Gloves for the Last Time

I swear this is my last glove themed post. At least for the moment. I thought I was actually done yesterday, but then an odd thought struck me.

Gloves are not a prominent fetish. The greatest hits of femdom clothing fetishes are things like boots, heels, stockings and corsets. Gloves don’t even have their own special fetish name. There is a Wikipedia article on it, but while super obscure fetishes like crying (dacryphilia) and amputation (acrotomophilia) have specific names, gloves are just gloves. It’s rare you see a kinkster posting about a love of gloves, where shoes and stockings show up all the time.

Yet when I hunted through my archives for interesting photographs to use, I had a multitude of options. That is not normal. I like post photographs to relate to my text and finding something appropriate often takes a lot of hunting around.  I frequently spend longer trying to find a suitable image than I do writing the post. With gloves I could written a dozen posts and not run out of material. They seem to be one of those things that are really popular, without anyone actually being aware just how popular they are.

My final long glove post image  is from douzocosplay. It’s a cosplay of Ally from Sunstone. You can find more from the artist at her Deviant Art site.

Why Size Matters

My post on long gloves triggered a number of interesting comments. Readers had a variety of different theories on why they were particularly sexy. With advance apologies to the original commenters, I’ll try and summarize them here. I may well screw this up.

  1. Long gloves are explicitly decorative rather than functional, so sends a signal of being desirable and wishing to attract attention.
  2. Gloves are protective armor, insulating the wearer from the world. So long gloves emphasize this separation, elevating the wearer above the viewer.
  3. They emphasize the limb and trigger thoughts of either touching or being touched by them. That’s particularly true for sleek sensual materials like latex, leather, velvet, etc.
  4. Gloves communicate both intent and, in the case of long gloves, high status. Once the gloves are pulled on then things – possibly evil things – are about to happen.

What I like about these theories is that they’re all different, possibly contradictory, yet entirely plausible. In fact it’s possible that they might be simultaneously contradictory and yet all correct, which seems impossible. They work in different ways for different people in different contexts.

This is Cindy Crawford shot by Ellen Von Unwerth for Italian Vogue in 1991. Which of the above theories matches to this particular image? I think I could make a case that it works for all of them.

Short can be Sexy

I’m returning to the subject of gloves for my next couple of posts. A few days ago I asked why long gloves are sexier than short ones. That generated some interesting comments I’ll share in my next post.

However, I’d hate to leave anyone with the impression that only long gloves can be sexy. That’s very much not true. For example, here’s Mistress Audrey Fatale looking particularly fabulous in short black leather gloves.  Admittedly, most of the fabulousness comes from Mistress Fatale herself, but the glove is definitely adding a certain something to the shot.

Mistress Audrey Fatale is a Melbourne based pro-domme who offers both virtual and in-person sessions. You can find her professional site here and her twitter feed here.

Size Matters

Why are longer gloves sexier than shorter ones? It’s thoughts like this that keep me up at night.

Obviously they emphasize more the shape of the arm, but is the forearm really a super sexy body part? It’s not quite the same as a leg being emphasized by a long boot. Long medical gloves like these imply things are going to be particularly messy, which is hot. But long opera style gloves are also sexy and they’re very much not PPE equipment. It’s a puzzle.

This beautiful image is from the twitter feed of Mistress Euryale, a Hong Kong based pro-domme. You can find the original fullsize version and another shot from the same scene in her original tweet. Mistress Euryale also regularly visits Paris, so if you’re near either there or Hong Kong and would like to meet her, then check out her professional site.

Regressing

I’m keeping the face covering theme going with this image, but taking it in a very different direction. That’s one way to stop someone breathing virus particles everywhere.

This image also made me realize how much I’m regressing in quarantine. The young and innocent me used to look at images like this and sigh, wondering what it would be like to be the man in this situation. In recent years I’ve been lucky enough to treat images like this as inspiration for future shenanigans. Now I’m back to sighing and longingly staring at the image. I miss a firm but gentle hand over my face.

This looks like something from a magazine fashion shoot, but I’ve failed to track down a source for it. If anyone has any suggestions on its origin, then please leave me a comment.

