First off, this is what I will be talking about.

It’s an episode of a CNN show called This Is Life that is all about us funny furry type people in the furry community.

Or should that be the Furry Community? Whatever.

Like nearly all furries, when I found out a show was going to do an episode on us, I cringed inwardly. We have had some very bad representation in the media by people who only saw us as hilariously pathetic perverts to be mocked and exploited, and because of that, my default reaction to any kind of media coverage is “I wish they would just leave us alone in our own little world. ”

This attitude of mine is woefully out of date. It has been a long time since a certain horrible episode of CSI (to which I shall not link because I don’t want to get all mad again when I am trying to talk about something good) which treated my community with absolutely no respect.

And I love that show. So it really felt like a betrayal.

Anyhow, all the media coverage in the last decade of which I am aware has been respectful, sensitive, open-minded, and understanding. The days of being the bottom of the nerd social pecking order are over, people have added us to their mental lists of colorful but harmless weirdos, and in general, everything is cool.

But some impressions do not fade, so I doubt I will ever really trust the media.

Anyhow, the show was actually really, really good. It was sensitive and understanding and managed to really get to the heart of what being furry means to people by depicting our community through the eyes of three people who have used it to get over serious problems and who have found, in the furry community, a place where they can be themselves by being someone else.

Some of us can only be ourselves when we are wearing a mask.

Which brings me to one of my only criticisms of the episode, and it is a very minor one, and quite common to media coverage of our community.

It goes like this : the episode focuses very strongly on fursuiters. All three subjects were fursuiters and only a few snatches of voiceover acknowledge that there are those of us who do NOT fursuit.

In reality, of course, only about 10 percent of us fursuit, although that number is climbing rapidly among the current generation of young furries as the knowledge of how to make one’s fursuit is digested and spread by the community.

Still, there’s a lot more nonfursuiters than fursuiters. But I do not blame the media for fixating on the fursuiters because they are so amazingly visual.

The camera just eats them up. They are like cartoon characters come to life. Furries outside of the fursuit community are merely nerds in animal T-shirts. But the fursuiters are very visibly distinct.

So whatever. I can live with it, no problem.

I was instantly hooked into the episode because the very first subject was a woman who suffers from intense social anxiety.

Um, hello? That’s me.

And like me, she found that the only way around that was to become someone else. In her case, it was a fursona whom she eventually turned into a fursuit, and in that fursuit, she becomes a totally new person. Someone bubbly and gregarious and energetic and very very friendly.

Also me. Obviously. I have never taken being Fruvous to the point of turning him into a fursuit, mainly because I can’t sew and I don’t have the money to buy one.

But it’s essentially the same. We furries create a version of ourselves that can do what we cannot and be who we want to be. Our real world lives revolve around the people we happen to be – the product of accidents of fate over which we had no control and about which we were not consulted.

Our fursonas, on the other hand, are custom crafted creations made to fit us perfectly and let us be who we need to be.

And the episode made me wonder what it would be like to have a fursuit of Fruvous. It could be quite amazing for me. I see videos of fursuiters interacting with people in a really fun and lovely way and I think, “I could do that!”.

And I want to. It seems like it’s not just loads of fun but also very fulfilling. I want to make people happy – it is what I want more than anything else in my life.

A fursuit could allow me to express my hidden exuberance and friendliness just like I do as Fruvous online. And that’s a prettty amazing prospect.

I have been wondering how to become more like my fursona. I really wish I could be just like him in RL. He has a lot more fun than I do, and no social anxiety. In fact, he’s quite bold about meeting new people and has a very wide group of friends and is generally well liked and popular.

In other words, he’s me as an extrovert.

And who knows, maybe even me as I was meant to be before being raped at the age of 4 took all that away from me and turned me into the fragile cripple who is typing these very words that you are reading.

Thank you for that, by the way.

Anyhow, the rest of the episode is also awesome. The other two people are a fellow with crippling PTSD who has to live all by himself way out in the middle of nowhere in order to control it and a woman with both lupus and another rarare genetic disorder who went from being super active and sporty to limited to a wheelchair in the space of six monthys. Both also used their fursuit fursonas to escape their problems.

It ended with the host attending her first furry convention. It was interesting to see it through her eyes because, as a grey-muzzled furry, I often forget just what a strange and wonderful world furry fandom can be.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go pretend to be a fox for a while.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.