Say it with Flowers

I’ve been decorated before in sessions, but never anything quite like this beautiful shot. It’s by Asha Luna, a Melbourne based domme, using flowers her submissive brought to the session.

Being used as a canvas is not something I ever particularly fantasize about, but it’s always very hot when it happens. The submissive is simultaneously the focus while also being objectified. An essential part of the art but also just a mechanism for the domme to express herself. For that reason I never really request it as a style of play, as it seems too personal to do so. It has to be something triggered by the domme and her creative spark.

Mistress Asha Luna’s professional site is here and her twitter feed here.

Posture

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. This weekend marked the 50th birthday of one of my most sociable friends. That resulted in a lot of parties, drinking and, because we’re now all old, complaining about the amount of drinking that had happened the night before. Unfortunately all the complaining and/or drinking left very little blogging time. Normal service should be resumed in the next day or so.

In the meantime let me leave you with this image from the famed photographer Ellen Von Unwerth. I’m not sure if it’s strictly femdom, but it’s got a certain something about it. There’s a suggestion of power and control in the dynamic, with the lurking threat of punishment if certain standards are not maintained.

Jennifer and Vince

Here’s a final post in my short celebrity femdom sequence. I’m particularly happy about this one as it creates a sequence within a sequence. Jennifer Aniston, shown here with Vince Vaughn, was obviously a main character on the series Friends. Ditto for Matt LeBlanc from yesterday’s post. And while Ben Stiller (from this post) was never a regular on Friends, he did guest star as one of Rachel’s boyfriends in an episode called ‘The One with the Screamer‘. This is of course all totally meaningless to random readers looking for a dose of femdom hotness, but emergent patterns please my inner anal retentive dork.

Foot Fetish Fail

I’m continuing my celebrity femdom theme with this shot. I think it’s fair to say that Matt LeBlanc does not have a foot fetish. Many people, faced with Shalom Harlow’s dainty pinkies in a high heeled shoe, would have a smile on their face and only one focus for their eyes. Matt looks like he can’t wait for the photographer to be done so he can get away.

This was shot for Vogue by Arthur Elgort back in 1997. I can’t believe this shot is over 20 years old. I found it on labstrakt’s tumblr.

Penelope and Ben

I’m not sure how I missed this when it was originally released. This is Penelope Cruz and Ben Stiller shot by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue back in 2016. It was part of a sequence re-creating iconic fashion shots to publicize the movie Zoolander 2. I have to admit that I’ve absolutely no idea what the original shot is that they’re re-creating.

Updated: It was based on a Helmut Newton shot from 1976. My thanks to Mistress C for the tip.

Willing to be Entrapped

What is it with Russia and the sexy red headed female spys? First there was Anna Chapman and now we’ve got Maria Butina. Has the FIS been watching too many James Bond movies? I guess if you’re going to corrupt American democracy, you might as well look good while doing it.

With this in mind, if there are similar Russian operatives still in the US, I’d like to announce that I know … lots of super important classified stuff. I might not be involved in politics, or defense, or election monitoring, or indeed anything apparently relevant, but trust me on this, I’ve got like dozens of top secret things in my head. I’m totally worth entrapping in a cunning erotic plot by a sexy female spy. She may even have to interrogate me. Tell her to pack nipple clamps and lingerie, but leave the thumb screws at home. Mild kink with a dose of sensuality is absolutely the best way to get inside my pants head.

The first image here is Anna Chapman and the second is Maria Butina.

The Pits

The story of a company selling advertising space on people’s armpits popped up onto my radar over the weekend. The idea is that the advertisement becomes visible when people grab hold of overhead straps on public transport.

I like this story for two reasons. Firstly, armpits are sexy. Definitely an underrated bit of the body. Secondly, its strikes me as a brilliant bit of guerrilla marketing. Not the general concept I hasten to add – pretty sure that’s bullshit. But the ad agency in question – Wakino –  has managed to get itself and its first and so far only armpit ad customer a lot of free PR. That first customer just happens to be an underarm hair removal product. So rather using a regular advertising campaign with models to get customers, they claimed to have created a whole new (silly) advertising vehicle, got a lot of free press coverage from that, and as result their company and their customer got a lot of eyeballs. It’s very meta.

This is Mistress T advertising nothing except the beauty of her own armpits and feet. I believe this is from her twitter feed.

