Mainstream – Page 41 – Femdom Resource

Venus in Fur

I’ve made passing references to David Ives play Venus in Fur in past posts, but I’ve sadly never made it to the theatre to see it. Fortunately for myself and others who have missed out, it has now been turned into a film. Directed by Roman Polanski, it stars his wife Emmanuelle Seigner, and has been getting good reviews from both mainstream and kinky sources.

This isn’t the first movie from Polanski to explore D/s and sexual power games. His 1992 movie Bitter Moon was packed with kink and twisted sexuality. Even his very early movies, such as Rosemary’s Baby and Repulsion, touched on aspects of sex, power and control. Given his history, particularly the infamous sexual abuse case, that can make for some uncomfortable viewing, both from a moral and artistic perspective. I’d certainly understand someone not wanting to give him a cut of their movie ticket price. Personally I plan to see it. His classic Chinatown is one of my favorite films and I’m looking forward to seeing what Mr and Mrs Polanski have put together here.

This shows Mathieu Amalric (male lead) on the left, Emmanuelle Seigner centre and Roman Polanski on the right.

He floats through the air, with the greatest of ease

I debated if I should post this image. It’s not really femdom in the usual sense of the word. However, I figured that 90% of my readers would enjoy it on an artistic level, and 10% would get off on the idea of a petite lady who could throw a man immense distances. Although keep in mind that 73% of all statistics are made up by bloggers trying to justify their posts.

It’s by the Chinese artist Li Wei. Amazingly, as this article describes, it’s not done purely with photoshop. There is post-processing of the images to remove ropes and harnesses, but the locations and the bodies are real. This particular image is titled ‘Love at the high place 1’. You can see two other images from the sequence here and here.

Magnificent Maleficent

The latest Disney fairytale, Maleficent, has been getting some pretty mixed reviews. Fortunately, while everyone might not like the movie, there has been consistent praise for Angelina Jolie’s take on the character of the evil Queen from Snow White. Watching great actors ham it up as bad guys is always a guilty pleasure. Think of Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber, Antony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter or Heath Ledger as the Joker. I’m sure Maleficent will not be troubling the Oscar committee, but watching Miss Jolie tear it up as an twisted sadistic fairy in a leather catsuit promises to be particularly rewarding.

The image below is older one, taken (judging by the background) at a Comic Con. She’s one celebrity who can really rock the leather look. Kinky sites always seem to feature the scene from Mr and Mrs Smith, but I always thought she looked better attending the premier to that same movie.

Giving thanks

Miss Margo’s latest post – My Night with the Sailor – isn’t femdom at all, but one part of it made me smile and put me in mind of when I play. As the post title suggests, it features a sexual encounter with a naval man, and this was the part that caught my eye…

He thanked me for the sex…well, he didn’t say “Thanks for the sex,” he just said “thank you” after he came. It always makes me feel weird when guys thank me for sex. I don’t know why.

I have two consistent reactions after kinky play or even vanilla sex. One is laughter and the other is to say thank you. Neither are directed at a specific thing. I’m not laughing at what just happened or saying thank you for hitting me with stuff (although I’m always grateful for anyone doing that). The laughter is a joyous thing. It can be a release of tension after a particularly intense scene, it can be a sense of ‘Wow, I can’t believe we pulled that crazy thing off”, but mostly it’s just an expression of happiness and well-being. Similarly, the thank you isn’t about being polite or acknowledging a debt. It’s far more general. It’s a thank you for being alive, for being into kink, for being open to a shared experience, for being there in that moment with me. Whether I’m getting sweaty in the sheets or being beaten and tormented, the end result makes me very happy, and laughter and thanks are my natural way to acknowledge that.

I found this image on the Girls Rule, Subs Drool tumblr. I picked for the combination of sex and what looks like happy laughter. It seemed appropriate to the topic but also vaguely familiar. It wasn’t till I came to post it that I figured out where it was from. Before looking at the attribution below it, can you name the actors and the movie?

This is actually Ewan McGregor & Kelly Macdonald from the movie Trainspotting. In the context of a femdom tumblr, with comments on tickling, I interpreted it quite differently to how it looked when I came to view it in isolation.

Mind the gap

After yesterday’s flat and lifeless celebrity shots, I thought I’d put up an example of a mainstream photographer getting it right. This is by the fashion and beauty photographer Serge Krouglikoff, and shows a much better understanding of a kinky dynamic.

There’s no elaborate leather or latex gear. Their white tops and dark bottoms are perhaps a little cliched, but it’s a classic look for a reason. There’s no whips, chains or dungeon paraphernalia. Their respective hand positions convey the power dynamic, but it’s that tantalizing tiny gap between them that I really like. It’s an invasion of personal space, threatening yet also intimate. Close enough to catch the scent of the other. Close enough to breath a kiss or deliver a slap. Teasing and yet also withholding. It gives me a frisson down my spine, and makes me think of those occasional moments of perfect balance that occur in a scene.

