Unmasked

“I’m a furry,” she said.


My stomach dropped. I remember fear bubbling up as I looked away.

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That’s what Sam Flake, a then first-year psychology major from southwest Ohio, told me. We were at a First 50 Days event at Miami University coloring premade templates with markers when she mentioned the fact and asked if I wanted to move in with her.


I had known her for only a couple of weeks, and now she was smiling at me in that nervous way people do when waiting for an unknown answer. 


“Uh … why are you telling me that?” I replied.


“It’s not a sex thing. I just wanted you to know.”

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***

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The easiest way to answer the question “what is a furry?” is to imagine furries as a kind of fandom, akin to something you would see around anime, comic books, or video games. 


Furries’ interests just happen to overlap with the animal kingdom. 

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People who identify with the furry community usually create their own “fursona,” which is a character that has a unique identity and personality. Some people commission their fursonas to be made into fursuits, which are full-body outfits comparable to those of sports mascots. They are created so that the customer can act out their fursona. 


That’s where Sam comes in.

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Sam isn’t just a furry. She’s a fursuit maker and a successful one at that. Her business, Soul Enterprises, has garnered quite the following over the past six years.

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Sam posts her works-in-progress (WIPs) and recent commissions on her Instagram and Twitter @sheenitude. Sam’s pages are relatively popular — she’s gathered over 15,000 followers on Instagram and has about 5,000 followers on Twitter. Her YouTube page, Kyla Wolf, where she posts her WIPs and tutorials, has just under 7,500 subscribers.

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She spends weeks detailing hand-sewn suits to be shipped all around the world. Her work is done through commissions only and the suits go for more than $5,500. While she only takes a handful at a time, each one can take up to months to finish. 


Now, she didn’t tell me all of this information just because she felt like it. 

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She wanted me to know because we were considering moving in together, and that would mean occasionally having the husk of a neon-colored animal hanging around, which would be a bit of an adjustment for any roommate. 


I agreed to move in anyways.

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Life with Sam was about what I expected. She worked constantly; her sewing machine was always whirring in the background of our lives. Sometimes I’d sit in bed and watch her work. We’d chat about what it was like going to conventions, how to create fursona, or the problems she was having with a customer. Or she’d sit in silence, listening to music while she worked.

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But no matter the distraction, her hands were always steady, intricately feeding the sewing machine or fastening one piece of fabric to another with a quick stitch. It was all about the details.

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We moved out after the pandemic caused shutdowns across the country. Miami sent its students home, so we went our separate ways. We still talked over text and occasionally Facetime, but our conversations had become more about the world and less about fursuits.

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But three years later, when I told Sam I wanted to write about her fursuits and her furry identity, she cringed.

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“I don’t like saying it’s part of my identity,” she said. “I mean, it is, but I don’t like saying it.”


“Why not?” I asked.


“It’s just weird,” she said. 

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Sam wasn’t born into the furry universe. She didn’t just wake up one day and believe she was an animal — that’s not really how most furries discover the community. 

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For her, it started as a fun way to expand her art. When she was 14 years old, she stumbled upon some YouTube videos of a dance competition at a furry convention. At first, she was really put off by it. 

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“I was like, ‘This just looks weird. Why are these people dressing up like that?’” she said. “Which is fair.”

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But then, two of the suits caught her eye. She started watching more videos created by these furries, and they inspired her to expand on her art. 

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Before long, Sam decided she wanted to explore sewing. Her mom was the sewing expert in her household, so naturally, she was the one Sam turned to for help. She’d pester her mom repeatedly to show her a specific stitch until she finally gave in.

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“She'd show me once and she's like, ‘Okay, go practice it a hundred times,’” Sam said. “It was horrible, but that was my practice.”

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When she started creating suits, her mom couldn’t help anymore. Sam turned back to YouTube, but she could only find one video explaining how to make a head. For everything else, she was on her own. Another problem Sam had was that she couldn’t exactly ask for help at her local sewing club on how to create a fursuit without getting a few eyebrow raises.

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But slowly, using dress patterns and templates of her design, she developed her own method of bringing fursonas to life. 

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She fixated on it, and what started as a casual interest in drawing became a full-fledged business. She’s created over 40 fursuits since 2016.

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It’s important to note that not all furries are in it for the same reasons. Sam rolled her eyes when I asked her how she deals with the bestiality stereotype furries are given. 

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“I think it can be really hard to break down the stigma around it just because people want something to shit on,” she said with a laugh. “And furries are really easy to shit on.”

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By and large, she doesn’t see her community focusing on sex. That side does exist, but it’s the minority. 

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There have been instances of online scams when buying and selling suits, as well as people abusing animals. But in Sam’s mind, there are bad people in every community.


“Our bad side is just more well-known,” she said.

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She doesn’t tell many people about her hobby. She’s guarded around the topic. While her family knows and supports her, she’s told only a handful of close friends. She waits people out, weighing how they’ll take it.

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“I usually sugarcoat that I'm gay until I know the person is OK with it,” Sam said. “I sugarcoat a lot of my normal personality traits because I’m autistic. Those two things already are really big parts of myself so it just doesn't make a huge difference to hide one more thing.”

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Unfortunately, Sam’s fears surrounding the publicity of her hobby are justified. Since she started her business, she’s received so many death threats that she lists them off casually as if they’re grocery items. 

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“I've gotten people telling me to kill myself,” she said. “I've gotten people telling me that they're gonna come kill me or they hope I die. They hope I get in a car accident, people telling me that I'm the scum of the earth, I'm the worst person alive, and that all furries should die.”


She rolled her eyes and laughed.

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“All I do is, a few times a year, [I] dress in an animal costume and run around at a convention,” Sam said. 

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Before joining the community, Sam was quiet. She was the kind of kid who would dread speaking in class. When the teacher asked a question, she’d sink into her chair, eyes pointed to the ground, and try her best to disappear.

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But then she started developing her fursona: a playful, spunky wolf character named Kyla who was the complete opposite of Sam's outward expression at the time.

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“When I was in-suit during my first convention, I could act however I wanted, [I could act] like an idiot just having fun, and everyone loved it,” she said. “And everyone reciprocated that. And it was like, ‘Oh, shit, I can just have fun and everyone's digging it.’”

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It took a few more years, but today, bits of Kyla’s personality have become part of Sam’s. 

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When she gets to a new class, she scopes out new faces: potential friends. She lights up at mentions of shared hobbies, hailing down a slew of questions to find a closer connection. 

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This is the process for many furries who have just discovered the community: A feeling of isolation and rejection turned into acceptance and tolerance.

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Now Sam can create that feeling for her clients as well. As an artist, she feels a sense of pride every time a customer sings her praises. Her work is not only appreciated but admired. 

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The excitement her customers feel when they unbox their new fursuit is understandable. For many, they feel comfortable only once the mask goes up.

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“The character you're dressing up as is most often your idealized self or your true self,” she said. “And so when you put that on, you get to be that person. And no one knows any different.”

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***

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At the end of our interview, I started to wrap up our conversation. We laughed at a joke one of us made as I began to stand to leave. 


“Oh hey, when is this piece coming out?” Sam asked.


“Honestly, I’m not sure,” I replied. “Maybe November or December. Why?”


“Oh, I was just worried about my professors seeing it and thinking, ‘Oh Sam …’”

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Her voice trailed off. She smiled her nervous smile, the same one she had the day she told me she was a furry. 


I smiled back at her. 

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“That’s what the piece is for,” I said. “Maybe they’ll see it and think it’s cool or at least learns a little more about the community.”


“Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “Maybe.”

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