If you're alone in the woods, who would you rather run into: a man you don't know or a bear? This question, He posed for several women in a TikTok video last month, has made the dilemma of man versus bear viral. And women online are almost unanimous in favor of the beefy, hairy, sleep-through-winter model.
Let me clarify in case you know guys who fit that description: the bear. Everyone is choosing the bear.
The question is an opportunity for women to compare their fears and find out which danger is greater. In the video that started the trend, seven of the eight women who give “bear” responses make the same reasoning: a bear is attractive, they argue, precisely because it is not a man. “Men are scary,” says one.
Looking at the data, these answers are reasonable. The World Health Organization reports that almost a third of women worldwide have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence, “mostly perpetrated by men.” (Statistics also tell us that a man you don't know isn't actually the biggest threat you might encounter in the woods. It's the man you do know, your intimate partner, in most cases, who represents the biggest threat. danger.) Meanwhile, only a few people worldwide are harmed by bears in any given year.
However, risk assessment is not the only way to address this issue. Which creature women fear most is obvious, yes. But what about which one? want further? Is anyone passionately going after the bear?
This is not unprecedented, as people have chosen the company of predators before. More than 30,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers began domesticating wolves. They chose a large carnivore to be their hunting companion, home guard, and overall loyal companion. In the millennia since then, we have only come further. People swim with sharks, keep boa constrictors in tanks in their living rooms, and post selfies taken with tigers on their Tinder profiles.
Women have chased dangerous animals for the same reasons they have built relationships with men. For entertainment, for friendship, for support. For love. For more? A woman having an affair with a bear is a far-fetched idea, but it is supported by stories of human-animal connections told throughout history.
You probably grew up hearing bedtime stories about women becoming romantically entangled with creatures. Greek myths such as Leda and the swan and Europa and the bull; fairy tales like “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Frog Prince.” In fact, there are so many tales that fit the description of the woman-animal romance that folklorists group them into the “Animal as Boyfriend” category. More recently, you may have seen the Oscar-winning film “The Shape of Water,” in which a woman falls in love with an amphibian, or read Rachel Ingalls’ novella “Mrs. Caliban,” about the exact same thing, but published 35 years before the film was released.
The women in these stories choose their beasts with ecstasy and desire, because choosing the animal means leaving society behind. Often in these types of stories, women get caught up in domestic drudgery. If they are in a relationship, they are housewives and housewives, in charge of infinite tasks; If they're single, they're lonely librarians or debt-ridden grad students stuck at their desks. Their worlds are man-made and consist of cake mixes and emotional labor. They are not afraid of men; They are tired of living in a patriarchy.
Then they decide to completely distance themselves from the world of men. They go for the bear. Perhaps the best and most striking example in this animal-as-boyfriend category is the 1976 novel “Bear” by Canadian author Marian Engel. Towards the end of her main character's torrid romance with this animal, Engel writes: “[F]or a sharp and strange moment that he could feel in his pores and in the taste of his own mouth that he knew what the world was for. She didn't feel that she was finally human, but that she was finally clean. Clean, simple and proud.”
You certainly shouldn't follow in the footsteps of these fictional women, but you should consider their point. There is a world out there, if only in fiction, where women have found a cleaner, simpler, and freer existence. Interestingly, it comes with an animal lover, but what can I say? Myths and fairy tales are strange.
The stories we tell ourselves about beauties and beasts offer a reframing of the man versus bear question. Instead of comparing one fear to another, we weigh our desires. In your life, will you choose the lesser evil or the greater emotion? Think of the TikTok question this way: If you're alone in the woods, are you focused on getting out or would you like to see what's possible when you go deeper?
Julia Phillips He is a Guggenheim Fellow and bestselling author. His next bookBear”will be published on June 25.
