The Guardian has been running articles featuring photographers picking out their favorite photograph – My Best Shot. It’s a fun series that adds context to some striking imagery. The one that caught me eye for the purposes of this blog was by Giada Ripa and showed Shibari bondage performed by a Japanese domme. The accompanying story tells of a 150 year old photograph collection, the people behind it and Giada’s contemporary response to it.
While I enjoyed the article, it did annoy me with its recycling of an old cliche. That’s the claim that the domme’s clients are mostly men with high pressure, stressful jobs.
I guess that could mean they’re ER doctors, teachers in tough schools and people trying to hold down two minimum wage jobs while bringing up a family. Probably not though. More likely she means that they’re well off executive types who can afford to regularly visit a pro-domme.
My career in tech has been relatively successful. I rub shoulders with executive types a fair amount. I’ve even been in meetings with a tech billionaire or two. I’m very confident in saying that very few of them are stressed or under abnormal pressure. If anything the higher you go, the easier it is. They have assistants to smooth the way and HR departments to handle their dirty work. Everyone listens to what they say, their ideas are praised and teams of people leap into action when they give instructions. They’re paid a lot to do their job and a lot when they leave their job. They might work long hours, but that’s hardly a rare thing these days.
Human’s have an innate desire to see things as fair. We want rewards to align with effort and achievement. So we create this fiction about the pressure and stress of business leaders. They must be doing something to earn all that money. Otherwise, where’s the justice?
In reality, there’s there’s not much justice when it comes to the distribution of wealth and resources these days. And kinks are definitely not aligned to career choices or an ability with corporate politics.
You can see the Giada’s image in the linked article. For this post’s image I thought I’d go with another and more intense take on Shibarai bondage. This is by Alexandra Wildfire as featured on her website.
Alexandra Wildfire is a London based pro-domme. She has a wide variety of interests including Shibari. If you’re not in the London area then her clips store info is here.