Fetish fail

I could start a blog based purely on showing terrible representations of kink and fetish in celebrity culture. The commonest scenario is describing any celebrity dress with a hint of straps, leather or latex as a dominatrix outfit (for example this recent article). That’s just journalists being lazy and cliched, but now and again you get cases where the celebrities and artists have been the ones to make a hash of things. The recent photoshoot for V magazine, featuring Katy Perry and Madonna, is a great example of this.

They’re obviously going for a retro-fetish look, probably inspired by Bettie Page, but they don’t have a fraction of the presence she brought to her shots. Somebody should explain to them that fetish and kink are all about powerful desires and sexual attraction. And, as with all powerful feelings, they can risk invoking aspects of darkness, danger, yearning and compulsion. There’s none of that in these shots. Just two women wearing silly outfits and exhibiting no chemistry together. Although is narcissism a fetish? If it is, then they could at least have one fetishistic element covered.

Clothes make the man

I’m not really a fetishist. I’ve never asked a domme to wear a particular outfit and, much as I appreciate the aesthetics of traditional latex and leather S&M outfits, I can also happily play without them.

Smart clothes on the other hand, that’s a whole different story. I love getting dressed up and going out with people who feel the same way. Seattle is a wonderful city in many respects, but fashion and dressing for dinner is not a big thing here. My suits have probably got more hours clocked in suitcases at 30,000 feet than they have being worn in Seattle. Seeing a well dressed couple moving together through a restaurant or bar always makes me happy. There’s something very right about that scene.

This particular image is Michael Fassbender in GQ. He looks great, and the position of her gloved hand really makes the shot.

Mutually thrilling, kinky lovemaking (and EL James)

Reading mainstream articles on kink is always a hit and miss affair. On the glass half full side, they’re typically a lot better than they were even two or three years ago. Kink has infiltrated society from many different routes. While before it was either ignored or treated as a ‘laugh at the freaks’ topic, it now gets addressed more seriously (with just an undercurrent of laughing at the freaks). On the glass half empty side, it’s difficult to find a mainstream article on kink that doesn’t get something horribly wrong.

This article from the London Evening Standard is a good case in point. It’s generally pretty positive, giving a potted history of the terminology, and emphasizing the need for consent and mutual experimentation. Unfortunately, it also invokes EL James and 50 shades as a great example of defining boundaries and healthy S&M.

In Fifty Shades, EL James took care to delineate a relationship in which the sub-missive, Ana, had discussed and agreed her boundaries. ‘The prejudice around the whole subject is terrible,’ James told me. ‘Nothing makes me angrier than critics who suggested the book was about abuse. It demonises people who enjoy this lifestyle.’

I think reading that sprained my brain. EL James writes about a horribly fucked up abusive relationship that has no connection to healthy BDSM (as documented at length here), and then claims critics were the ones conflating abuse with BDSM. That attitude makes me think she should run for political office. It would be a shame to waste a degree of self-delusion that strong.

I hate to end on a negative note, so here’s a fun image of a couple who look like they’re genuinely enjoying the lifestyle. This seems to fit the final paragraph in the article, which invokes the “joyfulness of mutually thrilling, kinky lovemaking.”

I’m afraid I don’t have an original source for this. I found it on the Work Is Never Over tumblr.

A curious coincidence and a cute couple

My life of odd coincidences continues. I sessioned with Lydia tonight. Fun with needles was on the agenda, and I’ve now got a plethora of sore spots to prove it. Before I left for the session I had 10 minutes to kill, and spent it browsing my blogroll, where I stumbled across this latest post from Bondage Blog. It features a still from a movie called ‘The Pet’, and something about the red headed naked lady looked vaguely familiar. Sure enough, when I looked the movie up at imdb, there was Lydia in the cast list.

From the blog post you might assume she played the eponymous ‘Pet’, but apparently that wasn’t the case. Hers was a pretty minor part, although it did involve rigging her own bondage suspension set-up in a tree for one scene. From the reviews it looks to be a pretty cheezy B movie of curio value only. I doubt I’ll be seeking it out, but I did find it very weird to randomly stumble on that post and 10 minutes later be chatting to the actress in an entirely different context.

For the purposes of this blog, I need a different kind of pet to feature. Here’s an attractive one with an equally fetching owner. They make for a lovely couple.

I found this on The Answer Is Always More Art tumblr.

Vampire Willow

Life is full of odd coincidences. Yesterday I was joking about vampires, and included an aside about the price of a mortgage on a gothic castle. Today the very first story I read over my morning coffee tells me that Dracula’s castle is for sale. Unfortunately there’s no listed price, and no mention of how accommodating the local wenches are when it comes to open bedroom windows and diaphanous nightwear.

On the plus side, it does give me a chance to continue the theme with one of my favorites – vampire Willow from the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’ve blogged about her before, so I won’t rehash that post here. Although in writing this, it struck me that the show steered away from the traditional sexually aggressive and dominant female vampires. There was no shortage of evil females – Drusilla, Darla, Glory, Natalie French, Inca Mummy girl, etc. But no main character in the traditional predatory femme fatale vampire role, which is such a staple of the genre. The two closest matches are vampire Willow and Faith, both associated with the good character roles.