“Whiplash”: upcoming web series

For those of us who enjoy watching web-series and indulging in kink – or indulging in web-series and watching kink – here’s an interesting-looking upcoming web drama.

Whiplash is an edgy web series that chronicles the adventures of Erin Byrne, a strong and independent woman struggling to gain acceptance in life.

Erin comes from a difficult background with an abusive father. As a result of growing up in an atmosphere of family violence, her life has been a series of unfulfiling jobs and bad relationships.

Then, in one moment, her entire life changes.

A chance meeting with a professional dominatrix entices Erin into the world of fetish, where she hopes to finally be appreciated for her strength and to  gain an upper hand on life.  Lured by a promise of wealth and respect, Erin can’t imagine the intrigue and drama that await her.

Along the way, Erin (as Lady Bronwyn) gains insight into her own relationships with love, power and trust as she embraces her new family in the world of kink. Will Erin find the light of contentment she seeks by diving into a world considered by many to be dark, or will this be a path that will lead to her undoing?

I must admit, I have *huge* problems with the premise.

Firstly, don’t get me started on childhood trauma and subsequent interest in kink. Yes, it’s not unknown, but it’s not as common as fictional kinksters will have us believe. There could be so many interesting reasons why somebody may turn out to be kinky (including “I don’t know why, I just am!”), so many backgrounds for the main character. Falling back on the Bad Father trope smacks of lazy character creation.

Then, BDSM as the cure for all your life’s problem is a dodgy concept. Your dad is an arshole? Your boss is worse? Your best friend is after your dog? There are rats in your kitchen? It’ll all be OK when you take up a job in an extremely vulnerable profession which requires sanity, focus and having your shit together. Umm.

Of course, the creators of the show may have huge sneaky grins on their faces as they lull us into complacency with a pedestrian premise, ready to blow us away with amazing writing that subverts all tropes and pokes holes in presumptions. Maybe.

Be that as it may, I’m looking forward to “Whiplash” getting funding and actually posting some episodes.

Anti-creepiness manual

So okay, this video is about foot fetishists rather than spanking, but the anti-creepiness advice is still pretty usable, I think. Watch and take notes, munchkins.

Life in spanking after 30: part 2

To celebrate my birthday last week I cast my eye over the professional spanking scene, looking to talk to women who would admit to being in their 30s. I wanted to ask them one question:

“Has your involvement in the spanking industry changed with age? If it’s has, do you think it has to do with your age, or experience, or changes in your personal preferences?”

I present to you the responses in the order that they were sent to me.

Miss Hunter, AKA The Hunteress, of Captured by the Hunteress

I’d say it has changed in some ways but not so much in others.  This is probably due to a number of factors, but mostly because of maturity!  Being in my early twenties when I started out, having no prior experience/desire of spanking and CP, I was totally naive about the whole thing.  I couldn’t believe there were so many people into it.

This amazement turned into fascination for me and after a few months I was completely hooked.  I can’t imagine my life without it now.  Now I’m producing my own content and managing my own website – that has been a major change for me.  It’s opened up a creative avenue/outlet for me which I always knew I had just wasn’t sure what to put it into.

Amelia-Jane Rutherford, AKA Ariel Anderssen of Restrained Elegance

My involvement in the spanking industry started fairly late; I guess that if I’d got involved when I was very young, I might have noticed more of a difference as I got older.  I certainly don’t feel as though I’ve ‘grown out’ of certain roles – I’ve always been aware that, being so tall, I don’t look like everyone’s idea of a of a submissive or bottom.  So I guess that from the outside I probably never have looked fabulously believable as a schoolgirl, but in my mind, I’m just as able to go to that place as I was five years ago.

Maybe I’m slightly less comfortable with certain roles now.  The ‘looked after by male relative while parents are away’  scenario feels a bit of a stretch; whereas I’ve grown in to feeling comfortable making movies where I play teachers, part of a married couple, or someone who starts the movie with a bit of authority.  That said, it all depends on who I’m working with – a really good Top can sort of make anything work, hoorah.

I’m beginning to think that I’m not ever going to discover the joy of switching, even though it seems to happen to loads of people who start off as bottoms.  I’m still definitely a bottom  and that’s quite reassuring to me, because I was worried when I started exploring spanking work (and play) that I might ‘use up’ my fetish through doing lots of it, and would lose this part of myself.  So I’m quite happy that my preferences are pretty much exactly the same as they were when I started spanking modelling.  I’ve learned to like things I didn’t know about, and have refined my fantasies a bit, but I still love the same things.

