F – Page 35 – Femdom Resource

Cheap celebrities

Last month I featured a post on Taylor Swift and her recent fetishistic music video. I wasn’t surprised to read in a follow-up article that a lot of the outfits for the video came from the LA based Stockroom. What did astonish me was that they actually returned the majority of the items. Can you do actually do that? It’s not like they hadn’t been used. The evidence is right there in the video. And it was only $13,000 worth of stuff to start with. I’ve no idea what it cost to make that video, but I’d guess the wardrobe was a pretty small fraction of the total.

Personally if I ran the Stockroom I’d have had a special ‘as worn by someone famous’ sale running the moment the used goods came back in my direction. It’s not like they’re running a rental service over there.

Of course this topic does me the perfect excuse to feature someone looking lovely in something fetishistic. This is Ms Ava Zhang, an LA based pro-domme.

If you’re in the LA region and interested in seeing her latex collection in person, her etiquette page is here and her contact information here.

Pleasure & Pain

The post title sounds like a lead into something seriously kinky and sexual, but in fact it’s taken from a mainstream exhibition running at the Victoria & Albert Museum – ‘Shoes: Pleasure & Pain‘. There’s a good article on it over at the Guardian, which talks about the history of shoes, and how they’ve been intertwined with culture, fashion, sex and fetishism. This particularly bit made me smile…

For a few decades in the middle of the 17th century, there was a fashion for ladies’ indoor shoes to come attached to a flat panel, which joined the bottom of the high heel to the toe. Not only did this lift the wearer above imaginary dirt and clod-hopping Puritans, it also provided a satisfying sound as the shoe made contact with the floor. Soon that flat-footed slap, which could be heard several beats before the wearer entered the room, became the mark of real lady.

I don’t particularly fetishize footwear, but I can still appreciate the the click of a heel and the sound of a strutting boot on a hard floor. It’s a pretty effective mood setter, particularly when someone is tied down and can’t easily turn to see what’s happening. I often find myself smiling at the cliche of it, but enjoying it all the same.

This rather beautiful drawing is from the Croquis Nocturne tumblr. From the posts on the tumblr I’d guess that the artist is also the tumblr owner. Worth checking out if you appreciate this image.

Famous people doing stuff

Taylor Swift has a new music video out featuring lots of her famous friends. That means someone I’ve never listened to has created a video with a bunch of people I’ve never heard of. I feel like I’m one step away from yelling at kids to get off my lawn.

While I might not have my finger on the pulse of modern music, I can appreciate a video featuring lots of aggressive women in fetish gear beating people up and shooting things. That never gets old. The video is also a grab bag of film references, so it’s fun to play spot the homage. From a quick look there’s Sin City (referenced by the poster below), The Fifth Element, Tron, Kill Bill, Matrix, Watchmen and every Bond movie. It also puts me in mind of the girl gang from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, but that’s probably because they’re both a pastiche of the same thing rather than being a direct reference.

A spring garden with Lydia

I should start this post with a warning: It features images from a piecing session I did with Lydia a few weeks ago. So if you wish to avoid image of naked needled me, then I’d suggestion not clicking any of the links below.

The negotiation for our play was – as usual – very short. I think I said “How about doing some piercing?” and she said “Sure.” That was job done. We’re not big on complicated scripts. I like being surprised and giving Lydia scope for her devilish imagination. A piercing session gives her that ample scope, as she has shown in the past (e.g. here, here and here). In this case she created a decorative piercing all across and down my back. She said the layout and design was inspired by the idea of a walk in a spring garden.

You can see the top part of the design in this shot here and from another angle here. Not content with decorating the top of my back she also planted some needles in my butt, seen in this long torso shot and this close-up. The round design on my butt cheeks is known as a button and is particularly painful. The shafts of the needles cross each other and trap flesh in between. This means any kind of movement pinches and squeezes nerves between needles and creates very intense sensations. Moving around wasn’t really on my agenda, but apparently it was on Lydia’s, as piercing was followed by hitting, and striking, and prodding. That tended to produce a few wiggles.

The marks left when everything had been removed were particularly impressive. I loved the patterns created in the skin. In total I think we used around 120 needles with a gauge varying between 25 down to 18. It wasn’t one of the most intense piercing sessions we’ve ever done from a pure pain perspective. However, it was one of the most meditative, focused and aesthetically pleasing.

Photograph of Lydia is by Mandy McGee photography.

Mirrors

Mirrors feature heavily in most playspaces. Ask any pro-domme and they’ll typically tell you how important it is to have a lot of mirrors around. Quite frankly, until very recently, I never really understood that. After all, I know what I look like, and don’t have any desire to stare at myself. I might be masochistic, but I’m not narcissistic. The domme normally does look fabulous, but I can see her anyway. So what’s the point of the mirrors?

In recent months I’ve begin to appreciate them a little more. Originally I looked on them in the same way I might look at pornography. Is it hot? Is it visually appealing? Often the answer was no. Seeing me tied up and getting beaten wasn’t hot, because the comparison I always made was with commercial porn. But now I’m beginning to look at them as an alternative view on our dynamic. I’m not simply looking at two bodies, one hot, one not. I’m looking at two people doing some crazy kinky stuff. I’m watching a mutually fulfilling interaction. Seeing that play out from another angle in a mirror can be really interesting. I just had to let go of my pornographically conditioned view on what exciting kinky play looked like.

