The Fur and the Feathers

You know the old expression “party animals”? It never really went out of style, particularly among one strong subculture we know exists but hardly notice.

Fursuiters at Midwest Furfest 2010

Ever wonder why some people draw humanistic animals so much? Disney probably comes to mind here. It’s been around for millenia, but when do we stop to label it anything other than “personified animals?” When do we take it any further than watching The Lion King or Fritz the Cat (for the more daring bunch)? Luckily, we have furries to take this further than any of us could ever dream plausible, but don’t ask a furry to define what exactly furry is.

“If you ask fifty furries to define what furry is, you’ll get a hundred different answers.” Said “Uncle Kage”, chairman and CEO of Anthrocon, in a 2010 interview. And it is true. In the large, furry is defined as an affinity for anthropomorphic characters similar to those that you see in Disney-Pixar films, but when you go any deeper, the furry fandom as it’s called can have any depth or purpose to a person from a simple bored escape to a full-fledged lifestyle.

What exactly do the furries concoct? Art, plain and simple. Be it the art that actors bleed and sweat over in plays and live performances, digital and fine arts, the art of writing, the art of music, and what made them internet infamous in the first place, fursuits. Many furries are professional musicians, published authors, and haved worked for companies like Disney or Dreamworks, and for many, it’s more than just a hobby – it’s money!

In the furry fandom, art is not cheap. Most good artists charge anywhere from $25 to well over $100 for a complete coloured art commission, and fursuits – a costume representation of one’s furry character, or “fursona” – typically start no cheaper than $600… and that’s just for the head piece, paws, feet, and tail! With this, however, many are able to actually live off the fandom with a reasonable income, particularly professional fursuit designers.

The conventions, on the other hand, are generally affordable for all furries, and boy do they draw a crowd! Pittsburgh’s famed Anthrocon this June had over 4,000 attendees (a record) and almost 900 fursuiters in their fursuit parade. The furries love it every year in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh loves them right back. Since 1997, Anthrocon has raised over $100,000 for Pennsylvania animal charities, a state renowned for its high rate of animal abuse and pit bull fighting. A typical convention runs between $30 and $55 for admission (Chicago’s Midwest Furfest being among the cheapest at $30 if ordered early), and it will only become costly if one was to travel to the convention from afar, which most attendees do.

Some active furry conventions in the midwest are Midwest Furfest, which as of 2010 stands as the 3^rd largest furry convention in the world (behind Anthrocon and California’s Further Confusion), IndyCon, a modest Indianapolis convention in its sophomore year. Columbus, Ohio’s Morphicon is another decent-sized convention which had 275 registered attendees in May 2010. Snowpocalypse in Minnesota is a smaller one-day convention directed more toward local furs, and finally Oklacon in Oklahoma had a 2010 had almost an identical attendance to Morphicon.

When it comes to choosing a character to represent oneself in the fandom, some have it as simple as picking their favourite animal, but some actually make their character something completely unique (such as a beetle-cat) . Many furs in the fandom actually create, and sometimes even go as far as fursuit, with a character of the opposite gender. The furry fandom is a mixed bag of different people, and are widely known as a bunch of people with wide open minds and hearts, so being different, let alone the opposite gender of what’s seen, is almost a social norm.

Compared to the human world, the furry fandom has completely backwards demographics. On the 2011 online furry survey, exactly two-thirds of the furry fandom (66.6%) are between the ages of 15 and 24, but there is a figure in every category all the way from <15 to >55. Understandable, of course, as the rising generation grew up with Disney characters.

But how about this? 78% of the fandom identifies as male, while only 21% as female. The other 1% marked “other”, whatever that may or may not entail. This question is followed up by a gender percentage measurement of how much someone identifies as their gender, from “completely male” down to “equal” and back over to “completely female”.

On top of that, being completely heterosexual is actually a minority! That’s right, there is actually a demographic in America not directly aimed at the LGBT community where the LGBT community just so happens to be more open about themselves. Must be all the diabetes-inducing (if not slightly creepy) hugs from the fursuiters. By the numbers, only 23% of the survey’s participants consider themselves completely heterosexual, while nearly half (47%) consider themselves bisexual or gay.

Sexuality is a part of life, and with the furry fandom being a lifestyle, sex is integrated very well into the furry fandom. Yes, there is porn of it. But because of many media misinterpretations and the strategy of ‘shock value’, the simple fact that pornographic material containing anthropomorphic characters existed opened up Pandora’s box to a slew of backlash.

The first, and arguably the most damaging, instance of baiting the furry fandom as a whole was in a 2007 episode of CSI: Las Vegas cleverly titled “Fur and Loathing in Las Vegas”, in which a man in a raccoon suit was found murdered on the side of the road, and the CSI team attends a fictional convention called PAFCon (funny enough, PAFCon is now a real Las Vegas convention because of this) to gain information on the killing. The episode depicted furries to be kinky casanovas, and among popular culture the furry fandom was shunned for being nothing but “people who dress up as animals and have sex”.

In 2009, an episode of Tyra Banks got in depth with two furries who furthered the stereotype of the furry fandom being all about sex. Most furs jumped to their defense almost immediately, and as a matter of fact, Tyra’s two guests have been shunned from the fandom as a whole.

So what did the backlash do in the long run? In a nutshell, it took an entire subculture previously unknown and soft-spoken and turned it upside-down. But over the last two years, the facts have prevailed – out of 2,850 respondents to the 2011 furry survey, only 553 (less than 20%) actually claimed to be a fursuiter, or one who wears a fursuit. Atop that, temperatures inside of fursuits generally can climb to 120ºF, which requires very limited physical strain, and we all know sex is a very strenuous activity unless you’re a stiff. This also demanded the implimentation of ‘furry lounges’ at conventions, where a fursuiter can go where no photography is allowed in order to avoid being caught outside of character. Unfortunately, this in itself fueled the backlash even further.

We see it, we live with it, and we just don’t know it. Furries are everywhere and are growing leaps and bounds every year. With breathtaking art, a plethora of different people, and open hearts, furry is simply something that many of us never knew we were all along.