My post on long gloves triggered a number of interesting comments. Readers had a variety of different theories on why they were particularly sexy. With advance apologies to the original commenters, I’ll try and summarize them here. I may well screw this up.
- Long gloves are explicitly decorative rather than functional, so sends a signal of being desirable and wishing to attract attention.
- Gloves are protective armor, insulating the wearer from the world. So long gloves emphasize this separation, elevating the wearer above the viewer.
- They emphasize the limb and trigger thoughts of either touching or being touched by them. That’s particularly true for sleek sensual materials like latex, leather, velvet, etc.
- Gloves communicate both intent and, in the case of long gloves, high status. Once the gloves are pulled on then things – possibly evil things – are about to happen.
What I like about these theories is that they’re all different, possibly contradictory, yet entirely plausible. In fact it’s possible that they might be simultaneously contradictory and yet all correct, which seems impossible. They work in different ways for different people in different contexts.
This is Cindy Crawford shot by Ellen Von Unwerth for Italian Vogue in 1991. Which of the above theories matches to this particular image? I think I could make a case that it works for all of them.
So no word to describe my particular fetish… hmmm does that mean I get to create a new word for the Oxford English Dictionary? Team effort anyone?
Feel free to throw some idea out there! Although I’m not really sure who is in charge of choosing fetish names. It does seem that a lot of very common fetishes have no name at all, yet incredibly obscure ones that apply to just a handful of people get named. Doesn’t really seem to make a lot of logical sense.
-paltego