A Royal Warrant

Cheap and cheesy BDSM kits are nothing new. They pop up in sex shops all the time, typically with some weak restraints, a blindfold and a limp flogger. A new kit called ‘Prince and I’ may not improve much on the typical contents, but the marketing is at least innovative. Not many sex toys get associated with royalty, but Vegas domme Carrie Royale has managed to turn 15 minutes of fame into a sales gimmick and tabloid headlines. I’m sure the Buckingham Palace lawyers are putting together the ‘cease and desist’ letters at this very minute, but personally I’m a fan of her approach. The British royal family is an expensive waste of space. The least they can do is provide some valuable marketing material for a domme with a good eye for publicity.

One other thing in common between royalty and dommes (at least of the professional kind) is the love of a good throne. They crop up in dungeons and femdom porn all the time. Here’s Mistress Ella Kross in a particularly ornate one. While a throne may be common, not many dommes can boast a battle axe on the wall behind it.

EllaKrossI should add that the idea of using royalty to sell products is certainly not a new one. It might seem anachronistic but lots of British products carry a Royal Warrant, meaning that they’re supplied to a royal personage. The bottle of HP sauce in my cupboard has the fact that it’s “By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen” emblazoned around its neck. In the list of goods carrying the British Royal family warrant the only sexual one I can find is for lingerie. Dungeon furniture and torture equipment would actually be appropriate for an old aristocratic family, but sadly I don’t see any of that.

AVN Season (final)

There might have been little attention paid to kink and BDSM at AVN, but one of the winners does have a femdom connection. Riley Reid, who picked up the Female Performer of the Year award, has done a number of shoots for Femdom Empire. She’s one of a growing number of conventional porn stars who seem to be happy to cross over and shoot kink.

Years ago there was a fairly clear distinction between people who shot BDSM and those who shot conventional porn. That now seems to be breaking down. Partly I suspect that’s down to the growth of BDSM porn and the larger professional studios shooting it. However, I’d guess that an even larger factor might be how often regular sex (PIV, oral, anal, etc.) now gets mixed in with more hardcore bondage and pain shots. I think that mixture puts off a lot of potential BDSM performers, particularly dommes. I’ve talked to several who wouldn’t shoot for kink.com anymore because sex in a femdom scene was considered part of the shoot. Instead they decided either to not shoot or stick to their own clipstores where they had more control. This in turn opens up opportunities for regular porn stars who don’t mind mixing sex and kink. So it has been less a simple removal of barriers, and more an expansion of regular porn and retreat of BDSM specialists.

Riley ReidHere is the aforementioned Riley Reid demonstrating some of the skills and attributes that made her female performer of the year. I hope the owner of this pair of testicles feels that he contributed in some small (painful) way to her ultimate success. This was obviously shot for Femdom Empire.

International Fetish Day

Apparently International Fetish Day is a thing and I just missed it. It’s the third Friday of the year, which seems a rather silly scheduling decision, as there’s no memorable date. Are they trying to overlap it was workplace casual Friday’s? Maybe forget the jeans and t-shirt and turn up in your gimpsuit?

Fashion and horological issues aside, there’s a good article on it at The Debrief. It talks about kink, fetish and queerness in a very open and approachable manner. It’s the kind of mainstream article that can help demystify kink and encourage discussion.

Personally, I’m more of a masochist and power exchange kinkster than a fetishist. That said, if I was going to pick out a few specific things that push my fetish buttons, this image would be a good starting point. There are boots, leather gloves, facesitting, a happy lady and red wine. Those last two may not typically be listed as a fetish, but all five of them make me smile.

Facesitting

Leather for him and her

I’m sure the reason this was originally posted (I think on this tumblr) was the because of the attractive lady in leather. The image cropping would certainly suggest that. However, I actually really like his outfit and predicament. His black outfit makes him anonymous and objectified. The wall fasteners are functional, efficient and positioned so as to make his posture very uncomfortable. I particularly like the one on top of the hood. It doesn’t look like much, but having the head held like that is quite an intense experience. Fancy ropework across naked flesh is all very well, but sometimes you can’t beat a functional leather and metal combination.

Two leather outfitsI’m afraid I don’t know who this is. She clearly has an interesting playspace to go with the outfits, although I’m not entirely sure that lamp is a good match for the walls. If anyone can help with the attribution then please leave me a comment.

