My husband (no hair on head, much hair everywhere else, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi) is a classic bear, and I definitely prefer this vintage nomenclature to rat-hunk 🐻
Great post. As a fellow man of fur, I can’t tell you how reassuring it was to see cool hairy guys on screen when I was young and insecure about what felt like a dirty secret. Especially Caan in The Godfather.
Decades ago a few of us at work applied the adjective "rat-faced" to the features of a particular sort of attractive male, and it was meant as the highest compliment, and I must confess that I'm amused to see it in widespread use. (We never, I should note, thought of it as depicting a particular sort of ethnicity; indeed the prize rat-faced gentleman was as WASPy as they come.)
It's always fascinating when the traits that people actually find attractive bump up against what they assume they're supposed to find attractive. My roommate all through college was a very hairy, swarthy, stout-bodied Romanian Jewish dude of average height: girls were always just naturally drawn to him, and he never struggled to get dates, though they always managed to mention that he wasn't normally "their type," or sometimes even that they were "surprised" by how sexy they found him. He always struggled with how to take that. Like, "uh, thank you, I guess? Glad I'm the exception?" Of course, I don't think he was an exception, it was just that his attractiveness caused these little systems failures in people who were raised to think they should find only a certain type of guy appealing, only to discover that their biology said otherwise.
I'm sure lots of plus-sized women have encountered similar comments. Millions of men find bigger girls irresistible, but deep down they suspect they shouldn't, so they somehow find ways of expressing that attraction that makes those women feel bad about themselves in the process.
❤️ “I’m fine with that since bears are incredible creatures”
My husband (no hair on head, much hair everywhere else, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi) is a classic bear, and I definitely prefer this vintage nomenclature to rat-hunk 🐻
Great post. As a fellow man of fur, I can’t tell you how reassuring it was to see cool hairy guys on screen when I was young and insecure about what felt like a dirty secret. Especially Caan in The Godfather.
Yet another lovely entry, Jason.
Decades ago a few of us at work applied the adjective "rat-faced" to the features of a particular sort of attractive male, and it was meant as the highest compliment, and I must confess that I'm amused to see it in widespread use. (We never, I should note, thought of it as depicting a particular sort of ethnicity; indeed the prize rat-faced gentleman was as WASPy as they come.)
Thank you!
It's always fascinating when the traits that people actually find attractive bump up against what they assume they're supposed to find attractive. My roommate all through college was a very hairy, swarthy, stout-bodied Romanian Jewish dude of average height: girls were always just naturally drawn to him, and he never struggled to get dates, though they always managed to mention that he wasn't normally "their type," or sometimes even that they were "surprised" by how sexy they found him. He always struggled with how to take that. Like, "uh, thank you, I guess? Glad I'm the exception?" Of course, I don't think he was an exception, it was just that his attractiveness caused these little systems failures in people who were raised to think they should find only a certain type of guy appealing, only to discover that their biology said otherwise.
I'm sure lots of plus-sized women have encountered similar comments. Millions of men find bigger girls irresistible, but deep down they suspect they shouldn't, so they somehow find ways of expressing that attraction that makes those women feel bad about themselves in the process.
We should really try to stop doing this, huh?