Whether latching onto gay archetypes (e.g., Gypsy IS the Hamlet of the American musical, pnp party tonight, Diesel, etc.) or self-consciously avoiding them (e.g., I-don't-get-Liza-Minnelli-or-Lady-Gaga-so-take-my-gay-card-please rhetoric, on the DL, hipsterishly eschewing bathing, Dockers), all gay men can agree on one thing: finding themselves endlessly fascinating. So, it's no wonder that the bear community -- a lifestyle involving the indoctrination of plus-sized hairy men -- thrives here in San Francisco, a city endlessly fascinated with itself.

In addition to an annual convention devoted to large, furry homosexuals (International Bear Rendezvous, which happened over the President's Day weekend, where over 50 events celebrated the bear lifestyle), the city has several venues that cater to the "healthy"-looking and/or hairy sect (Deco, The Lone Star, The Eagle Saloon).

For the Bold Italic, exquisite scribe Josh Rotter went undercover to investigate the massive bear culture. Among other things, Rotter, says he "quickly discovered that a Bear was more of a look than a personality; the appeal was a masculinity thing - stomachs could be soft, but chests had to be hard - and it was nice to have hair to rub up against. "

Hm.

What's more, it seems there's a strata of categories within the bear subcategory (i.e., otters, wolves, ginger bears, ewoks).

How do you know which label, if any, you fall into? Well, check out the handy chart the Bold Italic provides, which you can view after the jump.