Masochist, submissive or foot fetishist?

Feet are complicated things. I’m sure most non-kinky people lump all feet related activity into the single category of fetishizing unusual body parts. But those of us with slightly more discerning (or depraved) palettes know there’s a little more to it than that.

A masochist might love ball busting, trampling or general kicking. He (or she) enjoys feet for the options they give a sadist to inflict serious pain in a very controlled and personal way. Alternatively, a submissive may enjoy the D/s aspects of scent, worship and service. Feet have maintenance requirements (cleaning, massage, nail care, etc.) which make them ideal for submissive rituals. Finally, a foot fetishist loves feet as a thing of beauty in themselves. They enjoy looking at them and caressing them, with no need of a D/s or SM dynamic.

When it comes to pornography involving feet, there’s often an overlap between these categories. The same image can be interpreted in different ways depending on the proclivities of the viewer. I think the shot below is a good case in point, where all three alternatives are feasible. There’s physical proximity for the fetishist, scent and subservience for the submission, and painful pressure for the masochist. Personally I’d say it looks slightly more masochistic than anything else, but beauty (and porn) is in the eye of the beholder.

Feet pressing on slave's faceI found this on the Femdom Style Counsel tumblr site. It’s originally from Princess Kali’s site.

Happy Birthday to Me

Just a couple of days ago this blog turned one year old. It feels like I’ve been writing it for much longer, but the post dates don’t lie. 12 pages, 378 posts and 544 approved comments equals one year of blogging.

Looking back at my statistics for the first month I had around 100 visitors. Twelve months later and I’m serving in excess of 60,000 visitors a month with over half a million page views. I originally purchased a small site web hosting package, I’ve since upgraded through medium to large, and I’m heading towards the super size. All those figures are kind of amazing to me, given this is just a random collection of re-posted images and links accompanied by whatever thoughts are currently floating to the front of my brain.

I have to thank a lot of other established bloggers that linked to me and sent traffic in my direction. This includes (but isn’t limited to) Saratoga, Ms Marie, Suzanne and Her Majesty’s Plaything, who were all important linkers in the very early days. However, I have a special place in my heart for Shohei Yamashiro, who provided me with my very first incoming link from his site Slug on Leather. It therefore seems only fitting to illustrate this anniversary post with one of his fine pieces of artwork.

Shohei Yamashiro Artwork

Spot the kink

Many years ago, when I was still a child, there used to be a competition in my local paper called ‘Spot the ball’. They’d take a photograph of a moment in a football match (or soccer match for those of an American disposition) and edit out the ball. The competition was then to mark an X on the photograph on where you thought the ball actually was. The closest to the exact spot won. This image reminds me of that competition. There seems to be something fairly essential to the scene missing.

What is he looking so nervous about? What is she smiling at? Why is he in that posture? He looks like he’s bending over to be beaten, but I don’t see any implements to beat him with. Why are they in a men’s bathroom? Are watersports involved? Has he got to pee into the urinal without splashing anywhere? What particular kink am I looking at here? I feel I should be marking an X on where the missing second domme should stand in order to make the whole scene make sense.

Of course it’s possible she’s simply punishing him by making him go barefoot into a men’s bathroom. Given how disgusting the floors normally are in those, I think that’d be a pretty sadistic act in itself.

Spot The KinkI found this on the LashKisser tumblr site.

Updated: Thanks to Moose I now have a link to the original divine bitches shoot that this is taken from. And the missing X factor turns out not to be another domme, but a guy who’s about to screw the poor unfortunate slave. Which does help explain the look of anguish on his face.

80’s Flashback

Coming across this image sent me flashing back down memory lane. For most of my US readers this won’t mean much, but the ZX Spectrum (along with the Commodore 64) was a pretty huge part of my childhood. I don’t remember this particular magazine issue, but I do remember a lot of similar editions that were equally enticing, featuring many large breasted warrior queens. Whoever crafted this one (and I’m willing to bet significant money it was a man) clearly had a good appreciation for dominant women.

It’s funny to look back at these old games. This page has the original Crash review of the game featured in this cover, with actual screenshots. As a child I was never bothered by the promise of the artwork and the sharply diverging reality of the game itself. I’m not sure I even saw a difference. In my mind it all looked equally exciting. Now I look back and think “Wow, my parent were right. Those games were just a bunch of blobs and squiggles.”

