After a vacation in the land of the rich, famous and ostentatious, a post featuring this article on financial domination seems appropriate. It’s one of the better ones I’ve seen from the mainstream press on the subject, involving interviews with both fin dommes and their clients.
The bit of this article that made me smile was about one of the clients – Dennis a 38 year old professor.
For him, the appeal of financial domination is that it’s a “very real” form of humiliation and power exchange. “BDSM role-play with whips, chains, bondage is one thing, but at the end of the day those are just games, which focus around male fantasy,” he says. “But handing over your hard-earned money to a beautiful woman while being denied any sexual and/or romantic reciprocation is about as real as female domination gets.”
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Generally, he prefers Fin Doms between 18 and 27, athletic women who shop at stores like Lululemon, women with “pretty, innocent-looking faces and sparkling eyes that hide greedy, sadistic and narcissistic personalities.”
I spot a significant amount of self-delusion there. I’m all for Dennis getting his kicks in a consensual fashion. He’s clearly got a very particular interest and fantasy. But it makes me laugh to think that it’s ‘real femdom’ where all that stuff with bondage and whips is just games. At the end of the day it’s all fantasy and it’s all real. Nobody would bother with kink if it didn’t fulfill some sort of fantasy. And as long as cash is being handed over, welts are being raised and knots are being tied, then it’s all equally real.
I believe this is another image from the London based pro-domme Miss Antonia Davenshaw. I found it somewhere on tumblr, but detective works leads me back to her twitter feed.
Fin Dom’s a game. Marketing is important for any good prodomme, but the ladies who are successful fin doms have it down to an art form. I admire good fin doms. It takes talent and oh my god are those clients high maintenance–it’s all about manipulation and the right ratio of abuse and attention.
Yeah, client Dennis up there is in his fantasyland (which is fine). His description shows another reason why findom is tricky: not only is the session all about the manipulation and attention ratio, but the domme often has to pay some pretty convincing class drag. To meet Dennis’s fantasy, the domme had to maintain the illusion that not only is she more vain, cruel, and selfish than she probably is, but that her life is an effortlessly charmed one full of conspicuous consumption since birth.
Whew! That wore me out. I’d prefer it if the guy just took his clothes off and let me get to work. Please pass the paddle.
I’m typically amused and bemused by Findom. It often seems there’s as many dommes leaving in fantasy land as there are clients. There seems to be a lot of marketing and bullshit from some of them. However, as you say, the good ones turn it into an art form. It must be a very tough gig to pull off successfully and consistently.
I’m reminded of a comment I heard from a domme about dealing with adult babies. She said that they were needy, whiny and annoying. She added that she’d never wanted kids of her own and certainly didn’t want to have to deal with them at work. I suspect dealing with Dennis and other similar clients is another high maintenance exercise.
-paltego