I found this image on the Femdom Style Counsel tumblr. I’m afraid I don’t have an original source.

Swinging for the fences

Lydia introduced me to an entirely new sensation tonight. That’s unusual for me. I thought I’d tried most things. That’s certainly not to say I find our play repetitive. The various combinations of dynamics, sensations and predicaments are infinite. It’s just that when it comes to singular sensations of pinchy, stingy, slappy, whacky stuff, I thought I’d experienced most of the possibilities.

The new toy we tried was a Wiffle Bat. It taught me a lot of new things. Firstly, it makes a great noise when it hits. Secondly, it hurts like hell and leaves some impressive bruises. The sensation reminded me a bit of the playground when a kid would try and give a dead arm or dead leg. Painful but also numbing when it catches just the right spot. Finally, a domme looks amazingly hot when wielding and swing a big bat – even if it is made of plastic. Photographs of women flicking whips and flexing canes are ten a penny online. Some of them should try picking up sporting equipment and waving that at the camera. I guarantee it would make for great imagery.

The image above is of Harley Quinn from the Batman universe. I believe it’s artwork from the upcoming Batman videogame, which has bonus additional content featuring her.

Gratuitous filler shot

I just flew back from Las Vegas and the only thing now on my mind is getting a good nights rest. Sensible and thoughtful posts will therefore have to wait for another day. Instead I’ll keep the blog ticking over with some gratuitous imagery. I’m afraid I’ve no idea who this is, but she does look splendid in those jodhpurs.

Judge and jury

I was sad to see that Ellen Pao lost her case of gender discrimination against the Venture Capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The very existence of the lawsuit will have had some effect on Silicon Valley, but a win would have done much more to shake up a male dominated tech industry.

I wasn’t on the jury, so can’t speak to the details of the case, but I do know the deck is stacked against women in these situations. The jury is being asked to decide if someone was fired for incompetence or fired because of the firm’s culture and biases. Unfortunately there’s little chance that a randomly selected jury can come to an independent informed decision on the issue of competence in a VC firm. I suspect even a carefully chosen panel of technology experts would struggle on that. Instead they’re forced to use the reviews, notes and opinions from the firm itself, and that’s where the deck is stacked.

I’ve covered the double standards for women working in tech in the past, along with the more general issue of attitudes to forceful women. Characteristics that get a man promoted – aggressive, pushy, argumentative – will count against a woman. Women who are laid back lack initiative, where women who forceful are difficult to work with. Those biases end up in emails and performance reviews. The data that the jury is forced to use to decide competence is coming from a tainted source – the very firm that’s in the dock. So unless it’s a horribly egregious example of discrimination, then the biases of male bosses and co-workers continue to function as part of the trial evidence. I think this Jezebel article does a pretty good job of covering the issue.

I sadly don’t have any answer to this problem, other than raising awareness of it. I’ll leave you with a picture of a very successful independent businesses woman. She’s created her own media empire based on the latest technical innovations. Plus, she has an excellent T-shirt on. This is of course the one and only Mistress T.

Emerald City Comicon

While I was on vacation I sadly missed the Emerald City Comicon. That’s particularly annoying as I live just a block or so from the Washington Convention Center. I could have walked out my front door to get a coffee and bumped into a dozen or more cosplayers roaming the area. I’m not a big comic book geek, but I do enjoy experiencing interesting cultures and seeing people having fun with their hobbies. I particularly enjoy the effort and creativity that goes into cosplay. The fact that this sometimes involves attractive ladies in fetish influenced outfits is just an added bonus.

This is the Baroness (played by Cobra North) and Snake Eyes (played by Danquish). Photographed by The Will Box.

Tabloid nonsense

The past week has seen the tabloid news sites posting numerous articles on Alissa Afonina. She’s a young woman who was recently awarded $1.5M in damages after being badly injured in a car accident in 2008. The reason for all the tabloid interest was that the accident resulted in a brain injury that led to changes in her social and sexual behavior, and in recent years she has earned a living working as a dominatrix. Or, to put it in the most tabloid way possible, courtesy of the Daily Mail – “Star student, 23, wins $1.5m after car crash brain trauma turned her into an impulsive sex-mad dominatrix”.

I wasn’t planning to feature the story at all. All the articles seemed like sensationalist nonsense, designed to sell page views, titillate readers and ignore the serious elements of the story. However, Jezebel put together an interview that I think is worth linking to. I can’t say I like the headline for it, but it’s a well done interview that actually digs into the pertinent issues and treats Alissa as a person rather than a story to be packaged and sold. She comes across as an intelligent and impressive person who has dealt well with a very difficult situation.

She works under the name Sasha Mizaree. You can visit her professional site, her clip store, her twitter feed or her tumblr. If you’re in the Vancouver area you can arrange in person sessions via her main site.