F – Page 47 – Femdom Resource

Peaking behind the curtain

I’ve been enjoying catching up on Domina M’s new blog – Look Like Veronica Lake; Think Like Dorothy Parker. She used to be one of NYC’s top pro-dommes, mentored one of the current stars of that city, and has since retired to Barcelona.

She’s writing about the practicalities of being a pro-domme, the behind the scene issues she had to deal with, which I find fascinating. I think it’s always fun to read about unusual jobs. It almost doesn’t matter exactly what the job is – steeplejack, hostage negotiator, matador – there’s just something innately interesting in learning the tricks of a trade. It appeals to the desire to discover a secret, as well as the intellectual pleasure of gaining understanding of a new problem space.

I particularly enjoyed her piece on micro-dommenomics and her attempt to come up with a viable model for an inexpensive session.

A simple foot or OTK session in the morning might be a nice way to start my day. What say $75 for a half hour foot or OTK session in the morning? NO ONE could beat that.
…
There was no way I was going to dilute the “Domina M” brand with a blue light special. Besides the argument was that they wanted the minimum, simply a focus on their fetish. Okay fine. I created a new yahoo email account and advertised, “Simple foot/otk sessions with a beautiful, busty, 29-year-old blond. 8AM-11AM. $75 per ½ hour” every free place I could.
…
After all of that, how many people did I see in those three months? None. Zero. Goose-Egg.
Domina M

The failure of this approach doesn’t surprise me at all. When it comes to luxury goods and services, price may not be a good discriminating factor, but it is normally a good filtering factor. I probably can’t simply use price alone to choose between a $50 bottle of wine and $100 bottle of wine. But I can normally safely exclude the $5 bottle of wine from consideration. If I saw a very cheap price for an unnamed and unreviewed pro-domme I’d assume either she wasn’t smart enough to price herself correctly or was so bad that she couldn’t get business at a higher price. Neither are appealing characteristics. And, as Domina M discovered, the type of clients who don’t make that kind of assessment turn out to be the type of clients not worth cultivating.

In the comment section Miss Troy Orleans remarked on the fact that she’d recently offered a significant session discount to celebrate her eight year dommiversary, and had been surprised when only one person took her up on it. That also surprised me at first glance, but actually makes some sort of sense from a psychological perspective. A discount suggests that, compared to the normal exchange, one person is losing out on the deal. A client with enough disposable income to regularly see a top pro-domme is unlikely to value a transitory financial saving over the negative psychological association of the discount.

If Miss Orleans had reworded the offer to suggest she was going to extend the session length but still charge her normal rate, I wonder if it would have changed the uptake rate? The cost/time ratio is unchanged, but it creates a different emphasis. Now the client isn’t taking something away, but is instead being gifted with something extra. A bit like how restaurants don’t give regular customers discounts, but do send out additional free courses.

Perhaps that might also have been an answer to Domina M’s discount session experiment. Offer it only as a bonus to regular clients who have already paid the full session rate in the past. That weeds out the wankers while rewarding the regulars. Although of course that does still risk diluting the brand. These things are never simple.

I’ve added her blog to the pro-domme section of my blogroll, so hopefully she’ll be popping up there with many more interesting posts in future. Thanks to hmp for the original pointer.

Photograph is of Domina M. For a little background on the photographer see this blog post.

Young woman, big cock

Here’s an example image of what I’ve previously chosen to call ‘Discovered Femdom.’ That is to say an image that started life in one context, often as a type of vanilla porn or fashion photography, but ended up as an easy target for projecting kinky fantasies.

I found it on the entertaining but inappropriately named 333 images tumblr. My first thoughts were – “Cute girl. Love that smile. Wow, that’s a big cock. What’s not to like?” But then I noticed the lack of straps to hold it in place and, given the professional photographer backdrop, began to suspect it was from a traditional porn shoot. Sure enough, it’s from x-art and features the model Gigi R using it in a more conventional self-pleasuring manner. It’s still a great shot, but I’ll like my mental version of what happened next rather than the actual one.

O Canada!

You’ll have to excuse this post. Or not, your call. Either way, it’s going to be a non-femdom focused one. Instead it’s a couple of random things that caught my eye from north of the border.

The first amused me. It’s a series of commercials for a Canadian porn channel that play with the traditional porn stereotypes. There’s a pool boy, pizza guy and a cop ticketing an attractive young lady. They must have had the only casting call where bad acting was a prerequisite.

The second annoyed me. The beautiful woman below is Jenna Talackova, who was disqualified last week from the Miss Universe Canada competition for being born male. She had gender re-assignment surgery in 2010, but apparently didn’t meet the competition requirements of being born a ‘natural woman’. She’d already made it through to the finals, so clearly the earlier judges must have thought she was a suitably attractive competitor.

