"Furry is communism": Why do people dress up animals
Leon has been interested in animals since childhood. - it began quite at a young age after the cartoon "The Lion King", "Spirit" and "Balto". He painted them a lot - all the toys at home were also in the form of animals. Then there was the anime "The Legend of Silver Fang Wid" about dogs. "I talked with people on the Internet, drew fan art. Then I already knew about furry, but I didn’t care about it until I saw a fur one in one park. At first, this fandom seemed strange and expensive, but somehow it went, and I recently completed my seventh costume, "- says Leon.
Leon - furry (from the English "fur", fur), that is, loves anthropomorphic animals - those that behave like people. Talking animals are familiar to us from the time of Aesop, what can we say about Disney. Nevertheless, the emergence of subcultures is usually attributed to the 70s and the first underground zines, which did not create an improved version of Mickey Mouse, but offered their own view on human-like animals. The historians of the Octavia Woolf and Fred Patten fandom associate his appearance with the Vootie edition and the comic Omaha, the Cat-Dancer, which openly spoke about sex between anthropomorphic animals.
However, the word "furry" itself began to gain popularity after the World convention of science fiction in 1980, where they discussed the first character from the future comic strip "Albedo Anthropomorphics" - an anthropomorphic cat that serves in alien forces. Since then, the furry only gained popularity: in the early 90s the first conventions were already held, and the emergence of broadband Internet helped the subculture to grow to the whole world. In fact, furry are not much different from representatives of other fandoms (science fiction or anime fans) - however, most often they prefer the genre of "Original", where the character needs to be thought up on their own, rather than taking ready-made pop culture.
← Short documentary "Be a Furry"
Fursuits and furons
“People without costumes often come to meetings, and there are not so few of them. Not everyone has money, but someone does not want to change clothes for their own reasons,” says Leon. Most often we think of the representatives of the fandom as people in fursuits, that is, animal costumes, but they are a minority. According to the results of the interdisciplinary "International Anthropomorphic Study", only 20% of people in the fandom wear a suit. Ivan, a two-year-old furry, tells us that ordering a fursuit in a decent Russian workshop will cost at least a thousand dollars.
"It’s difficult, it’s expensive. One head costs twenty thousand rubles, and it’s still very cheap. Russia earns less than in the West, and we’ve got used to cheapness. Although in the US it’s absolutely normal to give two and a half thousand dollars for fursuit." - says Leon. Ernst, in the fandom for four years, explains that for a good fursuit, even our own production will have to wait and pay well: "The basis for the suit is at least twelve thousand rubles. Plus, you must understand that Russian fur is a battered cat, and the American is expensive. One delivery will cost no less than two thousand rubles. " Due to the high cost of the workshops, many furry make costumes themselves, but they admit that this is not very easy. “Sometimes it seems to me that the Fursuitmakers are gods. They are very talented people,” Ernst believes.
The costume is usually sewn by copying the “furson” of the customer - a fictional fluffy alter ego, in which both appearance and character are important. Ernst says that the development of fursons is an opportunity to choose a new personality for yourself: “A person cannot change his character or gender, while here you sculpt yourself like plasticine. Here I feel like a punk rocker with mohawk, green eyes and black hair, but in reality I look completely different. "
How often to use your furson - everyone decides for himself. Ernst puts on a suit when he feels sad and angry, and in everyday life he wears only a collar. Mila often puts on a suit for a walk, walks in it around the house - maybe even fall asleep in it. “A couple of times I came to study in a fursuit - they reacted funny. But it’s like that, I’m going to get mad at once. I generally like going to concerts like that, but in general it’s dangerous for a suit and can be hot. I don’t do it myself, but I know who wear tail or gloves in everyday life, "says Leon.
Yiff and costumes for sex
Ernst and other fursuits told us that they almost never encountered aggression on the street. Furry love children - true, sometimes they pull too much by the tail or ears that threaten the costume. “My favorite audience is local drunks, they take my suite well. They are the coolest,” says Ernst. True, this does not mean that everyone on the Internet and media thinks the same way. Since the furries became noticeable in the West, the first attempts to investigate them turned out to be at least unsuccessful.