I suppose that it’s probably experience that’s made the biggest difference to me.  When I started, I was just desperate to do the things I’d been fantasising about all my life, and I wasn’t awfully fussy about things like safety, who the Top was going to be at a given shoot, or how hard the CP action was going to be.  As time has gone on, I’ve learned to think properly rather than turning a prospective shoot into a fantasy scenario; so I turn work down when I don’t think it’d produce something I’ll be proud of.  And I’d be a bit more likely to say if the action was too hard for me.  I hope.   Meeting the friendly community of CP models, producers and bloggers has been a lovely surprise, and has contributed to my no longer feeling guilty about being into spanking.  I still felt quite guilty, I think, when I started work as a spanking model.

So apart from bruising less, not much has changed.  And I’m really glad that my experience of this industry so far is that it allows for a much longer career than the mainstream modelling industry does.

Lucy McLean of Northern Spanking

I don’t think my actual physical involvement has changed all that much over the years.  I still do the same things now as I did many years ago in terms of writing, directing and editing films.  I still act like the mother-hen and smother the models who work with us with love and confidence – or at least I hope I do! But I did that at 24 as much as I do it now in my early thirties.  I don’t perform on camera as much as I used to, and certainly when I do, it tends to be only dominant roles, not submissive ones.  There are a few reasons for that, but it is mostly personal.  I find my submission a much more private affair these days, and I suspect that is a combination of getting older and my kinks evolving and changing quite dramatically over the last few years.  I very much enjoy the dominant roles I play on camera, but I think the reason I don’t sub any more is because I am not comfortable with exposing my vulnerability to the world in that way any more.  I found that much easier when I was younger for sure and I think I am much more reserved now than I was.  I’m not sure if this is a confidence issue.  In many ways I feel a lot more confident and self-assured as I have gotten older, so it may just have been bravado when I was younger!  However, in many ways I find my confidence knocked.

It’s fine and well KNOWING that people who make comment and judge your looks and performances who have never met you shouldn’t matter, but sadly even at my age negative comments still cut quite deep. There was one instance, in the last year or so, where I made a very rare on-camera performance alongside Amelia Jane, and we were both dressed as schoolgirls.  It was a cameo role and I wasn’t spanked in the film, but somewhere online someone commented on the trailer for the film that “the girl on the left (me) looks old enough to be my grandmother”.  Ouch.  Hurt even more by the fact that Amelia Jane and I are the same age! Though she is a truly stunning creature of near mythical beauty so it was probably quite foolish to put myself next to her in the first place, but still, it was possibly the worst thing I’ve ever seen written about me over the years.  I am usually pretty good at letting such things wash over me, but I am very conscious of getting older.  I think as a model it is much harder when you age because you are constantly surrounded by photographic and film evidence of you looking at your very best, of looking younger and one is much more aware of every wrinkle or line or sag than I suspect we would be normally.  For me personally, having a child this year has not helped my personal image or self-confidence.  I one day hope to make peace with aging and my body, but I do fear I may become a little obsessive about it the older I get.  Which makes me feel very sad.

The way I *feel* about the spanking film industry has changed, even though my physical involvement hasn’t changed that much.  I think this is a combination of experience, age and my personal preferences. (As well as the massive changes in the spanking industry over the years have an influence about how I feel and how I represent the industry too obviously – do not get me started on that!)

As I said, my own kinks have changed dramatically and that does influence the subject content of what I write and direct.  Of course it does.  I can still direct generic films for mass viewing pleasure.  But let’s face it, when you’ve been filming schoolgirl films for the best part of 10 years, it can get a little dull.  I have always tried to put my own personality into at least some of what we shoot, which is why we end up with off-the-wall projects like Wheatley Manor, Hot Fuzz, Strictly Come Spanking (and the eagerly anticipated Schoolgirls In Space).  However, to offset the crazy ones, there are also a small element of the films I shoot that are intensely personal. Films that give me chills when we shoot them and astonish me in edit.  7 years ago this would have been more D/s, heavy BDSM leaning spanking films.  Now it’s much more likely to be an honest, raw DD dynamic, or period pieces.  I could probably talk for pages and pages about this transition and how and why it happened.  But I won’t. I suspect this answer is already of epic essay proportions already! I don’t think my experience or age has changed things in a necessarily more positive or negative way.  It’s just different, that’s all.  And all of that is about evolution.  Evolving as a woman, as a person, as a mother, as a submissive and as a Director.  All equally valid in their contribution to changes, and being able to recognise and embrace those changes.  But that is what ageing and life is all about, right?

Thank you for doing this blitz-interview, girls.

