The beauty of dominant women
This image – sourced via Madam Is All tumblr – looks like it could have been a sketch from the Monty Python crew. They always had a penchant for playing Northerners in flat caps and pulling out old fashioned frocks and wigs for their female characters. There’s more than a touch of Michael Palin as Mr Gumby in the man in the center.
I’m afraid I couldn’t find any background on it. Image searching suggests it’s from London in 2003 but nothing else. I’d guess it’s some sort of art project.
I’ve featured the work of Chinese photographer Yushi Li in a prior post. However, it’s so good I feel it deserves revisiting.
The images below are from a series she called ‘Your Reservation is Confirmed‘. They’re funny but also play with the power dynamic in unusual ways. In a porn context these would be CFNM images, but as shot here they have quite a different feel. Typical CFNM shots are still focused on the male gaze, a play acted humiliation for the benefit of the viewer. These flip that around, with Li’s composed presence and direct stare challenging the viewer.
You can read more about her work in articles here and here. You can find more of her images on her primary web site.
If you’re interested in kink, sex work and podcasts then allow me to point you at #teakink by Eva Oh. She completed Season One recently and while I’m not typically much of a podcast person, I’ve enjoyed this one. It not only covers how she got into sex work and the unique challenges of pro-domination, but also her relationships with her family, adventures in Bali during Covid and what she’s learned about kink, life and herself over her career to date.
I’ve sadly not yet had chance to session with Eva. However, all the dommes I’ve played with who do know her have gushed about what a fabulous person she is. So, should you ever have an opportunity to play or chat with her, I’d definitely suggest taking it.
This image is from Eva Oh’s twitter feed, featuring her and Alessia Jade. You can find Eva’s primary professional site here.
I don’t think I’ve ever featured Tokyo’s Alpha Inn before. Which is kind of surprising, given it’s a somewhat famous in kinky circles as the only Love Hotel in Tokyo dedicated to BDSM. It seems to be a go to spot for a lot of pro-dommes who visit Tokyo.
I was reminded of it by this article in Huck magazine. It gives some context on the place itself and the people who play and work there. The photographer for the article is Nathalie Daoust, who spent several months their creating a series called Tokyo Hotel Story. The image below is from that series.
Continuing the theme of NYC domme’s, the image below is Mistress Serafina. She was recently featured in a Mashable article on Tech workers who transitioned into Sex Work. While everyone interviewed seems to be thriving in their new careers, the reasons they moved are sadly all too common for women in tech.
“I really did experience sexism at every turn in my [corporate] career,” shares NYC-based professional dominatrix, Mistress Serafina. “From my first interviews out of college, I was propositioned by my interviewers, then I was propositioned by the principal engineer at my first job. I was repeatedly looked over for opportunities, and told in my performance reviews that my tone was too fiery.”
For someone like myself, who has worked in tech for 20+ years, it’s a depressing story. The whole area needs a major cultural shift. More women in engineering and product development would help, but we’ll never get there is we keep driving talented people like Mistress Serafina out.
This image is from Mistress Serafina’s twitter feed. You can find her professional site here.
Talking of Mistress Iris (as I just was) she has apparently been listed on NY Magazine’s list of The Most Powerful New Yorkers You’ve Never Heard Of (scroll to the end). I say ‘apparently’ because it doesn’t provide a photograph or a link and Mistress Iris isn’t traditionally associated with NYC. She was originally LA based and now seems to mainly be in Europe (with regular trips to Tokyo, London, NYC, LA, etc.). However, I can’t think of another Mistress Iris who’d have the profile to be in this article and also considered as an NYC local. Although based on the title on the list, I guess not having heard of her would be kind of the point.
Wonderful though Mistress Iris is, it seems a shame they didn’t pick an equally high profile domme who has a stronger claim to NYC residency. After all, there is no shortage of them. It’s one of the great cities for kink. Off the top of my head I can think of Troy Orleans, Mistress Tess, Lucy Sweetkill, Mistress Blunt, Lady Harper Chase, Mistrix Sade and many, many more.
Here’s an image courtesy of Mistress Tess who has an amazing NYC studio space. Curse Covid for ruining my chance to enjoy a lengthy session in it earlier this year.
One thing I should add to my previous post on Google – their stupidity only applies in you’re actually logged in to their service. Which, given the prevalence of things like android and gmail, is probably true for a lot of people. However, if you’re lucky enough not to have observed the regression in results, that might be why.
Anyway, moving on to a positive note, here’s some visual loveliness to start the week. This is the always amazing Mistress Iris, in an image she shared on Twitter. I’m personally sad I’ve not had chance to play with her since 2019. Based on her social media and her site, she seems to be enjoying a lot of kinky hijinks in some beautiful parts of the world.
Google continues to degrade as a useful service. To go with its endless ads and poor relevance we can now add an increasing puritanical streak. I covered similar problems with its image search all the way back in 2012. Now its web search has taken a similar turn.
If you search for a dominatrix in a city – for example the query {la dominatrix} – the default results are a whole heap of junk. I get zero useful pro-domme sites. Instead I get a bunch of books being sold, a few random magazine articles and some obscure music track that has that title. The top link for {NYC dominatrix} is a New York Post story about domme who tried to poison someone. The rest are random social media nonsense and more garbage stories from sites like The Daily Mail. All of this is with Safe Search off.
Weirdly, to get good results, you need to turn off personalized search. On my web browser that’s buried under “Google Settings->More Settings->Personal Results->Show Personal Results”. In other words, a setting that almost nobody is going to find or change. I say it’s weird, because a correctly personalized results for me should be all pro-domme links! My browser history is full of visits to domme sites, their social media accounts and similarly kinky sources. Yet Google is either stupid enough to miss that or puritanical enough to think I shouldn’t be going there.
Although changing that Google setting fixes the issue, it’s probably best to vote with your clicks and just avoid the site entirely. That change is going to cost a lot of dommes a lot of money, flushing their SEO investment down the drain. The good news is that (so far) similar queries to Bing give me excellent results, no faffing about with settings needed. That’s already my go to search for my PC. I might have to update my other devices now.
Here’s one of the LA dommes whose site is normally in the top 10 results but is entirely absent with the default settings -the fabulous Inga Larsson.
It’s not often a photographer can turn getting dressed into a dynamic action shot. This is a rare and rather lovely example. Her poise and expression are the finishing touches to a great image.
I’m afraid I don’t have a source for this. I located it via She Wears the Pants.
Writing lines is a common punishment for naughty children and errant submissives the world over. It’s even used in the opening to one of the world’s most famous TV shows. I saw a twitter post recently where a submissive had done them in a pattern with a different color for every letter, which was pretty neat. However, a user under the handle Stone Mason has taken the idea to a whole new level with these hand engraved slates for Charlotte Douleur. I imagine a selection of lines in engraved stone tablets would make for a great dungeon decoration.
You can see some other images of the slates from the original twitter post.