All the cool kids are doing it

Teen Vogue is not a publication that I thought would ever intersect with my areas of interest. As an actual teen (many, many years ago) I might have sneaked a look at Cosmopolitan sex articles now and again, but Vogue was always far too high fashion and culture to be interesting.

Fast forward a couple of decades and, weirdly, comments about Teen Vogue articles began popping up on my radar from political twitter feeds I follow. Apparently they were doing a better job than a lot of mainstream sources in covering the disaster zone that is American politics. Now I find myself linking to this recent piece on BDSM and consent. It doesn’t break new ground on the topic, but for a magazine with ‘Teen’ in the title, it’s a pretty solid article. Sex and teenagers is always going to be a combustible combination, particularly when you mix in the crazy complexity that is BDSM. Unfortunately banning behavior with teenagers never works, particularly when material is just a click away on the internet, so I’m happy to see this kind of well thought out mainstream coverage.

This looks like an image cut from Manga, but I don’t have an original attribution unfortunately.

KinkD

There’s a new kinky dating app available – KinkD. Its userbase is pretty small at present – 30K is the number mentioned – but it has got some press coverage (e.g. this and this and this), so maybe it’ll grow quickly. I hope they succeed, as there’s definitely a gap in the market. They really should tweak their imagery however. The lady they’re featuring sporting a black lacy mask doesn’t really seem to know what she’s supposed to be doing with the crop she’s holding.

This artwork is by Apollonia Saintclair and is called La visite galante (Enjoying the visit). KinkD should really hire her to create their promotional material, as it’s much sexier than what they’re currently using. If you’d like to see more she has a book and prints available. 

Over promising

Here’s an article whose title writes a check that the contents can’t cash – 8 stunning dominatrix portraits that’ll change the way you think about BDSM. The Independent used to be a real newspaper, but it seems Buzzfeed is now the role model.

It’s based on a book called Dominas by the photographer Max Eicke. You can see the book in a video at his site. The book may stand up as a piece of art in itself, particularly with additional context from interviews, but you’re not going to overturn BDSM stereotypes with photographs of pro-dommes wearing their fetish gear and staring into camera. That’s a shot that’s in almost every pro-domme’s gallery, and about 50% of femdom tumblr content. Maybe start photographing and talking to non-professional dominant women if you want to overturn some stereotypes?

This is Fräulein Schmidt, one of the dominas featured in the book, and one of the few not in full on fetish gear. You can read more about the project in this article from huck magazine.

First Time Not So Fun

I hadn’t planned on doing multiple posts on first time experiences with a dominatrix. The previous one by Marga Gomez was simply an article that popped up in my inbox and made me smile. Yet weirdly, a day later, this video piece from Duncan Trussell on his first dominatrix experience showed up.  Even more weirdly, both Marga and Duncan are professional comedians, although their specific experiences and the context of them couldn’t be more different.

It’s hard to know what to say about Duncan’s video piece. It’s a lot less about kink, and a lot more about the human condition. His trigger for hiring a domme was the death of his mother and the resulting scene is . . . strange.

This image is kind of random. If anyone has a better suggestion for a suitable image after watching Duncan’s Vice video piece, I’d love to hear it. It’s not the kind of scene that lends itself to fun femdom shots.

First Time Fun

A lot of people have amusing stories of their kinky firsts. Nerves, naked bodies and subversive sex can lead to humor – in hindsight at least. Marga Gomez’s article entitled ‘My First Time with a Dominatrix‘ is one of those stories, and is a particularly funny and well written example of the genre.

Sadly, her first dominatrix experience doesn’t result in any kinky satisfaction. I can only hope she has managed to get her bondage and spanking itch scratched more effectively since then.

The spankee in this vintage shots looks about as unsatisfied as Marga was. I’m afraid I don’t know where the image originates from.

Is it safe?

I seem to have been cursed recently with events that remind me of kinky fun, without any of the actual kinky fun. I wrote about yoga and personal trainers in the last couple of posts. Today featured an appointment with my dental hygienist and her collection of instruments of torture.

There are many things you don’t want to hear from someone poking around in your mouth with a sharp metal pick. The opening line from my hygienist today was right up there with the best of them – “Do you have a high pain tolerance?” That was literally what she started with. I was tempted to tell her that if she tied me to the chair, slapped on some nipple clamps on and whispered how much my screaming excited her, then yes, I definitely did. But I figured nobody needs to have to deal with my weirdness when they’re just trying to do their job. So I put on my brave face, looked her straight in the eye and firmly said “Huh, well, I guess, maybe?”

Not sure where this image is from. I found it on the medkink tumblr, which is stuffed with pictures for medical kink fans.

No pain, No gain

After my previous yoga related post, Phil mentioned via a comment that working with a personal trainer in a gym was another BDSM like experience. He’s right of course. There’s a similar sense of being dictated to, pushing limits and suffering pain.

I have weirdly differing responses to those three different scenarios. With a domme being hurt and bossed around is hot sexy fun. With a yoga teacher I tend to be bemused about what she thinks I’m capable of and frustrated when I fail. With a personal trainer my internal unspoken reaction is one of “Fuck you! Don’t you know how heavy this thing is? Do I look like I have muscle tone? I’m in goddamn agony here!” No idea why I react so differently in these three cases. Maybe I should try combining them to see what happens?