. Marc Dirix, “Le nouveau Mister Bear Belgium Lou veut donner davantage de visibilité aux personnes trans.” Gaylive, 5 octobre 2026. Source des paroles de Lou. Le palmarès officiel confirme son titre de Mister Bear Belgium 2027. Gaylive et palmarès de Belgium Bearpride.