Half drag

This isn’t really a femdom related post. Instead it features an image from a series that I found fascinating, and thought a lot of my readers would also appreciate.

The photograph below is from a sequence entitled ‘Half Drag’ by the photographer Leland Bobbé. It features pictures of drag queens and, in the words of the photographer, is designed to “capture both the male and the alter-ego female side of these subjects in one image.” None of the shots in it are composite images. They’re a single photograph taken after the subject has been very carefully made-up on just one side of their face (in this particular case that of Pusse Couture’s). Both from a craftsmanship and artistic perspective I think they’re amazing shots. You can read more background and donate to the project on the artist’s blog.

As far as I’m aware (and I’m no expert) drag queens occupy a particular unique niche of their own. There may be complex intersections with gender roles, sexual orientation, fetish, performance, etc. but it’s not the same as any of them. However, just to jump back into the kink arena for a moment, the idea of an exaggerated female persona does seem to be a popular theme with male submissives. Some see it as a form of humiliation, which is not something I’m a fan of and therefore don’t typically feature here. For others it seems to be a very positive change, an aspiration to be an object of desire or a chance to explore a hidden side of themselves. It’s a shame that these two alternatives often seem to get conflated together.

Pusse Couture in half drag. Photographed by Leland Bobbé

Sutures in Seattle

I do a lot of sessions that never get blogged about. Either we don’t remember to take photographs or they’re intense but not particularly visually interesting. However, today’s post brings you a scene I did last week with Lady Lydia which was both a little unusual and we remembered the camera for.

As the post title suggests it features suturing. There’s no blood and nothing particularly graphic in the shots. Unless you count a naked me as graphic (I wouldn’t blame you if you did). That said, there is some piercing and skin sutures involved, so I’ve put the details on a separate page. If you’re interested in seeing what a very talented domme can do with a cutting needle, some surgical suture and a willing volunteer, then feel free to follow the jump.

Weirdly sexy

This is undoubtedly a sexy image. Gorgeous woman. Well proportioned guy with a cute bow-tie. Nice D/s vibe from the positions. Yet oddly, I find the fact her lingerie is mismatch the sexist element of all. I have no idea why, other than the fact I’m weird.

Sexy image of woman standing over a manI found this on the Work is Never Over tumblr (whose author also commented on the mismatch). It’s taken from a fashion shoot and the photographer is Antonio Andrade.

Let’s hope it’s firmly attached

The internet is awash in fake pills and dangerous devices that claim to help enlarge a penis. These ladies appear to be taking a more direct approach. Grab one end and pull, hard. Either that, or it’s a new exercise routine they’re working on. Squeeze, pull, twist, and repeat. Ignore the screams.

Two women at the gym torturing a manI found this on the Gustos Extremos tumblr. I think (although I’m not entirely sure) that it’s from the Strapon Dreamer site.

Augustine returns!

Augustine’s artwork featured in my very first post to this site, and he was the first artist I added to the Femdom Artwork page. He closed the original site for his work some time ago, so I was very happy to hear (via a comment he left) that he’d started a new tumblr featuring both his old work and any new pieces. There are only a handful of drawings there currently, but I’m looking forward to seeing it grow in the future.

Artwork by Augustine

In your face

I like this shot because it’s simultaneously conventional and unusual. The composition is very conventional. There are a million shots out there featuring a woman sitting on a man’s face. What makes it unusual is the very shallow depth of field, which blurs him out and pushes her very much to the fore. There’s a vibrant immediacy to her. She’s both in his face and in our face.

Shiloh Avery photographed by Eric Kroll

The model is Shiloh Avery and the photographer is Eric Kroll. I found it on the We Like the Weird Stuff tumblr.

Nurse Ratched Revisited

Medical role play is pretty common in BDSM and particularly in femdom. It’s a natural fit with the dominant female authority figure and all those invasive and potentially painful medical treatments. Everything from needles and catheters through to straightjackets and dental gags have been appropriated into the kinky domain.

Most femdom medical imagery is pretty fetishistic, with lots of shapely nurses brandishing random medical equipment and staring into the camera. For example, this kind of shot. Pretty but not all that scary. For really disturbing kinky medical themed images it turns out the fashion industry is the place to look. Specifically this shoot for Interview Magazine by photographer Steven Klein featuring Karolina Kurková and Crystal Renn.

