The beauty of dominant women
Here’s an image with a very high density of kinks. There’s all sorts of fun stuff going on – bondage, leashes, feet, heels, whips and crushing. It’s extreme, yet somehow it captures the sense of a real life play session.
Sadly, I’ve no idea where it’s from or who the creator is. I found it lurking in a obscure folder on my hard drive. I suspect I got it from a tumblr years ago. Reverse image search didn’t turn up any useful leads.
This lovely shot – courtesy of Elise Graves and Bondage Liberation – reminded me of the old tumblr ‘Happy BDSM.’ Its content was exactly as its name suggests and was featured here in past posts.
The original site is now sadly defunct, gone the way of most tumblrs, but I’m a little surprised that nobody has thought to resurrect the concept. For kinky folks I think its contents effect was much the same as seeing posts of cute animals doing adorable things. It’s an ‘ahhh’ moment – a little hit of endorphins and happiness before we go about our day.
You can find the original image, along with others from this scene, via this tweet. Elise is a professional rigger, bondage model and domme based in SF. You can find her Bondage Liberation site here and her twitter feed here. The male performer is the West Coast based Ruckus.
This photograph – courtesy of Mari Cherry – looks like what you’d get if you asked an AI to digest my twitter feed and create a single image to represent it. There’s bondage, nakedness, service, food/drink and a cute pet. It’s a shot with a lovely calmness to it. A lot of forniphilia looks forced and uncomfortable. This looks uncomfortable in just the right way.
Mari Cherry is an SF based domme and rigger. You can find her primary site here and her Twitter feed here.
At a quick glance I thought this image belonged to the genre: “Hot domme in fetish gears hangs out in gritty urban environment to create interesting study in contrasts.” It’s not a major kinky genre, but there are a few examples around. For example, this one from the late great Mistress Adrienne.
However, on looking more closely, there’s a pretty clear sign it’s not your average urban environment. That hooded naked man locked away in the pen for one. There’s something particularly sexy about over the top bondage. Adding extra control when it’s not needed makes it so much hotter. In this case to go along with the bars on the door there’s the thick chain hooked outside, the leather hood and the locked hands in mittens. Lovely.
The hot domme in question here is Mistress Trinity accompanied by Heavy, sourced via this tweet. Unfortunately, the space is at Studio Avalon, which AFAIK closed in 2020.
Updated thanks to a helpful comment: The space is probably Residenz Avalon, rather than the studio. Unfortunately, it’s also no longer around. You can see a video from what used to be here.
Continuing the theme of masks and hoods in femdom shots, here’s another nice example. I think this works because everything fits with the dynamic of the scene. The cuffs, the hood and the background all suggest a prison setting. It’s an up close and personal interrogation and she’s probably not on familiar terms with the Geneva convention.
After a bit of hunting around I believe this is from the Paraphilia51 clips site.
One of the common problems of femdom porn is the use of silly hoods for submissives. When used appropriately hoods can be super hot thanks to their objectifying nature. However, they’re often just simple balaclavas or loose gimp masks being used to hide the identity of the amateur/volunteer submissive. See my past two posts for some thoughts on that topic.
Here’s a good example of how hotness can be preserved while still masking identity. I’ve actually no idea if that was part of the goal here, or if this setup was purely about the look and sensory experience. Either way, it’s a very sexy shot that shows faceless submissive aren’t mutually exclusive with sensual imagery. The heavy knot where his mouth is makes for a particularly nice touch.
This was created by the professional rigger and domme Mari Cherry, based out of San Francisco. I sourced it from this tweet. You can find her primary site for booking sessions here.
I always enjoy shots like this one, where people have been inspired to recreate a kinky scene from art or from a magazine. For example, this previous post from all the back in 2013. They make me think of a chef doing a riff on someone else’s classic recipe.
In fact this’d probably make for a good game show, along the lines of Top Chef. However, instead of a kitchen and a few selected ingredients, contestants get a well equipped play space and a classic BDSM image to recreate. I’d love to watch a series featuring great dommes try to do their best possible recreation of a Sardax Milking Machine image or a classic John Willie bondage drawing in an hour or less.
I believe the domme here is the famous Amanda Wildefyre. You can find information about her sessions, playspace and onlines lessons on her professional site.
One final comment on the recent ‘Fetish or Fashion’ pop-quiz I’ve been running. Servitor posed the very reasonable question: Why not both?
That’s a fair point. As far as the resulting images go, they contain significant elements of both fetish and fashion. I guess I should frame the question around the image creators and their primary industry. Is it a pro-domme / fetish producer or a model being paid for a shoot with a (relatively) mainstream publication. Is it someone who spends more time in dungeons and playspaces than they do strutting a catwalk? What kind of animal do they usually have at the end of a leash? Petite Pomeranian or a perky puppy boy?
There’s clearly a healthy interchange between the fashion and fetish worlds. However, I’m not sure it’s always a equally balanced exchange. A lot of pro-dommes are extremely fashion aware. Unfortunately, on the flipside, fashion editors and photographers often seem confused about kink. A charitable take would be that they’re deliberately re-interpreting and re-contextualizing kink to tell their own stories. After all, their ultimate goal is different to someone creating material for a kink or fetish market. A less charitable interpretation would be they’re raiding kink for easy shock value and then haphazardly mashing its elements together without any really understanding.
I think the distinction between fashion or fetish often doesn’t come down to the clothes, styling, make-up or beauty of the subjects. It’s down to their understanding and intelligent use of the kinky elements. Or not.
This mainstream fashion shot is from Vice Serbia, features rapper Sajsi Mc and was photographed by Alek Živković.
Choosing images for this site can be an erratic process. Sometimes I can scroll through endless pages of tumblr’s, tweets and my personal image trove and not find anything that catches my eye. On the other hand, there are some content creators where why challenge is not simply reposting everything they do. I could happily re-post all of Sardax’s work or every image that Mistress Iris shares.
Elise Graves is another of those kinky content creators whose work I could happily feature on any or every day of the week. This shot for her Bondage Liberation site is a great example of why. It’s got a beautiful blend of heavy bondage and emotional tenderness. Just the kind of mix that pushes my buttons.
This was sourced from a tweet that has some more great shots from the same scene. It features Elise with Heavy, photographed by Kino Payne. You can get this film and more like on the Bondage Liberation site.
I’m continuing the leash artwork theme with this post, although with a pretty significant change of tone. This one is a lot more serious and painful looking. His cute little furry ears are clearly not earning him much sympathy from his owner.
Unfortunately I don’t know who the artist is or if it’s part of an image series. I’d guess it is, but reverse image searching took me nowhere. Momiji refers to red tinted maple leaves, but that doesn’t really help narrow it down.
Thanks to Sardax I believe I now can give an attribution: Koyo who posts under the @KouYou177 twitter handle. As Sardax says in his comment, his work is intense, but definitely worth exploring if you enjoy heavier femdom artwork.
