Uniform Fetish in Peril?

I’m on holiday this week, munchkins, and you were going to get an away notice and not much else today, but the BBC interferred. The following item on the news is an epitome of “what the fuck”:

A male stripogram facing court over wearing a police uniform and equipment has been charged for a second time.

Hang on. They charged a male stripper for performing in a police uniform? And then they did it again?

I don’t need to explain why this made me boggle. Police uniforms are not uncommon in spanking videos. They’re pretty common in your old vanilla porn as well, actually, and people have been wearing them for sexual kicks for ages. If the police make a habit of dragging people off to jail for a spot of uniform fetish, the courts are going to be extremely busy over the next two hundred years.

Obviously, commenting on a case without knowing full facts is futile. A little click-around on the BBC website has revealed that, although the lad was originally arrested for wearing the uniform, the charge was not pursued; he is, in fact, being taken to court for carrying dangerous weapons in public (i.e. having a baton).

And still they arrest him again? For impersonating a police officer? Even though the first time he was arrested for it, there was no charge?

If a Scottish lawyer happens to be reading this, please explain to us plain perverts what’s going on. There has to be more to this case, if only because otherwise it looks bloody scary.

The ‘Starship Troopers’ whipping

This is one of my favourite mainstream movie whipping scenes of all time: Johnny Rico’s military flogging in Starship Troopers.

It got to be my favourite because it was one of the best scenes I saw “in the wild” – that is, watching the movie with my friends, not knowing there was a whipping to come. I was in my early teens, still off-line, still hungry for any glimpse of a spanking on the screen.

And this scene provided, hoo boy, did it ever. I loved everything about it, and I still do: the tribunal beforehand, the fact that he undeniably deserves it, and that, in fact, the flogging is a merciful option.

The fact that the hitherto evil sergeant gives him something to bite on, with a hint that he too knows what the lash feels like. The fact that you see the reaction of his mates forced to watch the punishment – and also that it cuts away to the scene of his girlfriend having a riotous good time in her flight school.

It’s a goldmine of good stuff, and you only ever see a few strokes. A full spanking film has never had the same effect on me.

I couldn’t find a clip with the full tribunal, but here’s one I did find:

By the way, the ‘Starship Troopers’ book has even more corporal punishment stuff, but then it’s Heinlein; he can always be relied on to provide a good spanking scene.

Cane Macro

I’ve always wanted to stick a Princess Bride quote onto a still from one of my spanking films.  And Niki does kinda look like she’s about to stick the cane in my throat.

She doesn’t in the end, though.

The still is from my most recent “Northern Spanking” release “A Schoolgirl’s Private Diary”, but I’ll talk about the making of it separately. It was rather a lot of fun to make.

Burlesque and Femininity

Yesterday the BBC ran a programme about several young women who signed up for a crash-course in burlesque dancing, because they wanted to feel more “feminine”. At the end of the course they were going to perform a routine in a proper burlesque club, with dozens of people watching them.

I admit, the stated aim of the program made me bristle. I couldn’t figure out how strip-tease is supposed to make you more feminine – I mean, male strippers, are they feminine? Is it inherently feminine to dance without any clothes on? I love watching strip-tease, but I’m not ready to agree that a ballerina is less feminine than a stripper, because she’s wearing clothes.

I’m being facetious, of course: it was all about sexuality. What those girls wanted was to learn to enjoy their bodies, to learn to view themselves as sexual beings, and to be brave enough to broadcast their sexuality to the world. Fair enough, really. It was a shame how some of them couldn’t bear to touch their own breasts _over a t-shirt_; they urgently needed some love, that’s for sure.

I just still don’t understand how “sexual boldness” equals “femininity”, or how it’s the most potent source of girl power. I’ve never bought the claim that being a sexual object is the greatest way to female empowerment. This may sound odd coming from somebody who revels in being a sexual object (because I am, hell yes, I am), but I will repeat until my vocal cords wither that it’s being able to make an informed choice to be a sexy little thing that leads to empowerment – not actually being one.

The girls in the programme went through with the show, and found power in it, and it’s a good thing. Except, one girl chose not to do it. The cloud of disapproval of her decision irked me to no end. There was a distinct tone of “oh well, isn’t she a repressed, unempowered loser for having refused to twirl her nipple tassels.” And that is when empowerment-via-stripping-off begins to be disturbing: it’s as though what used to be a brave personal decision becomes a social expectation. Say, what? The girl’s a loser if she chooses not to dance burlesque? What part of “I’ve made my decision” signals lack of empowerment to you?

Ladies and gents of the BBC, you’re somewhat screwed up in the head.

Mind you, the corsets the girls got in the end were really pretty, and one particular red-head was breathtakingly beautiful. I did want to thump her for going on about how she wasn’t attractive because she was 6′ tall. Excuse me while I take my 4’11 frame into a quiet corner to weep for the silliness of the humankind.

Crying for the camera

Crying is something I’ve never done during a spanking shoot, and I think that sucks. I tear up a bit, and I sniffle a lot, and when it hurts, I howl – but honest-to-goodness weeping, appropriate to what the character ought to go through, is just something that keeps escaping me.

Thing is, I cry when I’m sad or upset. I cry during a normal spanking some times, but I don’t like it, because it normally means something isn’t going right for me. Also, I’m an emotional person, and I cry over books, movies, and random moments of sadness – yet, try as I might to think about those weepy moments during a shoot, the buzz and exhilaration overpower any hint of sadness I try to conjure up.

I did manage to make Niki cry during our recent Lupus adventure, but a similar trick didn’t work on me. No matter how I tried to convince myself that the evil man who’s just shot my mother was about to thrash the hell out of me and my friends, and that it was really worth crying about – nope, no tears.

Tell you what, though. After the emotional grinder I’ve been through while finishing the last Harry Potter, I don’t foresee any problems shedding tears in the future. I just have to think about… oh, here goes. *wipes away a tear*

(No spoilers in the comments until the end of July, please.)