Apparently it draws heavily on the institutional white trend of Spring 2012 and features such designers as Jennifer Fein, Stella McCartney and Dolce & Gabbana. It’s certainly one of the most fetishistic and BDSM heavy fashion shoots I’ve ever seen. I’m guessing they must have hired a professional bondage rigger for the ropework shot. I think if a photographer for somewhere like Kink.com had come back with these images they’d have sent him away with the instructions to come up with something a little less fucked up next time.

Karolina Kurkova & Crystal Rennfor  Interview Magazine

Karolina Kurkova & Crystal Renn for Interview Magazine

Splat!

It’s always important to be able to give clear and unambiguous feedback on the quality of someone’s work. How else can they expect to improve? It would appear that the young lady below has certainly mastered the art. I doubt that he’ll forget to mop behind the kitchen waste bin next time.

The drawing is by Bakerman (free deviant art login required). He has created a big collection of fun femdom drawings, a lot of which feature pies to the face. They’re a little too slapstick for my personal erotic taste, but they do make me smile. For those that do savor the idea the idea of getting pied by a dominant female, then his work could be just your cup of tea (and slice of cake).

Teacher's Brow Gets Mopped by BakermanThe original title for the piece is ‘Teacher’s Brow Gets Mopped‘ and the artists description of it reads “Two young women felt this instructor wasn’t being professional, so one shoved a mop in his face while the other waited to dump muddy water over his head.”

So near and yet so far

Just from an artistic perspective alone I like this image a lot. There’s a nice sense of balance to it, with their contrasting head and hand positions, and that one delicate point of contact between them. It’s also very sexy. Assuming he’s been told to remain still, she just has to sway slightly to tease and torment him. Sliding backwards equals pleasure, leaning forwards equals denial.

So near and yet so farI found in on the Fetish Locker tumblr. I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution.

Openly Submissive?

I stumbled across this post over at the Masculine Submission blog recently. It’s on the ever thorny topic of the perception of male submission in society. This is a reoccurring theme on many D/s blogs, and I’ve written about it in the past (which resulted in my most heavily commented post ever). I’ve played devils advocate before, and I’m about to do so again, although puzzlement would be a better way to summarize my attitude. I don’t want to be critical or diminish someone’s views, I just have difficulty relating.

Tomio’s whole post is worth reading, but the thrust of it is about the difficulty of being an openly submissive man in common environments that are hostile to that characteristic.

Why don’t submissive men hang out in the gym? That’s like asking why fish don’t hang out in the middle of the Sahara. It isn’t a friendly place for submissive men (let me be clear – I’m talking about guys who are openly submisisve…there are TONS of guys who pass as macho but are submissive when no one is watching)

If a man feels insecure about expressing who he is (security is the second level of needs); then he is incapable of achieving higher levels of existence.
Tomio Black

The part that puzzles me here is the idea of being ‘openly submissive’ in this kind of context? What does that really mean?

I don’t go to the gym regularly, a fact that’ll surprise no one who has seen any of my session shots. But the reason isn’t because of hostility, but because I find working out to be incredibly, brain numbingly, shoot-me now, tedious. I’m not really sure how open submission would manifest itself in a gym scenario. Actually, that’s not true, thanks to these kind of posts from Olivia Fitzgerald I do have some pretty good fantasies. But in reality, the daily interactions I have with people and places don’t normally touch on my innate submissive nature.

I find submission, like masochism, is entirely contextual. At work I tend to the forceful and aggressive. That’s not something forced on me by society, but just a natural function of working in a very competitive intellectually demanding area. In social groups I’m normally easy going and a facilitator of conversation, but not at all submissive. Only with the right person to accept my submission does that side of me come out.

I totally understand the potential difficulties in being a D/s couple in society, but that doesn’t seem to be what Tomio is talking about here. So am I just missing something here? Do other male submissives feel the need to openly express their submission in daily life, outside the specific context of a D/s relationship? Is the pressure to act like a ‘real man’ in conflict with how they intrinsically feel?

'leave me the way i was before' by BenegesserittA black and white version of this image has been floating around a lot of tumblrs (I found it on Red Snapper). I believe it is by the artist Benegesseritt from deviantART, and entitled leave me the way i was before.