Andreea Ceplinschi
Bear Girl
I was born with bowed legs. In baby pictures, they’re easy to mistake for extra chub and “still learning how to walk,” but I have toddler-early memories of adults around me worrying my mother about the way my legs were developing.
You probably didn’t swaddle her tight enough.
Do you think she’s going to look right when she gets older?
You can just dress her in long skirts and nobody will notice.
I don’t remember anyone being worried enough to consult an orthopedist, but to be fair, that probably wasn’t considered a legitimate medical field in late 80’s Romania. The point is: I was barely able to talk when I was taught my body was flawed, that my legs weren’t straight enough, that my nose was too big, my teeth too crooked, my shoulders too broad, my torso too short, my hair too thin, my fingers too knobby, my waistline too wide, my boobs uneven, my posture too hunched, my grace and femininity coefficient in the negative. By the age of 15 I learned about fad diets, like eating cabbage soup exclusively for three weeks, which might only work if you enjoy the smell of your own farts. I’d tried bleaching my hair with hydrogen peroxide stolen from the school’s chemistry lab because blondes were prettier and shaved my head when the color came out patchy pumpkin instead of sun-kissed strawberry blonde. I pricked my stomach with safety pins based on rumors that it would stimulate a thermogenic reaction, burned my inner thighs with the curling iron to try and melt away cellulite, and developed an eating disorder that still flares up when I’m feeling insecure. If my body was a temple, I didn’t believe in God, and that was the most important thing I learned about myself growing up.
But this story isn’t about that. It’s about what I learned about myself during my first Bear Week in Provincetown.
I was a 19-year-old J1 student who worked in a shop that sold Christmas ornaments. The Provincetown tourist industry was utterly new to me, its scheduled weekly themes only vaguely real, mainly because every Tuesday my boss would have me decorate the shop window display with Christmas ornaments that matched the theme. The bear-shaped ornaments I hung for that particular week in July did nothing to alert me to the type of visitors that would be populating this queer town. In the gay world, bears not only understand the assignment, they fully visually embody it on a wide spectrum of large and hairy, from round to muscular, long-bearded to neatly shaved, often leather-clad, but unmistakably bear-like in the context of Provincetown.
At the time of my first Bear Week, back in 2004, my learned context for men who looked like bears had developed around metal music fests and motorcycle rallies, involving a lot of testosterone-induced posturing and drunken displays of machismo that occasionally made me feel unsafe. I had learned that large, hairy, tattooed dudes hanging out in groups are dangerous. Based on that assumption, my prejudice kicked in as I walked home from work at night through streets populated almost exclusively with these impressive-looking men.
My summer rental was around the corner from Spiritus Pizza, the most popular pizza joint in town, smack in the middle of Commercial Street. They stayed open an hour past bar closing times and were THE place to get a late-night slice. After the first week or so of having to part the sea of pizza people mobbing street to get home, I’d gotten somewhat used to pushing my way through the amorphous mass of loud drag queens and sweaty half-naked bodies fresh off the dance floor.
Approaching a late-night mass of bears felt different: I found myself on mild alert, scanning the crowd for potential threat. And since I was looking for it, the threat materialized in the form of a furry, shirtless colossus lumbering in my direction. I tried avoiding his gaze so hard that I ended up staring and making eye contact instead. He locked in, changing course towards me with the diagonal decisiveness of the obviously intoxicated. I froze. He seemed impressively fast inside his massive body, even as he was unsteady on his feet. My brain instantly started practicing ways to apologize for drawing unwanted male attention. His arms stretched stiff at his sides. His beard shimmered under the streetlights with either glitter or pizza grease. He was about five feet away when another man’s muscular arm reached out from behind and snatched him back by covering his mouth with what looked like a piece of white cloth.
Here you go sweetie, napkin, the voice attached to the brawny arm was sweet and good-natured, almost a giggle.
At the age of 19 I thought what was left in my discovery of the world would be largely un-magical. And yet, watching these two overwhelming men get plucked out of the menacing scenario in my brain and into late-night Commercial Street Provincetown floored me. As I watched their kissing through grease-glittered beards, the tenderness of that paper napkin, the unmistakable joy of their large bodies hugging, the sweetness of nobody staring, mocking, threatening, I felt like a 5-year-old having a quarter pulled out of my ear. I felt relief, confusion, and curiosity all at once. I was in awe at being able to witness my prejudice challenged in real time. It made me ashamed and vulnerable, but also powerful, wondering what else I could challenge of what I’d brought with me from a background that taught me to feel unsafe in the world and unworthy in my own body.
Bear Week has since become the catalyst for the most important lessons I’ve learned in my chosen community. For instance, that queer confidence has a compelling softness, the kind that doesn’t flex by starting bar brawls and making others feel unsafe because it’s not ego-based; queer confidence is about creating a safe space like a themed week and inviting others into that space as their most authentic selves. I also learned that my authentic self is part Bear Girl, who revels in the delight of dancing squished between 300 sweaty bears on a boat at sunset, because all bodies, regardless of their shape, are containers for joy. Some days Bear Girl puts on a tutu at the age of 40 with the confidence of a 300lb man in a rainbow speedo and lives life like it was a themed week created just for her. She knows that accepting the fluidity of image can dismantle the hetero-normative myth of physical appearance operating in patriarchal systems outside the queer bubble. She’s open to the secret lives of leather-clad bears and dance floor queens who outside of Provincetown become accountants, bikers, or astrophysicists because all bodies, regardless of their shape, contain more than one version of ourselves.
I’m not always Bear Girl. I’m also the insecure little girl with crooked legs, and the dysmorphic self-hating teen, but I’ve finally stopped trying to erase and forget those identities. I can let them all live together in the same container because what I learned during Bear Week is that a body loved becomes the safe space.
Andreea Ceplinschi is a Romanian immigrant writer, photographer, graphic designer, waitress, and kitchen worker. Her writing includes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, the latter of which has been published and is forthcoming in Solstice Literary Magazine, One Art, Wild Roof Journal, The Quarter(ly), Bulb Culture Collective, Bicoastal Review, and elsewhere. You can learn more about her at www.poetryandbookdesign.com
