Tag: Mainstream

Honor Blackman

I was sad to read of the passing of Honor Blackman. I’m sure for a good number of my readers her role as the powerful leather clad Cathy Gale was a big influence on their early femdom fantasies. The original Avengers series was way before my time, but I remember catching re-runs in the 80’s and being captivated by her. Seeing her as the feisty but ludicrously named Pussy Galore in Goldfinger created a similar reaction.

I was originally going to feature a photograph of her in the classic Avengers leather suit. Then I stumbled on the beautiful shot below. Thanks for everything Honor.

Dumb Face

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. Life has been kind of busy. Normal service should be resuming from this point on. If not, I’ll try and find a lady like this one to incentivize me appropriately.

Not really sure where this is from or who it’s by. Obvious a pop art style, but searching for it doesn’t turn up many clues.

Update: This is by the artist Notalkingplz. You can find their work on tumblr and on instagram. Thanks to a helpful comment for attributing this.

Rebecca Ferguson

A final image in my sequence of posts featuring smartly dressed people. The image below is Rebecca Ferguson from the Mission Impossible movie Rogue Nation. I’ve not actually seen the movie, but now I kind of want to. I was very tempted to feature this alternative shot of her beating people up while Tom Cruise is tied up. That looks like a fun scene.

I’ve done plenty of scenes with very smartly dressed dommes, but I don’t think I’ve ever done one with the domme in a suit and a tie. I might have to add that to my bucket list. It’s one of those looks that provokes an anticipatory shiver.

Anthony Vaccarello

Whenever I see a fashion editor going on about a ‘dominatrix look’ I brace myself for disappointment. It normally means one of the models wore a pair of boots or – even worse – a leather choker. However, I have to admit that this papermag article on the 2020 Saint Laurent collection by designer Anthony Vaccarello doesn’t get it wrong. It’s a pretty hot and kinky collection, with some serious dominatrix vibes. I particularly like the combination of pussybow blouses with shiny latex pants as shown in this linked image. That’s fetish meets old fashioned schoolmistress, a particularly fab combo in my eyes. I also love the latex dress in the image below. Impractical no doubt, but beautiful and sensual.

Louboutin

If there’s one shoe designer who is widely known across all genders and sexualities, it’d be Christian Louboutin. I have a very straight non-kinky male friend who has minimal interest in fashion, yet he still managed to spot and identify a pair of Louboutin’s that flashed past us in a restaurant one night recently. I’m sure it was the stylish lady sporting them that first caught his eye, but he still managed to pick up on that little flash of red from her shoes.

I’d always assumed, given how sexy and fetishistic his work can be, that he was at least a little bit kinky. However, according to this recent NY Times article, that’s probably not the case.

I remember Helmut Newton, the photographer, telling me one day — he had looked at some of my shoes — “I’m going to give you the best address for dominatrixes in New York.” And I said, “Helmut, I’m just not interested in that.” He was surprised. This is a suggestion from my work to a projection of his own mind. Me, when I think leather and spikes, I’m thinking Haute Époque, 17th century.
Christian Louboutin in the NY Times.

While he might not be interested in ‘that’, but I do know a lot of dommes and submissives who love his high heels and boots. If you’re in the Paris area then there’s an exhibition of his work running over the next few months at the Palais de la Porte Dorée. For those of us not in that area, the NY Times also has a multimedia piece with him talking about his work and his inspirations.

This boot is called the Corset d’Amour and is featured at the start of the NYT media piece.

Cosmo Fail

Mocking Cosmo articles on sex and BDSM is a long running tradition around here. There has been the good, the bad and the highly humorous. Unfortunately, their latest example would fall under the categories of dangerous and highly irresponsible.

The article in question is ‘What you need to know about breath play in BDSM‘ and right there, that title alone is pretty problematic. The answer to that should simply be ‘More than we can possibly cover in a Cosmo article. Don’t even think about it till you’ve done some proper research.’

Unfortunately the article itself is not so succinct. It does at least start with a warning about how dangerous it can be, but that message is then rather undercut by the remaining text talking about amazing orgasms and describing how to do it. It reminds me of the South Park scene where Kenny dies of autoerotic asphyxiation.

My biggest problem with the article is that it seems to to cover the two extremes of breath play and almost entirely omits the safer and fun middle areas. It talks about voluntarily holding your breath and mindful breathing, which are fine, but probably not all that hot for most people. The rest of it talks about various ways to put hands around neck and squeeze (or not), which seems very dangerous advice. There’s a long running debate in the BDSM community around whether breath play done like that can ever be safe – with a lot of experts saying it can’t – but I’m sure 100% of the community would agree that beginners doing it based on a short Cosmos article is a terrible idea. The reader is therefore left with an unsatisfying approach and a really dangerous one.

I actually love breath play and do it a lot, but never with anything near the windpipe or arteries in my neck. A simple hand across the mouth and nose is enough to block breathing and push my buttons around being controlled, while being way less risky. Even better than a hand is an ass. Face sitting, which can be clothed or unclothed, is both fun, sexy and a good way to limit air. Even an armpit can work, although it can be tricky to get a proper seal. It seems ridiculous to me that Cosmos barely touches on these much better approaches. For more advanced scenes I’ve played with using plastic wrap and gasmasks. I don’t think either of those would be great starting point for beginners, but they’d still be better than anything involving gripping around the neck.