Miss World and Miss Universe pageants aren’t exactly at the cultural or intellectual cutting edge, but this struck me as particularly dumb even by their standards. In some circumstances qualifying requirements are obviously necessary. For example, this kind of issue can be a thorny one in the area of sports, where genetic men may have a natural advantage. But in a beauty competition? It’s not like being born male offers any kind of advantage. In fact it’s quite the opposite. Are they worried a flood of guys are going to be inspired to try pulling on a frock and entering? If she can overcome the issues of being born with the wrong body and still end up looking this amazing then good luck to her. They don’t ban cosmetic surgery for the other competitors. It seems hypocritical to ban it for her.

Incidentally, if you happen on a news article covering this story I’d advise you to stop reading before you get to the readers comments. Otherwise you may feel like taking a bath afterwards. When you spend a lot of time hanging out on blogs written and frequented by open minded LGBT positive people, you tend to forget just how many hateful people there are out there.

A fetish diversion

I’m not normally big on posting simple fetish shots. I appreciate an attractive latex or leather outfit, but I always treat them as a bonus to D/s or s&m play, not an end in their right own right.

One possible exception I’ll make for this is the Dutch model Ancilla Tilla. I’m not quite sure why, and what it is about her look that appeals, but something about her photographs always really grabs me. She often manages to pull off an elegant classical look, even when wearing some pretty fetishistic outfits. The fact she reminds me of a kinky Scarlett Johansson doesn’t hurt either.

Nice equipment

After a post featuring a lot of naked me, it seems only fair to provide a contrasting post. This one therefore features 0% scrawny naked English guys, but is 100% packed with hot dominant red headed women. I’m not sure if that’s constitutes a fair rate of exchange, but it’s the best I’ve got to offer.

On a personal note, I have to admit that my first thoughts on seeing this were not about the beautiful woman in the skintight catsuit. Instead they were more along the lines of “Wow, that’s a really cool bondage chair. I’d love to play with that.” I’m not sure if that means I’m turning into a BDSM equipment geek, or I’ve just seen too much femdom porn for my own good. Possibly both.

This is obviously a shot from Club Dom.

A dangerous image

Having mentioned Mitt Romney in a post last week, in the interests of being fair and balanced, I thought I should also devote a post to the other leading light of the GOP – Rick Santorum. Apologies to my readers from outside the US for whom this may not be all that interesting. I know the US primaries get a fair amount of coverage in the world press, so at least this shouldn’t be completely devoid of context for most people.

It turns out that Rick is not a big fan of pornography. That isn’t much of a shocker given his position on other social and sexual issues. He’s also not big on gay marriage, sodomy, contraception, pre-marital sex or abortion. His website contains the following:

America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography.
…
Pornography is toxic to marriages and relationships. It contributes to misogyny and violence against women. It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex trafficking.
Rick Santorum

That first sentence is a sly one. At first I read it as ‘a pandemic of pornography’, which given porns prevalence on the Internet isn’t too extreme a position. But he’s actually saying a ‘pandemic of harm’, which is far less obvious and calls for a much greater burden of proof. Unsurprisingly that proof is not supplied. He believes in a far stricter enforcement of the US obscenity laws. This old interview with ex-federal prosecutor Bruce Taylor should give you some idea of what is meant by that approach (I’ve linked to this interview before). This blog and pretty much every tumblr site on my images page would be in the firing line as obscene.

I wonder how they feel about images like the one below? It definitely causes me to have prurient sexual thoughts, and I’m publishing it with the intent of creating the same effect on others. I’m also not sure I can make a case for it having redeeming social value. It’s beautiful, but I’m not sure simple aesthetics really count in these matters. Otherwise that’d be a obvious get-out-of-jail card to always play. So, from my perspective at least, this is pornography.

It would seem that this is therefore causing me harm. And possibly creating misogyny, violence to women and sex trafficking. After all it can’t simply be the sight of naked flesh that causes harm. Otherwise it’d be dangerous to look in the mirror when getting changed. Similarly sex itself can’t be toxic to relationships, otherwise the human race would be extinct by now. So it must be something special about the sexual thoughts created when looking at images or movies. This ladies elegant profile, her piercing gaze and her strict governess style outfit are destroying my brain and/or morals as I type. Damn.

If later tonight you find that your relationship has been destroyed and you’ve been forced into prostitution as a result of this image I do apologize. I promise not to post such filth again. At least until tomorrow anyway.

This is by the photographer Ilya Kokorev. I found it on the Continuous State of Desire tumblr.

Making a good first impression

In the last few days I’ve been enjoying the autobiographical writing of Stephen Fry in his book The Fry Chronicles. He’s well known as a writer, actor and comedian in the UK, although in the US he’s probably best known for his role as Dietrich (the TV host character) in V for Vendetta. I believe he’s also going to be in the upcoming film of Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

He has a great collection of anecdotes, including this one from when he first met Miriam Margolyes. She’s another well known face in Britain, a celebrated character actress who has featured in many significant productions, and was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire) for her work. They meet for the very first time at the read through for a play.