Medical Problems

I’m safely back in Seattle, my NYC trip sadly at an end. My last full day there was enlivened by a great session with Empress Wu. This was our first session together and much fun was had, accompanied by a steady stream of snarling and whimpering from me. I’ll hopefully be able to share a few photographs from that in a future post.

In the meantime let me leave you with some light reading in the form of this article on coming out as kinky to a medical professional. Doctors and nurses are a common roleplay, but the reality of combining kink and medical professionals is typically less enjoyable. In many areas BDSM occupies an odd legal gray zone, particularly around the ability (or not) of an individual to consent to be hurt. Simply saying you consented to an act doesn’t necessarily make it legal. That gives medical professionals leverage if they choose to use it. Hopefully that’s an unlikely thing to happen, but it’s really not something you want to have to worry about when seeking medical help.

This artwork belong firmly in the fun fantasy style of medical play. The style seems familiar, but I can’t currently put a name to an artist. It appears to be signed jh 18, which doesn’t mean much to me.

Update: Thanks to a helpful comment I believe this is the work of joerggum, and you can find more on his deviantart account. Fans of heavy medical play should definitely appreciate his art.

Interlude

I had a fabulous session on Friday night that I wanted to write about and share photographs from. Anyone who follows my twitter feed might have already seen a shot from it pop up already. Unfortunately, this evening has gotten away from me, and I’ve absolutely no time to put a proper post together. So thinks as this rather lovely image as an interlude between more weighty postings.

I’m not exactly sure of the context for this image. A reverse image search tells me it’s probably Yvonne Catterfeld, but nothing about who took the shot or why.

Fashionable Kink

I’m always amused by how many fashion shots reference kinky dynamics, but totally fail to understand them.The photographers grasp the aesthetics and taboos of specific elements, but don’t understand how they fit together in a way that makes kinky sense. It’s like they’re trying to write a story in a foreign language with just a translation dictionary. The individual words are correct, but the whole thing is incoherent.  This linked image is a good example of what I mean. There’s obviously a spanking theme in there somewhere, but I’ve no idea what the overall concept is.

The shots that tend to work best are the simplest. When the photographers just have a single concept and a single subject, then it’s much harder to end up with a confused mess of clashing kinks and weird dynamics. This shot of the model Tatjana Patitz by photographer Nathaniel Goldberg is a good example of that. It’s simple but very effective as a fetish image.

This was shot for Allure Magazine in 2007. You can see more photographs from the shoot here.

It’s all in the Mind

The NYT has a short but informative article  on the complex relationship between brain and body when it comes to pain. It’s tempting to think of the body as the source of all physical pain and the brain simply reporting on the signals it receives but, as the article explains, it’s a lot more complicated than that. As every masochist already knows, and doctors are learning, pain is contextual, and the reprocessing that happens in the brain can make a big difference to the perception of the sensation.

I also found it interesting that the article draws a connection with itching. Ever since I got involved in kink, I’ve been fascinated by how that phenomena can be modified by my situation. In normal circumstances I find it almost impossible to not scratch a bad itch. The more I resist doing so, the greater the intensity and the compulsion to resolve it. I can’t think of anything else. Yet once in bondage, itches fade away. It’s almost like my brain has a switch it can flip – if I physically can’t fix the itch then no point bugging me about it. I’ve never had to stop play to get an itch scratched. But when the ropes or straps come off, any irritation immediately returns.

This lady is about to administer a two for one deal – pain and itching combined, thanks to a big bundle of stinging nettles. This is obviously originally from Femme Fatale Films.

Splashproof

There’s a lot to dislike about this image. It’s got the classic 70’s domme stare, the limp whip holding and the collar that’d be better suited to a submissive. Not to mention the weird crossed swords behind her. Who ever though that fake medieval weapons were a good look for a room?

On the plus side, her boots, gloves and natural beauty do make it work. However, what really sold me on it was the fetishistic apron-like dress. There’s something both disturbing and sexy about that. What’s going to spurt, splash or squirt that she needs protection from? And not just a small amount of protection. That’s a waist to heel cover. She’s ready for things to get seriously messy.