Life in spanking after 30: part 1

It’s my birthday tomorrow. I’m turning 31. I’m a bit silly about birthdays – as far as I’m concerned, it’s a special day that’s all about me, and I expect to be pampered and spoiled all day long. (And with both my husband and my lover spending the day with me, that’s exactly how it’s going to be.)

I’ve noticed something as I moved towards my birthday last year, and again this year. When I start discussing my birthday in conversation with friends and acquaintances, they frequently exude this air of expectation, like they’re waiting for me to start lamenting my advanced age, and wailing about my youth slipping through my fingers. I’ve certainly heard such wailing from a few of my girlfriends, and I know the conversational queues where it’s almost polite to start wringing your arms about your life being over. (This applies no matter how old you’re turning: one of my oldest friends started this process at 19, and repeats it every year.) And this, frankly, baffles me.

I’m in no way a person without confidence issues – trust me, I have plenty. But, whereas you’re likely to hear me sobbing into my wineglass about my writing skills or my struggle to conquer high heels (NB: I’m close to giving up on this last one) – every new birthday is a source of enjoyment for me, not a package of insecurities. Age angst is alien to me.

That’s all well and good, but that’s my personal life. With spanking modelling, things have a potential to turn a little more interesting.

An actress in spanking films – particularly a spankee – can expect to play young or youthful characters: schoolgirls, naughty nieces, cheerleaders, and so on. Where in private role-play I’m pretty comfortable with dressing up as a schoolgirl until they cart me away to the nursing home, I’m vain enough that at some point I’ll want to stop doing the same thing on film. Not yet, of course, but the day will come.

I wonder, will this day come at the same time for me, the spanking producers who shoot me, and the folks who watch me? In my experience, spanking models are encouraged to lower their age for as long as they can, and certainly to never admit they’re as ancient as 30+ years old. (Unless, of course, they’re in their 40s.) There have been (wildly successful) models who have managed to convince the world they were up to 10 years younger than in reality, which has made me giggle on occasion, particularly while reading message board discussions.

I’m unwilling to play the “you may never age” game at this stage, though I have before. I don’t know what this will do to my modelling. I’m pretty sure that, if I want to top, I can do it at any age, but I’m not ready to give up bottoming on camera yet. I’m curious to see if stating my real age will influence the roles available to me, and what sort of feedback I’ll get from the viewers, some of whom seem to be terrified of numbers higher than 29.

I was curious enough about this issue that I’ve contacted a few fellow models who admit to being in their 30s, and asked them how modelling has changed for them over the years. I’ll publish their responses soon, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, I’d be curious to hear some of your thoughts. How old are you (roughly)? How’s it going for you, being a spanko that age?

The state of F/M porn

If you want good porn, shoot your own. This is my conclusion after a couple of weeks of hopeful browsing of F/M BDSM sites.

Is it only my uneducated impression, or does most of the F/M visual content out there really, really suck? Perhaps, the good stuff is out there, and I’m just not finding it?

Here’s what I dislike about the stuff I’ve seen. For the most part, the men are faceless and invisible, no more than props to show off the fetishised power of the female dominants. These pose and strut, whips at the ready. I don’t dare say there’s nothing sexy about their heels and catsuits, but whatever sexuality there is, is focused entirely at the camera. I don’t see chemistry between the players, I don’t see passion, or even play-acted attraction. The kinky electricity flows not between the players, but directly from the domme at the camera: at the supposedly enthralled male gaze.

As a female viewer, I feel irrelevant. This isn’t surprising, because most porn is made for men. Even so, when I watch X/F porn, I can get a lot of pleasure out of it just by empathising with the girl on the reveiving end. Perhaps, this is the key to my dismay: when I look at spanking/BDSM porn, I want to empathise with the submissive. It’s all about the submissive for me, male or female. In the F/M porn, instead, the gaze follows not the submissive – the object of empathy, but the woman – the object of lust.

Now, being bisexual with a strong preference for women, I ought to be drawn to the dommes in F/M, the same way I’m attracted to the women in X/F videos. And yet, they leave me cold. This is, perhaps, because I look at the F/M stuff from the point of view of a female dominant, and so another female dominant under the circumstances is a like charge, gently repelling. Or maybe it’s because I just haven’t found the sort of dommes that I’m attracted to.

I wonder: this porn, shot entirely for the male gaze – does it work for its intended audience? Is it satisfying? Or maybe it works only up to a point? If you’re a male submissive, I’d love to know how it’s working for you.

Also, am I maybe missing some great F/M content? If there’s something that works for you, I’d like to know abot it, in case it works for me as well.