Shears was born in Mesa, Arizona, the son of an entrepreneur father and a Baptist mother. He grew up on San Juan Island, Washington, where he attended school at Friday Harbor High School and was bullied. At the age of 18, he moved into a dorm at the Northwest School in Seattle, Washington, to finish high school. Shears later attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. At the age of 19, he traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, to visit a classmate, who introduced him to Scott Hoffman.[citation needed] Shears and Hoffman hit it off immediately and moved to New York a year later.\n', '

Shears attended New York\'s Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts,[citation needed] where he studied fiction writing and was a classmate of Travis Jeppesen.[citation needed] He also wrote pieces for the gay magazine HX.[citation needed] In 2000, he worked as a music reviewer for Paper magazine.\n', '

Shears and Hoffman formed Scissor Sisters in 2001 as a performance art stunt, playing outrageous shows in clubs like Luxx, the heart of the electroclash scene in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Shears lived. After a couple years struggling in New York (working with the record label A Touch of Class, who produced "Comfortably Numb" and "Filthy/Gorgeous"), Scissor Sisters finally found success in the United Kingdom and Ireland, ending 2004 with the biggest-selling album of the year in the UK. In concert, Shears is known for provocative dancing, flamboyant outfits, and near nudity. (During his early years while he was struggling to make it in New York, he would often earn extra money as a Go-go dancer and male erotic dancer at male strip clubs.)\n', '

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