Photograph – Page 193 – Femdom Resource

Top shelf material

I’m on record as not being a big fan of public humiliation. That’s partly because I don’t like dragging other people into scenes without their consent and partly because I don’t particularly kink on humiliation. However, what I treat as humiliating or not probably differs fairly widely from a lot of non-submissive guys. For example, I think the shot below is kind of cute and fun. It’s teamwork in action, and he’s actually being useful. How else was she going to reach that bottle? It’s a bit like carrying a woman’s handbag or fixing her shoes. Humiliation to me means denigration of the submissive, where this is about being practical and helpful. Although I suspect I’d have a hard time explaining that logic to any friends finding me in this position in my local grocery store.

I found this shot on the Stealth Domme tumblr.

Incidentally, the post title here is a British expression typically taken to mean pornography. Adult magazines are put on top shelves in newsagents to stop kids looking at them. So it was originally intended as a play on words, describing both the picture and what’s happening in it. But then it struck me the US has another meaning, where top shelf refers to something of quality. I think it comes from liquor bottles in bars, where the best stuff is put on the top shelves. I assume that’s both an efficiency thing (not needed as often as cheaper booze) and a cost thing (less chance of it being knocked over). So it’s actually a triple meaning title, also describing how I feel about the image. This ends your random aside for the day.

More smiles

After yesterday’s post featuring a smiling sadist, I thought this would be a good image to follow it up with. According to the ever infallible Wikipedia, licking a face is a form of greeting for dogs. So I guess this is just her puppy’s way of saying hello. Given the width of those smiles, they’re certainly having fun with it.

I’m afraid I don’t have any context for the image. I found it on the Submissive Geek tumblr.

Size does matter!

Slogans on t-shirts tend to have only a very loose relationship with reality. I have a soft spot for my George Carlin one – “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups” – but in general they’re not a reliable source of information. In terms of credibility they rank somewhere between bumper stickers and Fox news. Although not necessarily in that order.

However, judging by the pictures below, it appears that Mistress Lana is someone who believes in living up to her clothing’s slogans. That’s a large cigar and an even larger strap-on. The featured gentleman looks a little perturbed. I hope for his sake the slogan on the back of the shirt is something like this.

Mistress Lana is a Moscow based pro-domme. If you find yourself in that part of the world, her session information is available here.

A touch of blusher

Miss Margo added a comment on yesterday’s post that mentioned a Sissy Maid High Tea that she attended at a BDSM festival. Much to her surprise, she had a blast.

They were so attentive, and trying so hard to impress, and they had put so much effort into their grooming and roles…it was really very touching.

That comment made me think of the image below, which I stumbled across on tumblr a few days ago. I thought it was very sweet, which isn’t an adjective I typically find myself using about cross-dressing D/s shots.

I also got to thinking a little more about the idea of male submissives playing with gender roles. In yesterday’s post I suggested it was a popular theme in femdom, which I still think is true. But that that doesn’t necessarily mean the two things are causally connected. It could just be that men who are open to exploring emotionally and culturally fraught areas like male submission are also more open to exploring other sexually complex areas. After all, if you’ve just spent the weekend role-playing ‘Sir Reginald Thistleswaite meets the Amazonian Queen and is tortured by much Snu Snu’, then raiding your wife’s lingerie draw probably seems like a pretty minor deviation. A guy who spent the same weekend drinking beer and watching football with his buddies might not feel quite as open to it, no matter how secretly curious he might be.

Half drag

This isn’t really a femdom related post. Instead it features an image from a series that I found fascinating, and thought a lot of my readers would also appreciate.

The photograph below is from a sequence entitled ‘Half Drag’ by the photographer Leland Bobbé. It features pictures of drag queens and, in the words of the photographer, is designed to “capture both the male and the alter-ego female side of these subjects in one image.” None of the shots in it are composite images. They’re a single photograph taken after the subject has been very carefully made-up on just one side of their face (in this particular case that of Pusse Couture’s). Both from a craftsmanship and artistic perspective I think they’re amazing shots. You can read more background and donate to the project on the artist’s blog.