Update: Thanks to a comment I believe this is Jacqueline The-ripper. Her instagram feed is here.

Cavalry Charge

I’m really not sure what this video is about. There are attractive ladies, pony boys, fetish gear, jousting and a beach. I like it. I just don’t know why it was created. Although maybe it isn’t necessary to have a reason to exist when that kind of subject matter is involved. We should be thankful that someone felt the need to record it.

I particularly liked the fact that it wasn’t filmed on a private beach. If you look in the background you can see random tourists sunbathing and looking on. I always find beaches pretty boring, but this group of people showing up would certainly liven the experience up.

Femdom beach jousting
My thanks to Mistress Sidonia for pointing me at this in a recent blog post.

Memory lane

I went to see a great 80’s cover band tonight. Drinking heavily and loudly singing along to 80’s hits probably isn’t ideal preparation for kinky fun tomorrow afternoon. My throat will probably be cursing me, but sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

I don’t have a date or attribution for the image below, but I have to think it’s a vintage femdom shot from the 80’s. Something about the boots and the look just shout it.

VintageFemdom

Lady with her man

I couldn’t really wrap up a sequence of posts on clothing without featuring a uniform of some kind. Although if anyone is arriving at this post after searching for ‘femdom uniform’ they’re probably feeling a bit disappointed.

The lovely lady in the boots is Cordelia Kuznetsova. I don’t know the gentleman, but I believe he’s wearing a French uniform from the First World War. In fact I should say from the start of the war, as the French military quickly figured out that wearing bright red pantalon was not the best plan when facing men armed with modern rifles and machine guns.

Couple
I found this on the he stoops to worship (aka Devoted Sub) tumblr.

Burke and Hare

Excuse me for a moment while I rant. I doubt it’ll do much good, but it will make me feel better. Given the time I spend on this blog, I figure it owes me the occasional indulgence.

The recent Amnesty proposal to decriminalize sex work (covered in this past post) has generated a lot of column inches in the press and a lot of stupid generalizations. It’s has also frequently featured a phrase I absolutely despise – ‘selling their bodies’. Let me state clearly that the only time a news article should be discussing the selling of bodies is if the profession concerned is grave robbery. In any other situation it’s completely fucking obnoxious.

It’s strange that anti-sex workers insist on objectifying the people they profess to care about so much. It’s almost as if they care more about their personal beliefs and morality than the people they claim to be helping. Perhaps Cindy McCain now thinks John owns her body after having sex, but there’s no reason to inflict her screwed up reasoning on the rest of us.

As an aside, I suspect anyone using this phrase has some deep rooted issues around sex. It seems to stem from the same kind of thinking that considers sex as a reductive act that somehow devalues and ‘uses’ up women. In everything else in life practice makes you better, yet somehow something that gives great pleasure, and almost everyone does, is the exception. John Oliver touched on this mentality brilliantly in a recent show.

Anyone who talks about sex workers selling their bodies should have to explain their reasoning to someone like Mistress Natsukiss (below). Then they should spend an hour or two ‘enjoying’ their purchase, and see just how in charge of her body they feel. I’d like to think she could beat some sense into them, but that’s probably too optimistic.

Natsukiss1
Natsukiss2
I’ve featured Mistress Natsukiss in several previous posts, including here and here.

A moment of self-reflection

There are times when I find my sexuality odd. Just occasionally I take a step back and go ‘Wow. You’re really strange.’ I suspect if most of my friends read this blog they’d agree with that assessment. They’d look at at posts about piecing, whipping, pegging or piss drinking and think ‘Yes. You’re pretty damn strange’. Yet for me the strangeness doesn’t correlate with that type of activity. Kinky freaky stuff is just kinky, freaky and fun. Nothing strange about that. What I find strange is the odd reaction I have to some less obviously kinky material.

Take for example the image below. I’m not into horses, boots, humiliation or mistress/servant roleplay. Yet there’s something about the look on her face that pushes buttons deep in my brain. I’ve absolutely no idea why, but for me this is probably the sexiest image I’ve featured in months. I can understand when someone gets hot and bothered over a lady in a skintight catsuit branding a whip. People are supposed to be excited by that. But why does a haughty backward glance in a poor quality photograph leave me feeling distinctly tight in the trouser region? As I said, strange.

TheLook