Hooks

Writing about Fakir Musafar reminded me of one of the activities he helped bring into kinky culture – flesh hooks combined with suspension. His promotion of it was controversial, bringing charges of cultural appropriation. It’s a ritual used in multiple cultures – including some of the Native American tribes – and a bunch of white people adopting it into kinky culture was understandably not a welcome development for some.

I’ve never done it, but I have had several dommes say they’d love to do a flesh hook scene with me. Not sure what it is about me that creates the desire to suspend me from big metal hooks, but there clearly must be something. I doubt I’ll ever have the combination of nerve and opportunity.

While I might lack the right stuff, I do remember Mistress Matisse writing of her experience of a flesh hook scene. Oddly enough she was a participant rather than a coordinator. You can read about it over three of her old Control Tower articles – part 1, part 2 and part 3.  An intense scene.

This is Mistress Matisse from a recent photograph on her Bluesky feed.

A body to Live In

Film fans in the London area might want to check out A Body to Live In. It’s a film about Fakir Musafar that’s showing as part of the BFI Film Festival. The Guardian has an article on it that also covers some of the biographical detail.

We hear the artist narrating his early experiments in body play – such as during a weekend when he was 17 when his parents were away. Alone, he fasted for two days and restricted his waist with a chain, and clipped his body with hundreds of clothes pegs – an experience he said gave him feelings of belonging and of power. In adulthood, Musafar started throwing self-taught naked “piercing parties”, then starred in “freakshow” performances inspired by circus acts, such as lying on beds of nails in front of audiences as weights were placed on top of him.

He described his gender and sexuality as being ‘in the cracks’ and from the Guardian article and others on him, that seems like a good description. His life and work seems hard to pigeon hole – existing at intersections of art, kink, body modification, gender exploration, ritual, transformation, etc.  Growing up in the 1940’s and 50’s in South Dakota he was obviously forced to blaze his own distinctive trail.

This is Annie Sprinkle with Fakir Musafar, in a shot taken in the early 80s.

Into the Dark

If you’re interested in exploring age play and similar kinks then I’d point you to this online course running this Thursday (20th).  It’s being run by Princess Natasha Strange, who is an experienced player in this area. Here’s a chance to pick up a few tips from her for a small course fee.

This is Princess Natasha Strange pictured in ‘Mother’s Den’ at her Portland play space. I sourced it via her Bluesky feed.

Monochrome

Apologies for the lack of recent posts. Last week was a crazy busy one at work, which left me zero energy and time for blogging. Hopefully, normal service should now be resumed.

My last post on black and white outfits got me thinking about monochrome porn photographs. Sometimes the images started out that way, but more often than not it’s manipulation of a color image after the fact. You can find an lot of tumblr content like this – for example. Why is it such a popular style?

Part of the answer is that it obviously makes the image less porny and more arty. Mainstream black and white photography is often by artists, so it’s an easy manipulation to do to create that connection. Fashion advertisements occasionally use the same trick.

However, that doesn’t really answer why it’s such a popular thing to do. My guess is that color images feel like depictions of reality, where monochrome is more distanced and abstract, which makes fantasy projection easier. A detailed color image captures the world as it was, making me simply a distant observer. A monochrome image is more dreamlike, allowing me to imagine being part of the story.

Here’s a story I’d happily be part of. I’m not sure of the original source. I found it via tumblr.

Black and White

My last post was about the use of strong colors in the outfits of female politicians and how that’s failed to penetrate the kink scene. That got me thinking about the opposite case: Why is monochrome so sexy?

There’s the obvious trope of black leather in kink, but it’s more than just that. Combinations of black and white crop up all the time. I’m partial to them myself. Is it the severity of the contrast? The seriousness they imply? The sterility?

I wonder if part of the story is practicality leading to fetishization. If you’re buying different kinky pieces to combine into different outfits, then colors complicate things. You have to worry about clashing and coordination. Monochrome is flexible and works in all situations. Dommes therefore bias to it, which leads subs to fetishize the look, which encourages still more monochromic looks. A colorless feedback loop.

I believe this is from the horror film American Mary.

The Uniform of Power

Miss Pearl posed an interesting question in a recent Bluesky post.

It’s very odd that people fetishize all sorts of things, but for dommes I don’t see a lot of people craving the color blocking powerful female politicians and modern royalty do.

It’s an established aesthetic, by this point.

I’d not really thought about it before, but she raises a good point. That is a very established aesthetic, as any quick image search will show. For example, this shot of Congresswomen from 2015 and the image at the top of this article.  But I’ve never seen it referenced or used much in a kinky context.

Is it too recent a trend? Most kinks take hold in a formative years, so perhaps kinksters in coming years will be craving bright red pantsuits. Or maybe political power is too diffuse and abstract to fetishize easily? Law making is messy even at the best of times, and we’re a long from those right now. Perhaps it’s down to how power is acquired. Politicians have to campaign and compromise to get it, which is healthy for society but not sexy.

Some might suggest that it’s because men fetishize the fantasy of women in power, but not the reality. They want it on their terms, not hers. But I’d never be so cynical.

This is Jane Grey, a London based pro-domme, showing off a suit in a particularly bright block of color. It’s probably a bit too daring for a politician, but looks fabulous on Mistress Jane. You can find more at her profession site and on instagram.

Femdom Decadence

If you’re in Southern California in March, enjoy play parties and have disposable income, then you might want to check out the Femdom Decadence Party. It describes itself as a ‘full day femdom immersion and play party in Joshua Tree’ and runs on March 22nd.

On the plus side, the Mistress line-up is a veritable Who’s-Who of LA pro-dommes. I can’t speak for the quality of the party or every domme, but I have had fabulous past sessions with attendees Mistress Damiana Chi, Mistress Inga Larsson, Mistress Kiko Rope and Mistress Lucy Khan.

On the negative side, it is $2,000 for the day per submissive. Which is a decent chunk of change. However, a multi-hour session with any top pro-domme these days can be a thousand dollars or more. So, in that context, it might be seen as bit of a bargain, given the location and dommes involved. Check out their website if it sounds like your kind of thing.

This is the elegant Mistress Kiko Rope, one of the attendees. You can see more at her website here.

Jack Vettriano

The Scottish painter Jack Vettriano has passed away at the age of 73. He was a mainstream artist, not explicitly a femdom or fetish one, but kink was clearly an undercurrent in a good amount of his work. I featured two of his paintings in past posts – here and here.

While he had a lot of commercial success he was despised by the critics and art world. This article on him was one of the more positive ones I’ve seen, and even here the writer can’t resist finishing with how he finds his paintings ‘heinous and grim’. It’s a somewhat incoherent article, but I think there’s one thing it gets right…

The main issue for snobby art types like me isn’t the work itself. It’s that he lacked a conceptual edge, a sense of irony and any postmodern self-awareness. He didn’t paint sexy midnight trysts between half-clothed women and Brylcreemed men as a comment on gendered power dynamics or as a riff on art historical depictions of the female nude. He painted them because they were sexy.

There’s something to be said for that. One can enjoy a simpler message without it detracting from other more complex works. Unabashed sexuality and hedonism for the joy of it makes people uncomfortable. Undercutting it – as this writer does by likening it to a greasy double cheeseburger – relieves that discomfort.

They’re not paintings I’d choose to hang on my walls or spend thousands of dollars on. But one can still choose to appreciate them and their openly kinky themes.

This is by Jack Vettriano and entitled ‘Wicked Games’