Are You Fur Real?, Liz Langley, Orlando Weekly
From basketball games to theme parks, commercials to publicity stunts, mascots are everywhere. It doesn't matter whether they're doing flips, hugging kids, riding scooters, or fighting with other mascots. People love spastic, wacky characters in fur suits. But some have taken dressing up in character costumes into a completely different - and kinky - arena. The world of plushies, as Liz Langley of the Orlando Weekly reports, is a fetish that focuses on people's sometimes-sexual fascination with dressing up as furry animals. Those that have dubbed themselves zootaphiles - or someone who loves fur suits - have even come up with a "plushie code" to identify themselves in the personals section of newspapers. It's unclear how one develops plushie crushes, or how the fetish started. But given the high concentration of fur suit-wearing jobs in Orlando, Langley suspects that the area must be a center of plushie activity.
--Kate Garsombke
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