…Miriam Margolyes had burst in like a beaming pinball just in time for the start of the read. When is was over she approached me.
‘How do you do? I’m Mir…’ She stopped and plucked at her tongue with her thumb and forefinger, ‘…Miriam Margolyes. Sorry about that, I was licking my girlfriend out last night and I’ve still got some of her cunt hairs in my mouth.’
From ‘The Fry Chronicles’

That’s an introduction you are unlikely to forgot. Of course with the the modern mania for shaving this situation is now far less likely to present itself as an opening conversational gambit. I was going to feature this image originally, which I liked for her expression but not for inappropriate absence of hair. Then I stumbled across the shot below which struck me as very beautiful and very appropriate. Not strictly femdom but a view I’m sure most submissive men will appreciate.

I found this on the Gorean Kajirus tumblr.

A congress of dildos

I’m not really sure what the collective noun for a group of dildos is. Searching on the web didn’t result in a definitive answer, although I did like the suggestions I saw for ‘A quiver of dildos’ and ‘A battery of dildos’. Personally after the last few years in the US, I’m thinking that ‘A congress of dildos’ might be a good collective form. Plus, it opens up all sorts of japing potential around the misfortune of spoiling your congress with some Santorum.

My dildo train of thought (an expression which according to google has unsurprisingly never been uttered before) was triggered by some of my friends who work at the giant Internet retailer Amazon. They’re in the software and management part of the company but, as per company policy, had to spend a week running around a giant shipping warehouse preparing orders for customers. Apparently it’s mandatory for all employees to do it, whatever their level. It’s so they have some idea what it’s like at the retail cutting edge, where the virtual turns into the material. One thing that surprised them, and in turn me, was the sheer number of sex toys that they had to deal with. I’d always assumed that people tended to shop at specialist retailers for that kind of item, rather than a large general purpose site. Their comments were confirmed by this (long) Mother Jone’s article on what its like working for an online shipping company.

Really, a staggering number of dildos. At breaks, some of my coworkers complain that they have to handle so many dildos. But it’s one of the few joys of my day.
…it’s a welcome distraction, really, to imagine all these sex toys being taken out from under a tree and unwrapped. Merry Christmas. I got you this giant black cock you wanted.
Mac Mcclelland

With a little reflection it became less surprising why people would turn to Amazon or other large retailers for these kind of purchases. I assume it’s for safety. The boxes are commonplace, the credit card entry unspecific and the chance of being scammed zero. There’s no fear that a package is going to turn up in your condo lobby labelled “Freaky Sex Toys Inc. Please treat this giant vibrating penis as fragile. This way up.”

For an illustrative image or two I turned to the site of Mistress Nina. She has a very fine congress of dildos in some unusual shapes (additional shot of a few more here). It also seemed a shame not to also show the lady herself, so here she is looking rather fearsome is in the woods with a pair of whips.

Mistress Nina is a pro-domme based out of Belgium. Her session information is here and information on her private members site is here.

More horsing around

Yesterday’s post stimulated some long dormant neurons in my brain. As I was writing about the rarity of real horses in femdom porn, something was niggling me about where I had seen it before.

The answer, after spending some time flipping through my internal femdom filing system, was the old cruella publication Riding Cult. This was a short lived magazine from the early 90’s, featuring lots of boots, jodhpurs and tight tops. Most of their images featured men as horses, as shown in the first shot below. He doesn’t look to be a beast in prime physical condition, but they seem to be enjoying themselves anyway.

Occasionally the magazine also featured real horses, as show in the second shot below. Typically they stuck to fairly traditional riding gear, but in this particular case I think they strayed a little. I’m no riding expert, but those boots don’t look all that practical. High heels and stirrups does not seem like a great combination. On the other hand a haughty stare from horseback does tickle me in hard to reach places, so I’m prepared to overlook the impracticality of the whole thing.

Indulgence (revisited)

Originally this post was simply titled ‘indulgence’ and consisted of a short comment stating how I had nothing clever to say, other than how sexy I found this shot. However, the folder name wordpress generated told me that I’d already used the title in an earlier post. So I go back to find my previous post and discover that I’m not only about to repeat a title, but also repeat an entire post. Not only was the title and text almost the same, but it was even a similar image of a gorgeous woman in glasses staring into the camera. I guess that says something for my consistency if not my creativity or my memory. Expect to see another post called “Indulgence (revisited) (revisited)” in a few months time where I surprise myself all over again. I’m going to claim that I’m practicing for old age, where I plan to entertain myself by pretending to be deaf and forgetful in order to annoy people.

I found this on the Rue Montorgueil tumblr. I’m afraid I don’t know who the lovely lady is, or where the shot originally comes from.