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Big Boys!
How involved are you with the gay community in Aotearoa?
Tia: In the past, I've done some promo work for the Burnett Foundation Aotearoa Love Your Condom campaign, and in 2014 I was part of the First Brush (Gay Version) viral YouTube video. And then in 2020, I competed for Mr Gay Novel Zealand and I won Mr Congeniality. In 2024, I won Mr Bear New Zealand.
Morro: I’m not as active now, but I used to travel to a lot of the bear events. I also won Mr Bear New Zealand, and then went on to compete alongside the Australian states, and I ended up winning Mr Bear Australasia – both in 2017. After that, I made a lot of friends and met so many people from all over the world.
As an active collective member, what are your thoughts on representation?
Tia: Ever since Aotearoa was colonised, being takatāpui was frowned-upon, not only by Western community, but among our own Māori communities as well. A lot of the mahi in breaking down that stigma, and de-colonising our people, is also connected to breaking down the stigma around having a bigger body – both as a Māori and as a queer person.
Now, lots of campaigns for the queer community are starting to film better and
Guide to gay men’s body types
Lesbians and lgbtq+ men have become normalized in pop culture to a point that terms we use to portray one another have get more commonplace. I was even asked by co-worker to define another staff member by these images.
In an effort to define some differences, here’s how body image types crack down for gay men.
So let’s start with twinks. Generally speaking, these are younger gay men who have a thin to slimly athletic build. Also, they don’t have a lot of body hair, and the chest is usually smooth.
Some guys will shave their chests and armpits to conform to this body image. I think that the designation came from Twinkies. You know — young, dumb and full of … moving on.
Up next are the otters. They maintain to be hairier overall, still with that slim to slimly athletic erect. I’ve seen guys of various ages take the image label of an otter, though it tends to be men under 40.
Closely related to the otters are the foxes. Basically a fox is an otter over forty. One buddy of mine described foxes as the cougars of the same-sex attracted male community.
Then we hold the bears. Like otters, men of various ages identify as a bear. These are larger-bodied or mus
Gay subcultures move and morph at a rapid pace, but the ubiquitous "bear" and "twink" cultures hold stuck around. The former typically refers to muscular men with body hair, while Wikipedia describes twinks as "having little or no body or facial hair, a slim to average build, or appearing to be younger than their actual age".
The communities involved are growing. But what is a bear really? And how are they different to twinks?
HuffPost SA spoke to some of the people committed in the upcoming Bearfest -- an annual event that takes place in Pretoria where the bear community gathers to accomplish bear-related things -- in an effort to grasp bear culture.
"Bearfest is basically a community-building event for the South African same-sex attracted bear community that shows gay men that you can accept people for who and what they are," creator of Bearfest SA Chris Taute says.
Taute says that being a bear is difficult to explain, but at its heart the community is about being nonjudgemental. It's important, he says, because the gay community suffers from the perpetuation of body standards that many gay men find complicated to live up to.
"The bear culture generally tends to place little or no
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