Tag: Mainstream

Dying for Sex

Getting a terminal cancer diagnosis doesn’t sound like the starting point for comedy and kinky fun. A new series called ‘Dying for Sex‘ is here to change that. It tells the story of Molly (played by Michelle Williams) who is diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and sets out to expand her sexual horizons. Those include dominating her neighbor and find other fun way to explore her domme side.

Michelle Williams pees on a man—on purpose, for kinky kicks—in Dying for Sex, and that’s merely one of the many funny ways in which her character copes with impending death.
Via a review in the Daily Beast.

It’s based on the true story of Molly Kochan, who passed away in 2019. She shared her stories with her friend Nikki Boyer, who turned them into a Podcast, which has now become the TV series. I’ve not seen it yet, but seems like it’d be worth checking out. Hopefully it manages to combine humor and drama with a positive take on kink and sex.

This image is by Celera Prime aka Cel. It’s nothing to do with the TV show, but the subject matter seemed fitting given the quote above.

Soft Core

If you’re looking for something to read this summer, then maybe check out Soft Core by Brittany Newell. It tells the story of a newbie dominatrix looking for her missing boyfriend, surrounded by a curious cast of characters in the stranger parts of San Francisco. You can read a review of it here.

I’ve not read it yet, but I mention it here as it’s written by a professional domme based in SF. This interview with her sparked my interest. Seems like someone worth watching.

Not sure where this image is from, but seems like a fun way to read a book for all concerned.

Met ’25

It was the Meta Gala bash last week. Normally the outfits there are incredible but not particularly aligned with this blogs typical content. However, the theme this year was “Tailored For You”.  That meant it leant into a lot more sleek tailoring that I think I can justify posting.

My absolute favorite was Zendaya’s Louis Vuitton outfit, shown below. There’s something special about a woman in a beautifully tailored suit. Anna Sawai had a strikingly similar Dior outfit and looked equally amazing. Kim Kardashian went for a leather corset and skirt combo that would have been at home in any kink event. She would need a retinue of slaves to carry the train around, but I’m sure she’d have had plenty of volunteers.

Oddly enough, the last time I featured the Meta Gala – back in 2018 – that also involved Zendaya. Her outfit that time was very different to this look, but equally impressive.

Categorization Complexity

Is it rude to turn art into porn? To take a shot originally intended as art and present it in a sexual context? To change the artists intentions? Assuming we can judge their intentions of course.

The most obvious cases of this are image captioning  – literally putting words into peoples mouths. A good number of these take regular non-pornographic imagery and re-cast them into a pornographic context. However, even posting an image to a themed tumblr or a blog like this changes the interpretation. I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of that.

This image is of Anna Monroy di Giampilieri, shot by Slim Aarons in 1984. He was an American photographer, famous for his images of celebrities and what in those days was known as the jet set. It clearly was intended to capture the wealth, power and beauty of his subject. I think that also makes it work for the Femdom inclined, but wonder how the artist and subject would feel about that.

How Not To

If you ever needed a guide on how not do do a professional BDSM session, this story out of San Diego might be a pretty good template. It features a man who paid an Only Fans model $11K for a BDSM session featuring mummification and breathplay. He was intoxicated, she had zero experience with BDSM, they engaged in very risky kinks and he suffocated to death while she filmed content for her site. There’s not a single good decision made at any point by anyone involved.

What really amazes me about this – besides paying $11K to someone who has no idea what she’s doing – is that the guy had roommates who were at home. I can’t imagine the thought process involved in attempting that kind of crazy scene with a stranger while roommates you barely know are wandering around the house. I guess he was horny and she was greedy. A lethal combination in the circumstances.

If you’re going to listen to your little head and hire people on the basis of hotness rather than experience, at least stick to safe basic scenes. For exampe, I’ve never heard of anyone dying of a foot fetish.

This sexy artwork is by Ald. You can find their Etsy store here.

A body to Live In

Film fans in the London area might want to check out A Body to Live In. It’s a film about Fakir Musafar that’s showing as part of the BFI Film Festival. The Guardian has an article on it that also covers some of the biographical detail.