In 2001, in the Vanity Fair, furry was presented as "plushyfilov", and in a 2003 report on the CSI channel, the subculture was designated mainly as yifferov (yiff is sexual content associated with anthropomorphic animals). Since then, most of the material about the furry goes under the headlines in the spirit of "This is not a fetish" or "This is not about sex," because sexual connotations were entrenched in the movement very tightly.
“The family doesn’t care about my hobby, but my friends call it a bestiality — it hurts,” says Mila, who was always confused by the 18+ materials. Nevertheless, yiff lovers exist, there are many, but certainly not the majority. More rarely, furry have sex in costumes at least for reasons of integrity of the fursuit. According to Sarah Dee, one of the largest fursuits masters in the West, she was only asked to make a lightning bolt between her legs - that time she took a thousand dollars from above and refused to repair the costume when broken. However, there is nothing strange in the yiff: every fandom inevitably acquires sexual content - from “Startrek” to “South Park”.
National Geographic film about the furry →
LGBT and white men
“I went to the convention once in my life when I was fifteen years old, and there were a lot of thirty year old men around - it was very strange. True, I did like one guy,” says Ernst. In fact, in the West white men from eighteen to thirty years really dominate in the fandom. Despite this, only 30% of furry consider themselves to be strictly heterosexual, and 2% identify themselves as transgender people, says Dr. Courtney Plant, one of the participants in the International Anthropomorphic Study.
Furri-fandom is very inclusive, moreover - Furson helps many people to realize their sexual identity. The opportunity to try on another gender or character, having invented a furson, often leads to changes in the real world.
"Sometimes it happens that a person comes to fandom as a heterosexual, and then realizes himself as a homosexual. Or, on the contrary, he realizes a clear separation, where he, for example, is heterosexual, and his furson is a homosexual." In general, furry has the opportunity to acquire new identities, which they may be ashamed of, scary or embarrassing to manifest in the real world.
Gas attacks and alt-furry
In the United States, where the largest number of furry lives, fandom participants are perceived by many as carriers of an important identity. For example, at the largest furry convention, Anthrocon holds special events for furries with disabilities, parents of furry (where they explain how to treat a teenager's new hobby) and workshops that teach people to tell about their identity to people far from the fandom.
However, the furry often has to defend its right to wear a tail - so, in September 2017, a member of the city council of New Milford (Connecticut) resigned because social networks published evidence of his belonging to the fandom, and in 2014 at the MidWest convention FurFest 19 people went to the hospital because of intentional leakage of chlorine gas. And this is not to mention the many mocking videos on YouTube for millions of views.
Suffice and squabble inside the fandom. For example, last year, Alt-Furry (i.e. Alt-Wright) appeared in the American division, due to which the rest of the community had to decide how to resist supporters of ideas completely incompatible with the principles of the community. This testifies not so much about the crisis among the furry, but about the fact that the fandom is becoming more and more noticeable. For example, the Disney cartoon "Zeropolis" clearly targeted furry. The creators discussed the idea with them, called for sending their photos in fursuits and agreed with the Furlife group, which arranges meetings with the participants of the fandom, to promote the hashtags #Zootopia and #ZooU
← Infographics about furry
Communism and friendship
"Furry is like a different house for me, leaving him is tantamount to murder. Only here there is an opportunity to open up, change yourself as you want. But we still remain people and just go to the fandom when we get tired of ordinary life," says Eve. According to Courtney Planta, despite the fact that many consider the furry strange, studies show that fantasies and activities associated with fictional characters and universes are inherent in almost all people.
“Painted animals are understandable to everyone - love for them has no national, geographical or religious boundaries,” said Samuel Conway, who explores furry at the Anthrocon festival. According to Plant, most furry come to the fandom for friendship, tolerance and support. "Furry is a type of communism where there are no rich and poor," Ernst is sure.
Cover: Uatoys