Man or Bear?

A video question is making the rounds on TikTok and YouTube shorts, asking women, “Would you rather be alone in the wilderness with a strange man or a bear?” Unsurprisingly (to me, at least), most women answer “the bear” with no hesitation.

The result has been an abundance of response videos from young men who are hurt and offended by women’s apparent fear of them. One guy made the question worse to clarify things. He suggested the question should have been, “Would you rather be lost in the woods with a bear that wants to kill you or a man that wants to kill you?” And again, it comes as no surprise to me that women are still responding, “the bear.”

When I asked my friend the question, one answered, “Maybe a bear. I mean, if you use human speech, most bears will leave you alone.” When I asked her the modified question, her response was, “Well, as a female, neither could or would be reasoned with.” Which made me laugh. I mean, she’s right, but that’s hilarious.

Why is This So Difficult For Some People to Understand?

What I’m struggling with is all the response videos young men are making who are taking it so personally. No one named any specific man in this bear vs. man scenario. It was just “a bear” or “an unknown (presumably) male human.” Sure, if they changed it to a bear or my brother, I might still pick the bear, but then it would only be to needle my brother. Ha-ha.

But Northern Exposure Changed My Understanding

For those of you who don’t remember the 90s, “Northern Exposure” is a sweet, slightly surreal serial TV show set in Cicely, Alaska (but filmed at least partly in Roslyn, Washington). It starred Rob Morrow as a neurotic Jewish doctor Joel Fleischman from New York who is forced to practice medicine in Alaska in exchange for his tuition.

Up there he meets Maggie O’Connell, played by Janine Turner, who is a tough woman working as a private pilot. She is the (required for 80s/90s TV) love interest in the (also mostly required) standard enemies to lovers trope. One of her issues is that all her boyfriends die in freak accidents.

Then in season 3, episode 18, “Wake Up Call” she meets “Arthur” while the town is being annoyed by a brown bear waking up after winter estivation. The bear is knocking over garbage cans and could be dangerous and Maggie comes across him when he breaks into her trash at night.

The next day, she meets a tall, blond-haired, viking-looking man in the woods while she’s chopping firewood. He helps her get her truck started, and she drives off, stars in her eyes. Later, when she’s cleaning up after the bear again, he appears and says that maybe the bear is just coming to see her. “Bears can fall in love, too. And sometimes they fall in love with human women.” As the episode progresses, it turns out that Arthur lives in a cave in the woods. His father lives in the mountains and his mother was killed when he was very young—she was shot and killed. He takes her to his cave and offers her mead and nuts and berries to eat. The episode is enchanting and aligns perfectly with the style and tone of the series’ finest episodes.

But what does that have to do with YouTube fads?

Maggie Isn’t Afraid of the Man or the Bear

When she hears the bear, she heads outside with a shotgun. And when she sees Arthur in the woods, she is star-struck by his appearance. When he offers to take her to his home, she is more upset that he’s carrying her across the river than that she’s heading off into the woods with a man she barely knows.

Arthur would never hurt Maggie. And she recognizes this immediately.

This is what the angry YouTubers want. At heart, they are romantics who wish that their true love will recognize them in an instant. And when most women feel safer with a wild bear than an unknown man, they despair that they’ll never find their Maggie.

Photo by Zdenêk Machácek on Unsplash

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