Cody here with more brilliant biographies of people you ought to know. First up, a bear named Christian Irizarry. (yes, authentic bear this time) He's a pretty well-known actor and singer on the East Coast. Doesn't ring a bell? Well his stage name is Christian Sebastian and he's truly a star!

Since the early days of the bear community in the 1960's and 70's men have struggled to find a definition to set themselves apart for the rest of the gay community and its many sub-communities. The "Bear" moniker came to represent the large-bodied, hirsute, homomasculine male often residing outside the accepted norm of the thriving gay community. The community became more formally cohesive with the publication of the original BEAR magazine and the blossoming electronic media. Newsgroups and bulletin boards carried the battle-cry of solidarity amongst the "real men" of the community that soon came to include the chubbies, chasers, otters, cubs, wolves....the menagerie was growing faster than the bear marketing machine could keep up. A bear code even sprung up from the front lines to codify the ins and outs of bear classification. Before long, the very community created out of a need for identity found itself struggling with a recurring question: What makes a bear a bear?