I’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for this particular breath play shot.

The Sport Report

America had a concert and ads showcase today, occasionally interrupted by a sporting event.

The game itself made me sad, as I’ve been a 49ers fan since I was a teenager watching Joe Montana and Jerry Rice play. On the plus side, the halftime show was a lot of fun with a surprising kinky vibe. Shakira had a hint of bondage going with her rope dance and then Jennifer Lopez came out in a leather outfit that had an awful lot more than a hint of BDSM about it. Not to mention the backing dancers sporting classic leather caps and dommey snarls.

As an added bonus, the sight of two talented Latino women dancing and singing in Spanish appears to have pissed off a lot of right wing troglodytes. So while my team may have lost, I’m always happy to find a silver lining.

Medical Myths

The story of how the vibrator was invented by Victorian doctors to cure women of hysteria is a well known one. There are plenty of online articles that refer to it. I’ve even referenced it in past posts. It has an obvious appeal. Who doesn’t like the idea of a Victorian lady telling her staid husband that she feels a burst of hysteria coming on and she needs to schedule a trip to Dr. NimbleFingers to relieve the tension?

Unfortunately – and you can probably guess where this was going – it turns out not to be true. As this NYTimes article by Hallie Lieberman makes clear, it was invented as a general device for health. Doctors did know there was a risk of sexual excitement, but were very keen to steer away from that usage. It was only thanks to women recognizing its potential that the vibrator gained its sexual usage and benefits.

I particularly enjoyed Hallie Lieberman’s gender swapped example of how unbelievable the hysteria story is.

Imagine arguing that at the turn of the 20th century, female nurses were giving hand jobs to male patients to treat them for psychological problems; that men didn’t realize anything sexual was going on; that because female nurses’ wrists got tired from all the hand jobs, they invented a device called a penis pump to help speed up the process. Then imagine claiming nobody thought any of this was sexual, because it was a century ago.

While that doesn’t sound likely, it does sound like a great scenario for a femdom roleplay. I would happily be a hysterical Victorian man who needs to be restrained  by nurses  and cured via mechanically assisted means. Obviously it’d all be done for my own good.

This is Lady Annisa and Mistress Miranda, two pro-dommes from the UK who are both brilliant at medical scenes. I’m sure that they’d be up for adding a historical twist to them.

Strange Logic

A new documentary by Louis Theroux entitled ‘Selling Sex‘ has been creating a stir in my social media feed. As you might guess from the title, it tackles the subject of sex work, following three women involved in the industry. Most of the sex workers I follow were not impressed. This thread by Lola Ruin and this tweet by Mistress Evilyne are pretty indicative of the feedback I saw.  Even the people involved in it were not happy.

I’ve not seen the show so I can’t review it. Instead I want to review a review of it. Specifically, this review in the Guardian by Lucy Mangan. I’m sure if you asked Lucy she’d claim her article, like the show, was a balanced and nuanced take on a tricky subject. Yet I think her final paragraph, containing the sentences below, show just how illogical and confused people can be when it comes to sex work.

The true question is how we define coercion or exploitation. The aim of the law’s definition is surely to ensure that anyone selling his or her body is doing so willingly, as a matter of absolutely free choice. Whether this can be said of any of the women here, I am not sure.

The idea of selling your body is not only a tired cliche but also makes no sense. A sex worker no more sells their body that does an athlete, a fashion model or a nurse. Like all those professions, a sex worker uses their body and their brain to provide a service. At no point before, during or after the transaction does a client own any part of their body. Possibly used underwear or sweaty athletic wear might be purchasable, should both parties tastes run in that direction, but that’s a whole different dynamic.

Logically, if having sex implies some transfer of ownership, then the same must be true regardless of the involvement (or not) of a fee. So does Lucy think that a wife having sex with her husband results in him owning her body? Is she a fan of bringing back the idea of Coverture more widely? It would seem an unusual position for a Guardian journalist to adopt.

The other strange part of that final paragraph is the bar she sets for doing sex work – ‘a matter of absolutely free choice.’ How many of us do our jobs out of absolutely free choice? I love my job, but I’d drop it tomorrow if I had the financial independence to make an absolutely free choice. That’s why it’s my job and not my hobby.

Coal mining is a dangerous, dirty and physically challenging job. As a result miners are often lauded as blue collar hero’s, taking on tough work to put food on the table for their families. Are they doing that as an absolutely free choice? Maybe we should we shut down the mines until we’re 100% sure of that. The idea that miners don’t understand the choices they make would be rightly criticized as patronizing and insulting. Yet people like Lucy are happy to infantilize sex workers and imply that they other people’s judgements (the law) should replace the workers own choices. Instead, shouldn’t we be celebrating sex workers for the difficult job they choose to do?

This is a long post spun from just a few sentences in a review of a show I’ve not even seen. Yet those few sentences seem illustrative of how even intelligent people can have internalized damaging and illogical views on sex work. From the online feedback that seems to be a problem the show’s creators shared.

I’ve no idea what’s an appropriate image to accompany this kind of post. Given I mentioned Lola Ruin at the top of it, I’m going to use that as an excuse to feature a lovely shot of her (from her twitter feed).