Theresa Berkley

I thought I’d finish my short sequence of posts on femdom in history with one on Theresa Berkley. She was one of the earliest and most famous pro-dommes operating as we’d recognize the profession today. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m sure that kink and femdom has been around for thousands of years, but the desire alone doesn’t necessarily translate into a viable domination business. For that you need a wealthy urbanized society and a culture with at least some degree of sexual openness.  The existence of that combination in 18th century London allowed Theresa to open a dedicated house of flagellation, which she stocked with furniture and toys of her own design.

Probably the most famous device she created was the Berkley horse, as shown in the illustration below. It allowed the client to tied to it for a beating on their rear, while still giving access to the face and genitals. Judging the following quote, some of her clients were pretty hardcore masochists…

A pound sterling for the first blood drawn, two pounds sterling if the blood runs down to my heels, three pounds sterling if my heels are bathed in blood, four pounds sterling if the blood reaches the floor, and five pounds sterling if you succeed in making me lose consciousness.

Five pounds sterling in 1800 translates to around five hundred and fifty pounds (720 US dollars) when adjusted for inflation, so not all that far off the current price for professional domination in London today. Although I doubt any pro-dommes these days will accept a bonus for making a client lose consciousness.

Phyllis and Aristotle

While the word dominatrix may have relatively recent coinage – as covered in yesterday’s post – the concept of femdom and male submission has been around a lot longer. It’s obviously impossible to know its true history, but given that sex, power and control have fascinated humans for thousands of years, I’m guessing kink has been around since we climbed out of the trees and decided to take an extended camping holiday on the plains of Africa.

Sadly those early humans haven’t left us a lot of information about their sex lives, but if you look to more recent recorded history, there’s no shortage of femdom. For example, the 12th century brings us the story of Phyllis and Aristotle. Although it features a famous Greek philosopher, the story is medieval in origin.

Aristotle advised his pupil Alexander to avoid the king’s seductive mistress, Phyllis, but was himself captivated by her. She agreed to ride him, on condition that she could play the role of dominatrix. Phyllis had secretly told Alexander what to expect, and he witnessed Phyllis proving that a woman’s charms could overcome even the greatest philosopher’s male intellect.

That’s a lot of kinks to pack into a short story. You’ve not only got femdom but also pony play, cuckolding, voyeurism and public humiliation.

This artwork of Phyllis and Aristotle, with Alexander looking on, is circa 1485 and is attributed to the German artist known as Master of the Housebook.

If you’re interested in to read more of the background to this story, and see more of the associated artwork, check out this blog post. The author attributes the historical popularity of the story to male anxiety of powerful women. That’s possible, but couldn’t it also be attributed to kinking on powerful women and an excuse to create femdom artwork in a socially acceptable context?

Dominatrix

I don’t use the word dominatrix on this blog very often. In fact, WordPress tells me that this is the first post I’ve ever written with that particular title. Given that this is post number 2,334 on a blog exclusively about female domination, I find that kind of amazing.

While I generally prefer the word ‘domme’, which carries less cultural baggage, it’s undoubtedly true that ‘dominatrix’ is the word the mainstream world most strongly associates with femdom.  But do you know where the modern usage derives from?

The word itself can be traced back to the 16th century. However, the original usage wasn’t sexual or related to kink at all. It simply referred to domination in the broadest possible sense. For example, a book from 1852 referred to France’s Napoleon as having been the dominatrix of Europe. Voltaire described destiny as the dominatrix of the gods, as the gods are of the world. Cassell’s Latin dictionary from 1892 defines a dominatrix as a woman who governs or rules (e.g. a town). 

The first usage in the modern sense is a very surprising and obscure one. According to ‘The History & Arts of the Dominatrix‘ it was in a pulp paperback by Bruce Rogers called ‘The Bizarre Lovermakers’ published in 1967.  Until I came to research this post I’d never heard of either that book or its author. A year later it was used as the title of a Myron Kosloff and Eric Stanton book, and then more broadly popularized in  the 1976 porn film ‘Dominatrix Without Mercy‘. If you look at the usage of the word on Google books, it was very obscure until the late 1970’s, and then suddenly bursts into popularity through the 80’s and 90’s.

I think I’d always subconsciously assumed that dominatrix had a similar etymology as sadism and masochism. i.e. Coined by a well known author in a classic book from the 18th or 19th century.  In actuality it was given its modern twist by an obscure pulp novelist from the 1960’s.