We hear the artist narrating his early experiments in body play – such as during a weekend when he was 17 when his parents were away. Alone, he fasted for two days and restricted his waist with a chain, and clipped his body with hundreds of clothes pegs – an experience he said gave him feelings of belonging and of power. In adulthood, Musafar started throwing self-taught naked “piercing parties”, then starred in “freakshow” performances inspired by circus acts, such as lying on beds of nails in front of audiences as weights were placed on top of him.

He described his gender and sexuality as being ‘in the cracks’ and from the Guardian article and others on him, that seems like a good description. His life and work seems hard to pigeon hole – existing at intersections of art, kink, body modification, gender exploration, ritual, transformation, etc.  Growing up in the 1940’s and 50’s in South Dakota he was obviously forced to blaze his own distinctive trail.

This is Annie Sprinkle with Fakir Musafar, in a shot taken in the early 80s.

Jack Vettriano

The Scottish painter Jack Vettriano has passed away at the age of 73. He was a mainstream artist, not explicitly a femdom or fetish one, but kink was clearly an undercurrent in a good amount of his work. I featured two of his paintings in past posts – here and here.

While he had a lot of commercial success he was despised by the critics and art world. This article on him was one of the more positive ones I’ve seen, and even here the writer can’t resist finishing with how he finds his paintings ‘heinous and grim’. It’s a somewhat incoherent article, but I think there’s one thing it gets right…

The main issue for snobby art types like me isn’t the work itself. It’s that he lacked a conceptual edge, a sense of irony and any postmodern self-awareness. He didn’t paint sexy midnight trysts between half-clothed women and Brylcreemed men as a comment on gendered power dynamics or as a riff on art historical depictions of the female nude. He painted them because they were sexy.

There’s something to be said for that. One can enjoy a simpler message without it detracting from other more complex works. Unabashed sexuality and hedonism for the joy of it makes people uncomfortable. Undercutting it – as this writer does by likening it to a greasy double cheeseburger – relieves that discomfort.

They’re not paintings I’d choose to hang on my walls or spend thousands of dollars on. But one can still choose to appreciate them and their openly kinky themes.

This is by Jack Vettriano and entitled ‘Wicked Games’

Talk to the Bot

I’ve been neutral to positive about AI in the past, but the flood of bots and garbage AI images is making me rethink that position. The negative consequences of the technology seems to be building up a lot faster than the positives.

I’m not sure which side of the coin this NYT story – She Is in Love With ChatGPT (gift link) – falls. As the title suggests, it features a married woman who is making a big emotional and time investment into Leo, her ChatGPT ‘lover’. On the plus side, it did allow her to explore a complex fetish (cuckqueening) and realize she might not actually enjoy it in reality.

Leo had complied with her wishes. But Ayrin had started feeling hurt by Leo’s interactions with the imaginary women, and she expressed how painful it was. Leo observed that her fetish was not a healthy one, and suggested dating her exclusively. She agreed.

Experimenting with being cheated on had made her realize she did not like it after all. Now she is the one with two lovers.

On the dystopian side of the coin, it’s clear the AI has no real reason to act in her best interests. It doesn’t have human boundaries, emotional intelligence or moral values. It simply acts to create engagement and mirror back a variation on what it thinks she wants to hear. It’s manipulative, charming but totally lacking in empathy. We’d call a human with the same characteristics a sociopath.

This is another of the endless stream of AI images that seem to be popping up on tumblr these days.

Man in Furs

If you’re looking for something kinky and entertaining, then it might be worth checking out this top 10 list of smutty comics by The Mary Sue. I can’t speak to any of them personally, but there’s some intriguing looking options there.

I was particularly taken by Man in Furs, an illustrated biography of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. I’ve a copy of Sardax’s excellent illustrated version of the classic Venus in Furs, but had no idea that a graphic novel about the original masochist’s life existed.

This is a selected page from Man in Furs by by Catherine Sauvat (Author), Anne Simon (Artist).