I’m normally a bit wary of posting military uniform pictures. I like them, particularly vintage ones (like this or this), but there’s often a strong hint of Nazi about some of the domme military outfits. While it’s true that the bad guys always have the best outfits, I’m not sure we’re quite far enough away from WWII to hijack its imagery for sexual pleasure. Or at least I’m personally not comfortable with that.
Fortunately, this shot of an American actress pretending to be a communist jet fighter pilot from the cold war has no such moral issues. The lady in question is Janet Leigh (most famous for her role in Psycho) and the movie is Jet Pilot. By all accounts it was a terrible movie, but I do think Ms Leigh looks great as the Russian pilot, particular with the Princess Leia hair (20 years before Star Wars).
Interesting. Not the slightest hint of the “Nazi vibe” emanating from this picture. She looks very serious, stern and efficient in her parade kit. She’s all work and no play. A study in humourless dedication and staunch professionalism. Not sexy at all, in spite of the uniform.
She’s wearing a male uniform jacket, designed only to make the male wearers more uniform; nothing more. That wearing uniforms tend to make not very sexy and unsexy males look (slightly) sexier is a byproduct, that might be purely cultural. I guess this is what psychologists also mean, when they talk about the cheerleader effect.
And remember, not all uniforms sex up the wearers. Daily drab weare and soiled grunt weare definitely do not. Parade kit in general and officers attire in particular, however, do … but only in the eyes of the beholders, of course.
Had that jacket been tailored to accommodate the female form of the wearer, however … or had it been “subverted” into (over)accentuating the female form, we’d be looking at a very different picture. Immediately conjuring up very different story lines and images in some of our minds. For which one does not need any awareness or knowledge of the worst WW2 exploitation, pulp fiction hacks and the movie industry have foisted on us in the past.
There is a curious double standard at work here; that’s for certain. Exaggerating it a bit:
Male in a reasonably well tailored uniform: Hero! … until proven otherwise. And if so … well, nobody is perfect, all of the time. Amirite?
Female in a reasonably well tailored uniform: Evil! … or bitchy and bad news at best. Evade. Avoid. Be elsewhere … Or stick around at your own peril and pay the price; be you prepared to or not.
One might speculate that it’s not the woman wearing the uniform itself, but her illicit appropriation – in the eyes of many – of one of the most powerful cultural symbol(s) of maleness, manliness and heroism, that sends up the red flags flying.
A woman dressed up to the nth in formal equestrian attire – till only a century ago an exclusive gentlemanly preserve – will often produce a very similar effect.
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And once us evil and connivin’ bitches start mixin’ an matchin’ … maliciously … like this e.g. http://www.crazy-outfits.de/de/lederhosen/171-lederhose-ds-414.html … you’re invited to draw your own conclusions, gentlemen. And maybe prepare to meet Ilse, resident night porter at the Penitentiary Hotel California, welcomingly humming “They can drag your ass in any time they like; but you can never leave …” 😉
May you all have a nice weekend.
I think it has very little to do with uniforms or riding outfits. It’s all about existing real world power dynamics and status quo.
Couple of weeks ago I read about a young woman (think it was in Florida) who was refused to attend a high school dance event, because she had the audacity to appear in a tuxedo. She was suspended from school as well, if I remember correctly. School administrators and teachers who did this to her apparently never heard of Marlene Ditrich. Or couldn’t care less.
She had to be punished immediately and harshly for her illicit appropriation and subversion of traditional and formal male attire. Same underlying mechanism at work there, that makes paltego slightly uneasy when a dom militarises her work outfit.
My unease is nothing to do with the subversion of traditional male attire. I’m one of the last people that comment should be applied to. Marlene Ditrich looked amazing in her tux. And I don’t have any problem when a dom militaries her work outfit. As I said in the post, I actually like military outfits and I linked to some of my previous posts featuring them.
If I’m honest I even like the ones with the Nazi vibe that I mentioned. Bad guys always have the best outfits. But that doesn’t make it a reasonable thing to post about. I’m uneasy about sexualizing something that killed tens of millions of people in recent living memory. That’s a personal call, but when I see a domme with a swastika armband or an SS Death Head cap then yes, I get a little uneasy.
-paltego