As far as I’m aware (and I’m no expert) drag queens occupy a particular unique niche of their own. There may be complex intersections with gender roles, sexual orientation, fetish, performance, etc. but it’s not the same as any of them. However, just to jump back into the kink arena for a moment, the idea of an exaggerated female persona does seem to be a popular theme with male submissives. Some see it as a form of humiliation, which is not something I’m a fan of and therefore don’t typically feature here. For others it seems to be a very positive change, an aspiration to be an object of desire or a chance to explore a hidden side of themselves. It’s a shame that these two alternatives often seem to get conflated together.

Weirdly sexy

This is undoubtedly a sexy image. Gorgeous woman. Well proportioned guy with a cute bow-tie. Nice D/s vibe from the positions. Yet oddly, I find the fact her lingerie is mismatch the sexist element of all. I have no idea why, other than the fact I’m weird.

I found this on the Work is Never Over tumblr (whose author also commented on the mismatch). It’s taken from a fashion shoot and the photographer is Antonio Andrade.

Let’s hope it’s firmly attached

The internet is awash in fake pills and dangerous devices that claim to help enlarge a penis. These ladies appear to be taking a more direct approach. Grab one end and pull, hard. Either that, or it’s a new exercise routine they’re working on. Squeeze, pull, twist, and repeat. Ignore the screams.

I found this on the Gustos Extremos tumblr. I think (although I’m not entirely sure) that it’s from the Strapon Dreamer site.

In your face

I like this shot because it’s simultaneously conventional and unusual. The composition is very conventional. There are a million shots out there featuring a woman sitting on a man’s face. What makes it unusual is the very shallow depth of field, which blurs him out and pushes her very much to the fore. There’s a vibrant immediacy to her. She’s both in his face and in our face.

The model is Shiloh Avery and the photographer is Eric Kroll. I found it on the We Like the Weird Stuff tumblr.

So near and yet so far

Just from an artistic perspective alone I like this image a lot. There’s a nice sense of balance to it, with their contrasting head and hand positions, and that one delicate point of contact between them. It’s also very sexy. Assuming he’s been told to remain still, she just has to sway slightly to tease and torment him. Sliding backwards equals pleasure, leaning forwards equals denial.

I found in on the Fetish Locker tumblr. I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution.

Openly Submissive?

I stumbled across this post over at the Masculine Submission blog recently. It’s on the ever thorny topic of the perception of male submission in society. This is a reoccurring theme on many D/s blogs, and I’ve written about it in the past (which resulted in my most heavily commented post ever). I’ve played devils advocate before, and I’m about to do so again, although puzzlement would be a better way to summarize my attitude. I don’t want to be critical or diminish someone’s views, I just have difficulty relating.

Tomio’s whole post is worth reading, but the thrust of it is about the difficulty of being an openly submissive man in common environments that are hostile to that characteristic.

Why don’t submissive men hang out in the gym? That’s like asking why fish don’t hang out in the middle of the Sahara. It isn’t a friendly place for submissive men (let me be clear – I’m talking about guys who are openly submisisve…there are TONS of guys who pass as macho but are submissive when no one is watching)
…
If a man feels insecure about expressing who he is (security is the second level of needs); then he is incapable of achieving higher levels of existence.
Tomio Black

The part that puzzles me here is the idea of being ‘openly submissive’ in this kind of context? What does that really mean?

I don’t go to the gym regularly, a fact that’ll surprise no one who has seen any of my session shots. But the reason isn’t because of hostility, but because I find working out to be incredibly, brain numbingly, shoot-me now, tedious. I’m not really sure how open submission would manifest itself in a gym scenario. Actually, that’s not true, thanks to these kind of posts from Olivia Fitzgerald I do have some pretty good fantasies. But in reality, the daily interactions I have with people and places don’t normally touch on my innate submissive nature.

I find submission, like masochism, is entirely contextual. At work I tend to the forceful and aggressive. That’s not something forced on me by society, but just a natural function of working in a very competitive intellectually demanding area. In social groups I’m normally easy going and a facilitator of conversation, but not at all submissive. Only with the right person to accept my submission does that side of me come out.

I totally understand the potential difficulties in being a D/s couple in society, but that doesn’t seem to be what Tomio is talking about here. So am I just missing something here? Do other male submissives feel the need to openly express their submission in daily life, outside the specific context of a D/s relationship? Is the pressure to act like a ‘real man’ in conflict with how they intrinsically feel?

A black and white version of this image has been floating around a lot of tumblrs (I found it on Red Snapper). I believe it is by the artist Benegesseritt from deviantART, and entitled leave me the way i was before.