If you were alone in the woods, would you rather run into a stranger or a bear? This question, posed to several women in a TikTok video last month, was inspired by the human-versus-bear dilemma. It spread rapidly. And women online are almost unanimous in favor of something that's chunky and furry and can sleep through the winter.
Just in case you know guys who fit that description, let me be clear: Bears. They all choose bears.
This question is an opportunity for women to compare their fears and figure out which danger looms larger. In the video that started the trend, seven of the eight women who answered “bear” gave the same reason. They argue that bears are attractive precisely because they are not men. “Men are scary,” someone says.
Looking at the data, these answers are reasonable. The World Health Organization reports that nearly one-third of women worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual violence, “mostly at the hands of men.” (Statistics show that the biggest threat you can encounter in the woods isn't actually a man you don't know. It's a man you know who poses the most danger, which means most of the time. (Your intimate partner.) Meanwhile, only a few people around the world are affected by bears each year.
However, risk assessment is not the only way to approach this issue. It is clear which creature the woman is more afraid of. But which one do you want more of? Is there anyone out there who is keen on bears?
This is not unprecedented, as people have chosen to mate with predators before. More than 30,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers began domesticating wolves. They chose large carnivores as hunting partners, home guards, and generally loyal companions. In the millennia since then, we have only progressed further. People swim with sharks, keep boa constrictors in their living room tanks, and post selfies with tigers on their Tinder profiles.
Women have chased dangerous animals for the same reasons they have relationships with men. For entertainment, for friendship, for support. For love. For many? It's a far-fetched idea for a woman to have a relationship with a bear, but it's supported by stories of human-animal connections told throughout history.
You probably grew up hearing bedtime stories about women getting romantically entangled with living creatures. Greek myths such as Leda and the Swan, Europa and the Bull. Fairy tales such as “Beauty and the Beast'' and “The Frog Prince.'' In fact, there are so many stories that fit the description of woman-animal romance that folklorists have placed them in the category of “animals as bridegrooms.” You may have recently seen The Shape of Water, an Oscar-winning movie about a woman falling in love with an amphibian, or read Rachel Ingalls' novella Mrs. Caliban”, but it was published 35 years before the film was released.
The women in these stories choose the beast with ecstasy and hope, because choosing an animal means separating from society. In these types of stories, women are often trapped in the drudgery of domestic work. If they are partners, they become housewives or housewives who are tasked with endless household chores. If they're single, they're a lonely librarian or a graduate student sitting at a desk in debt. Their world is an artificial one made of cake mix and emotional labor. They are not afraid of men. I'm tired of living in a patriarchy.
So they decide to leave the human world completely. They go after the bear. Perhaps the best and most shocking example of this animal-as-groom category is Canadian author Marian Engel's 1976 novel “Bear.” Toward the end of the protagonist's dramatic relationship with the animal, Engel writes:[F]Or maybe it was some sharp, strange moment when she felt in her pores and in the taste of her mouth what the world was for. Not so much that she felt that she had finally become human, she felt that she had finally become pure. Clean, simple and proud. ”
We certainly shouldn't follow in the footsteps of these fictional women, but we should consider their claims. There is a world out there where women have found a cleaner, simpler, freer existence, if only in fiction. Oddly enough, animal lovers come with it, what can I say? Myths and fairy tales are magical.
The stories of Beauty and the Beast that we tell each other reframe the human vs. bear issue. Instead of comparing one fear to another, we weigh our desires. Would you choose the lesser evil or the greater thrill in your life? Think of the TikTok question like this: If you're alone in the woods, are you focused on getting out or do you want to see what's possible when you go deeper?
Julia Phillips is a fellow at the Guggenheim Museum and a best-selling author. Her upcoming book, Bear, will be published on June 25th.
