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Last week we published a Street post from Lloyd Center, which featured some of the coolest looking kids in town, dressed in cool outfits, being teens. The last picture was a group shot:
This morning my boss called me into an office.
"Look," he said, "Street is supposed to be serious, like seriously cool people. We don't want furries in animal costumes! It makes the whole thing a joke!"
My boss is not an old man. In fact, he's just a few years older than me. Still, when I looked at the picture and explained to him these children are not furries, he was confused. He asked for an explanation and then he asked that I share that explanation with the world.
What is Kigurumi?
Kigurumi is a Japanese "onesie for adults," inspired by anime characters. They are, see above, utterly adorable, part of Japan's culture of kawaii and probably can be traced Japan's response to World War II. I once read an amazing article which I can no longer find, about how after the bombs were dropped on Japan, the culture responded by becoming obsessed with cute-ness, nature's most effective defense mechanism. "Look!" it says. "We can't hurt you! We are tiny, frail, helpless! Love us, don't hate us!"
In a New York Magazine review of an art show based on cute culture in Japan says it this way: "Japanese pop represents the strange, even psychotic response of a population traumatized by World War II, and then made impotent and infantilized by occupation."
American kids in Kigurumi are in some ways appropriating kawaii culture, but nobody cares because a) Japanese people are probably making money off of it and b) the whole point is you can't be scared if what's cute.
Japanese culture is big in Portland these days, almost as if we've never heard about it before. We're into ramen, the world champion Pokémon player lives here, Kigurumi at the mall. Never mind that we sent all our Japanese citizens to remote camps during World War II. Let's just not talk about that.
Anyway, here's Miley Cyrus and Ariane Grande in Kigurumi:
Look how cute they are! Please ignore the fact that they are grown women with amazing voices who could buy and sell you–scary, sexual beings. Don't worry! They look like baby animals! They would never hurt you!
What are Furries?
Furries are a kind of fandom. That means they are a group of people into one thing so much that they go to conventions and write about it on internet forums and have meet-up groups. What's that one thing? "Fictional anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics."
Basically: they like to dress up as animals and talk about dressing up as animals and imagine they truly are these animals. It's a deep, personal way for these people to express themselves.
As with many lifestyle-y fandoms, there's a sexual aspect to furries that often gets played up in the media. In 2001, for example, Vanity Fair wrote this article about furries called, "Pleasures of the Fur." In it, a man is quoted as saying:
Kinky! Sexy! Weird!
That guy, quoted, is actually a "plushie" or a person that likes having sex with actual stuffed animals, not human in animal costumes. According to Provocative Penguin: "only 1% of Furries admit to being Plushies."
It's complicated and you'll have to go to a convention and dress up in a costume to find out if you're a furry who's just into costumes, a furry into sex with other furries or a plushie. It'll take some time and the investment in a costume and an identity.
However, if you just want to look cool, purchase a Kigurumi. This dinosaur neck warmer is on sale!
Here's a video that might help you understand furries. In it, you will note a preponderance of non-teenager white men. Not a Miley or Ariana in sight.
Willamette Week