Femdom scene from Crash magazine

Just hanging around

I had a comment on my ‘about’ page recently asking for some electrical play or inverted suspension shots. Now as the saying goes, I don’t normally do requests, but then I stumbled across this image yesterday and thought it was worth sharing. The suspension is via cuffs and a bar rather than a proper rope harness (as shown more clearly in this shot), but it looks like it’d be both interesting and intense to try. I’m also now looking at it and wondering if it’d help out with some of my screwy back issues. It’d certainly help stretch the spine out, although the marks might be tough to explain to a physical therapist.

Lady NatalieThat’s Lady Natalie Black and you can see more of her at her members site.

Tenderness

Here’s another piece of artwork that caught my eye, with once again a distinct shift in style and color from the previous days post.

The depiction of a submissive wearing a chastity device while simultaneously being penetrated by a strap-on is a fairly commonly one. The additional emphasis it places on the dominants sexual control and power has an obvious appeal. However, this image struck me as showing an usually tender scene. Despite the manacles, fetish wear and padlocked cock cage, there’s a real sense of tenderness and vulnerability. She looks like she’s more likely to whisper sweet nothings in his ear than call him a slut. Which I personally think would be a definite improvement from the usual cliched domme pillow talk that often gets scripted in these scenarios.

Strap-on and chastity deviceI found this on the True Servitude tumblr site, which contains a lot of hentai images of various fetishes

Warmth

Here’s an image chosen to very deliberately contrast with yesterday’s post. While that was all blacks and greys, this has a real sense of warmth and happiness. The artist hasn’t used a bright vivid palette but there’s a rich earthy feel to it. I like her smile and the way he’s hugging a pillow for comfort.

Whipping

I’m afraid I don’t know the painter, but I do feel like I should know. I found it on the Women Supremacy tumblr site.

Brutality

I’m a little conflicted about this image. There’s a dark undercurrent to it that I find a little disconcerting, although I’m not sure I can put my finger on exactly why that is. Although I’ve posted other images with far more extreme pain and punishment play, this one feels oddly brutal to me.

That said, he’s clearly not too upset about the situation. And I do like the confident way she standing there – naked, aggressive and powerful. She has no need of any fetishist clothing to emphasize her status. The definition of ‘brute’ is of a ‘savage violent person’ and I think that description fits nicely.

BrutalI’m afraid I don’t know the original source for the image. I found it on the Undiscovered Limits tumblr site.

Adding a little realism to medical play

I had an interesting day today, as it featured a minor medical procedure. My back has been giving me grief for a few months now, although nothing painful enough to stop me working or playing. Its just been an ongoing discomfort that’s more annoying than anything else. Physical therapy helped but didn’t fix it, so today I went for a steroid shot into the spine. It’s no big deal, I was in and out in a couple of hours, but it did involve multiple injections, fitting an IV tap into my arm and wearing a silly backless hospital gown. Not to mention being bossed around by multiple nurses (all female) and a doctor (also female) in the hospital surgical unit.

This was the first time I’ve been involved in any kind of medical treatment in years, and the first time I’ve had real injections since I got physically involved in kink. In the last few years I’ve had hundreds of needles shoved into all sorts of tender spots, and documented a few of them on this blog (as listed in this post). I was therefore pretty blasé beforehand about the whole thing. Unfortunately the BDSM experience turned out to be less helpful than I thought. Without the erotic subtext it’s a very different experience. And the added uncertainty around the success (or not) of the whole thing doesn’t help matters. Nothing was particularly painful, but the discomfort level was still how I remember it from before kink.

I did consider trying to fantasize an erotic component to make use of my personal pain relief mechanism. After all my doctor is intelligent, attractive and forceful. Those are all very appealing qualities. Unfortunately those skimpy hospital gowns don’t leave much to the imagination. It seemed like it might be a fine line to walk between just enough fantasy to help out but not so much so as to cause a major talking point for the nurses afterwards. I didn’t fancy trying to explain that I was temporarily immobilized on the surgical table because I’d been imagining the anesthesiologist knocking me out by sitting on my face. I have to think that sexually harassing people in charge of injecting things into your spine is not a good survival trait.

Anyway, in honor of my little excursion today, here’s some medical femdom. A disturbing but strangely attractive image.

Medical FemdomI found this on The Room of a Domme blog (Japanese language).

Combo Deal

Here’s a lucky submissive getting a three for one combo deal, with bondage, hot wax and strap-on play all served up simultaneously. I believe that’s the beautiful Mistress Jayden wielding the wax and sporting the strap-on.

Personally I’ve found hot wax play to be kind of relaxing, a little like a massage treatment. Once I calibrate myself to the initial sharp pain of the drips, the trickling warmth can be soothing. The subsequent scraping it off of hairy skin with a large blunt knife, less so.

Wax play with strap-onThis is from the K is for Kink site.