Photograph – Page 202 – 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.
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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.

A cock torture palooza

After yesterday’s slightly off-topic post, I thought we should return to some serious femdom action. And who better to do that with than the talented Mistress Sidonia von Bork from The English Mansion?

Here’s a collection of fun looking CBT shots, along with one of Mistress Sidonia herself (click the images to enlarge them). You might think there’s a whole lot of cock in the shot on the left, but it actually only accounts for 18% of the total in the original blog post. The source photograph is an impressive 5×10 snapshots of heavy CBT torture. Definitely worth checking out if you’re looking for new ways to do horrible things to delicate and sensitive appendages.

Incidentally, does anyone know the name of that wire mesh column device in the shot on the right? I’ve never played with one, but it looks like it might be interesting to try.

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.

Fun and hijinks in San Francisco

Today’s post marks the return of one of the less heralded stars of the femdom porn scene. Someone who, despite a fine portfolio of work, has yet to attract the big money bookings. Or any kind of bookings. Yes, it’s that prime specimen of rippling submissive man flesh (stop giggling at the back), your host paltego.

These shots were all taken on my recent trip to San Francisco to see Mistress Yuki and Mistress Ai-Li. I mentioned it in a post written while I was there, and you can read my description of a prior visit in this post.

The two shots on the left were taken in my first session with just Mistress Yuki. You can see her reflection in the mirror in the top shot (click to enlarge should you so desire). I always enjoy these custom built bondage chairs, as they’re not particularly uncomfortable to sit in for long periods, but they do make me incredibly vulnerable. Everything is exposed and available for torment. They might not look like much but those plastic clips adorning my chest and genitals were vicious little buggers. Particularly painful when Mistress Yuki chose to grind her knee into them as the bottom left shot shows.

The top right shot was from the double domme session. That’s Mistress Yuki with the camera and Mistress Ai-Li tormenting me in the cage. There was one moment when they were enthusiastically encouraging me to step backwards out the cage, with the only minor drawback being the cords pulling my cock and balls out the front. You can see this from another angle in this image. For a moment or two I was tempted to try the stick plaster approach, and just give it a really good yank to break free. In hindsight I was glad I didn’t, as I might have pulled off a little more than I intended.

The bottom right shot shows me dangling in a harness attached to a powered winch. Like the chair it creates a very exposed position, with both sides of the body as viable targets. It’s particularly ‘interesting’ with two dommes, as they can work you over from front and back simultaneously. Not being able to anticipate where the next blow is coming from creates a very intense and disorientating experience.

We finished off both sessions with some piercing. This shot shows a line of needles created to run down my chest. In the second session the mistresses worked together to create two parallel lines of needles. I always find piercing can be a pleasantly objectifying process, particularly when the decorative aspects of it are emphasized. Having two people talking and working together in a coordinated fashion on my body really helped emphasize that objectifying aspect.

Shifting focus

I found this image interesting for how it plays with the focus of interest for the three participants – him, her and me.

She’s holding the weighted handcuff, the key part of the image that creates the tension of the moment, but not looking at it. Instead she’s looking up at him, biding her time, watching for his reaction when she lets go. He’s staring out at the viewer, but I think his gaze is really turned inwards. He’s concentrating on his own physical sensations, that internal submissive focus that often builds as pain becomes imminent. I’m looking back at him, but my gaze is actually drawn down to her hand and those dangling weights. My enjoyment of the image is anticipating what she’s about to do and how she’ll take pleasure in that moment.

So I’m looking at her, she’s looking at him and he’s looking inwards. It’s an interesting shift of focus, while still keeping a sense of connection in the image.

The dominant is Nyomi Banxxx, the submissive Lance Hart and the shot is obviously one from the Divine Bitches site.

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.
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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.

Site Updates

I’ve added a number of new sites to the Femdom Images page. These are:

Boy’s Don’t Cum
Dominant Women
Femdom Empire (making a return appearance after a change of host)
Femdom Times
Girls Rule, Subs Drool
Mistress Candy
No Morepe
Spanked 2 Tears
StellaNova’s Realm
The Edgier Vanilla
Mistress Anastasia

I’ve also added a few new sites to the BDSM Equipment page. These are:

The Madame Pontellier site is fairly unique, in that it offers free videos and then ties them to examples of equipment used in the clips. Typically that’s not how I’d choose to shop, but it might be worth checking out if that concept appeals to you.

The image below comes from one of the new tumblr sites – Girls Rule, Subs Drool. I thought it was cute. I actually have friends who will not even temporarily hold their girlfriends purse or handbag when out in public. To which my usual response, when they start objecting is “Oh for Gods sake, stop complaining and give it here, I’ll hold it for her.” I can’t imagine how they’d react to a request to fix a shoe in situ. Submissive guys really should be more in demand.

Updated: Somehow I forgot to add Spanked 2 Tears in the original list of tumblr updates. Fixed now.