Tag: Photograph

Happy New Decade!

I hope all my readers had an enjoyable end to their year and that the next decade will bring them many good things and new experiences. From a personal perspective the last ten years have been an amazing period of kinky experimentation and personal growth. I’m hoping I can continue that growth for at least another decade to come.

We’re now heading into the twenties, which means we’ve finally got a sensible name for our current period of history. It’s also an evocative one, given the huge cultural and social changes that happened in the previous twenties.  This image is from around that era and was a product of Studio Biederer. The clothing may be a touch more conservative than today’s typical femdom whipping scene, but clearly people’s kinky proclivities haven’t changed in a hundred years.

I find it impossible to post an image from Studio Biederer without also mentioning that the two brothers behind it were both Jewish, and killed by the Nazi’s in the holocaust. People’s kinks may not have changed in the last hundred years, but neither has their capacity for racism, violence and cruelty. Something we should all keep at the forefront of our minds as we move forward into the next decade.

Mistress Adrienne

I was very sad to hear of the recent passing of Mistress Adrienne of NYC. While our paths never cross in real life, I always admired her obvious creativity and talent. She had an amazing reputation as a domme and fetishist, as shown by the numerous tributes being paid on social media – Mistress Blunt, Daddy An Li,  Mistress Morgan, Lady Sophia Larou, Mistress Iris, Michelle Lacy and too many more to list.

This site has featured her images in past posts (for example here, here and here). While dommes in fetishistic outfits aren’t exactly an unusual thing, for Mistress Adrienne fetish and fashion was clearly a hugely important part of her identity, creativity and aesthetic. She had an amazing sense of style and the dedication to make it work, as described in this anecdote by Amikoland.

I’ll finish with an image and tweet she shared back in November. It makes me tear up a little reading it now. Rest in Peace Mistress Adrienne.

Although I’m a woman of #blackleather & dark fantasy, I’m a soul of LIGHT 🕯 Days get darker in winter months, but The light never goes out for inspired & content people. How will you make the most of your current reality? #leathergoddess #inspiration

Santa

It’s that time of year again. If you celebrate Christmas then I hope you have a good one. If you don’t, then I apologize for all the nonsense around it. If the holiday time is tough for you then I empathize and commiserate. Thankfully we’ll all be past it soon.

I found this article on the origin of Santa and Father Christmas interesting. I hadn’t realized that there were two separate figures involved and that Saint Nicholas was the patron saint of sex workers. On an entirely unrelated note, I’ve also enjoyed the #duvetknowitschristmas tag on twitter, which reminds me why I like staying at home over Christmas and not dealing with weird family arrangements.

Finally, here’s a nice bondage image from Thee Domasan to finish the post. What a well placed Santa hat.

Greta Garbo

I don’t think this really counts as femdom, but it is a lovely picture. It’s from 1929 and a movie called The Single Standard, with two of the A list stars of the time –Greta Garbo and Nils Asther. Given the positioning of her in the chair and him at her feet, you can definitely project a D/s vibe into there if you choose to.  However, while they both hid their sexuality during their film careers,  in reality he was gay and she either gay or bisexual. So it’s really just two beautiful people in a beautiful shot.

Heading Towards the Light

For anyone fed up with dark winter nights and holiday festivities, there is good news. In the Northern Hemisphere we just passed the Winter Solstice. That means we’ve turned the corner and are heading back towards lighter times. In just a few days all the holiday nonsense will be over and the days will slowly start getting longer.

Mistress Fox and her submissive marked the Solstice with this beautiful bondage scene. As you might guess, the petals were then beaten off him.

Mistress Fox is a NYC based pro-domme. I can’t find a website for her, but her twitter bio contains contact details for anyone interested in arranging a session.

Edging Changed My Life

That post title sounds like hyperbole, but it really isn’t. Edging did change my life. I don’t think I’ve shared this story here before, but it seems an appropriate time to do so. After all, it is a holiday tale, albeit one with a touch more masturbation than is traditional for that genre. It starts sadly, but in common with most holiday stories and self pleasuring, has a happy ending.

The year was 2009 and I was grumpy. It was the week of Christmas and my friends were all out of town or busy with their families. My dating life had been non-existent all year and I was stuck at home, bored, alone, watching the Seattle rain. My life wasn’t particularly bad, it just felt like I was spinning in place, achieving little.

These days I’d tackle the holiday blues by arranging some hot kinky play. Sadly, back then the idea of actually exploring my kinks with another real life person seemed impossibly scary. I knew dommes existed, I just couldn’t imagine myself interacting with one. So instead I whiled away my vacation hours wandering through some of the stranger areas of the internet. It was there, on some obscure femdom forum, that I found a link to a series of femdom audio hypnosis files.

Hypnosis isn’t my kink, but one of the titles caught my eye: The 12 days of Christmas. It was an edging challenge. 12 hypnosis tracks based around edging at the end of each day, with no orgasms allowed until the last track. The accompanying blurb promised that the final days orgasm would be the most spectacular one of your life. I can’t speak to the truth of that – I only made it to day 10 – but the week or so of edging leading up to that did crazy things to my brain chemistry. I don’t think I was ever hypnotized, but I was so pleasantly frustrated and happily horny it broke down all my natural shyness and fear of reaching out to a domme. With a brain awash in endorphins, I resolved to shake things up and actually do something about my desires. In January 20210 I scheduled a session with a local pro-domme. My kinky self was finally out and has been flying high ever since.

To my eternal shame I don’t remember who produced the audio tracks. I only used them that one time, the disk they were on has long since died and all the similar examples I’ve found online aren’t quite the same thing. The bits of the hypnosis that were supposed to enthrall and dedicate me to their creator clearly didn’t stick. But that singular 10 day edging experience really did trigger a change in my life.

I’m not sure this shot of Mistress Madeline is strictly edging, but given the look on Parker London’s face, the build up has been pretty tortuous.

Mechanophilia

I’ve heard plenty of dommes complain about slaves slobbering all over their feet or shiny boots. The human tongue is rarely an effective mechanism to polish leather or clean a leg. However, I’ve never heard of a domme complaining about a slave ignoring her and licking the grill of the car she arrived in. Are they expecting him to lick the whole thing clean? Or did he take one look at the attractive ladies in fetish gear and decide that a fly splattered BMW grill was more his cup of tea? Also, at least one of the people there in very confused about how handcuffs work.

The image is from the classic British femdom magazine Cruella. This is one of their odder examples, but their magazine and site in the 90’s was very formative for the young paltego.

Suzi Quatro

The theme of female rock musicians who write, sing and play bass – as yesterday’s post featuring Savannah Sly was so obviously about – gives me the perfect excuse to feature Suzi Quatro. Her string of hits in the 70’s made her signature leather jumpsuit look famous. I’d always assumed it was chosen specifically for its sexy and fetishistic overtones, but according to this Guardian article it was originally because she thought Elvis looked good in leather and a jumpsuit would be practical for leaping around on stage. Only later, after she was photographed, did the other aspects because obvious.

Her main hits were all before my time, but I do remember as kid in the 80’s having my attention caught by her photographs. This early image is probably the most well known, but I prefer the later shot shown below. This was taken by famous rock photographer Allan Ballard in 1981 and is now in the UK’s National Portrait Gallery collection.