The Bear Book is a composite portrait of gay bears--usually big, hairy men who favor full-face beards and prefer to wear jeans and flannel shirts. This emergent social phenomenon and new sexual iconography is burgeoning across America, Western Europe, and other parts of the gay global village. The first-ever book on the gay bear phenomenon, this book offers readers a collection of first-person observations and historical and critical investigations by participant observers within and outside the bear community. This exciting book is organized in an ideologically revealing manner, including...

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,...