Meet Robert Hill: Artist, performer, and history’s first sexy fursuiter.
by Patch O'Furr
(Don’t miss the interview with Robert!)
Come my pelted pals, gather around… and look back to the distant, dusty past Before Furry Cons. A time when seeing a sexy “fursuit crush” in public was as unimaginable as looking at furries on a phone in your pocket. A phone with the brightness dialed all the way down, of course.
It was the 1980’s, when everything was written by eye-blasting lasers with no dial-down button… so wear your raddest shades:
This is the story of a pioneer. It’s not a label anyone chooses, but what else do you call the first fursuiter at the first furry convention? (ConFurence 0… actually a test before the first one). They weren’t just a generic cute thing you could see at Disneyland, but a *look away kids!* pleather-clad dominatrix deer. Schwing! That’s Hilda the Bambioid, as worn by Robert Hill.
Astonishing vintage VHS footage of this Bigfoot-like creature was unearthed by Changa Lion, archivist for the Prancing Skiltaire, the furry house run by the founders of ConFurence in Southern California. When Changa posted Hilda’s 1989 con video to Youtube, it went viral outside of fandom, with over 75,000 views (to date). Then Changa found an even earlier video of Hilda that few have seen until now.
- Gizmodo: This Dominatrix Deer Dancing at an ’80s Furry Convention Is What the Internet Is All About
- Daily Dot: Here’s some amazing raw footage from the world’s first furry convention
In a way, these rare 1980’s VHS artifacts are like a Declaration of Sex-Positive Furry Independence. (Obligatory disclaimer for subscribers to the squeaky-clean side of fandom: that’s just one kind of furry, not all of them.)
That’s unusual. Sonious doesn’t get other ratings like this, and it pushes down search results. With so much unbalance, it’s hard to get both sides. Everyone likes both sides, right? So let’s give a deeper look to what Sonious was criticizing. This was the source of it all: