I Am a Fetishist, Hear Me Roar

I am a fetishist and proud of it. I love being a fetishist and I embrace fetishists everywhere Often misunderstood by the dungeon-only set, the fetishist occupies an important place in our world-tribe. Why would we wear latex if not for fetish? The clothing fetishist always dresses to kill. Who would wash, massage, and lotion our poor tired feet if not for the foot fetishist? Who would buy us that outrageously expensive footwear if there were no bool or shoe fetishists? Who would be our ashtray if not for the smoking fetishist? Who would we tickle half to death? Who would worship our hair, our gloves, our stockings, if there were no fetishists? Face it! Our world would be a duller place without them!

Fetish number one with me is latex, then in no particular order: opera gloves, evening gowns, corsets, smoking (yes, I still smoke and I love it), and of course shoes, but it is a woman's fetish for shoes, which is not at all like a shoe slave's fetish. With the exception of my latex fetish, all of my other fetishes developed in my childhood. Cigarette commercials were still on television then and the men and women smoking looked so glamourous, so sexy, that I bought the whole package. To this day, I still find a man who smokes to be sexy, and smoking becomes a checkmark in the plus column. The opera gloves and evening gowns shown on the thin models holding the contrived poses of the day were the epitome of glamour to me, and as an adult my fetish is to play dress-up in this manner. I think I was born with a shoe fetish because 1 remember even as a small child being extremely fussy about the style and cut of my Mary Janes and what kind of buttons they had. The corset? Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, of course.

Like most of my fetishes, many, many other people’s fetishes began in childhood. The older editions of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), defined a fetish as a sexual obsession with a nontraditional body part or an object, such as a foot or stockings, and as an obsession that was developed in childhood. DSM edition four also included a second, more expanded definition: that an obsession with a traditionally sexual body part, developed later in life, could also be included under the definition of fetish. Hence, "leg men," "ass men," "tit men," and the like, when added to the ranks of the traditional BD5M fetishists, significantly enlarged the number of fetishists. After reading the definition, it seemed clear that one could have a fetish for an object or a body part, but it was unclear that in the case of a body part, whether one can have a “fetish" for a part of one’s own body. I thought not. For example, one can be a latex fetishist (a personal fetish and a traditional fetish object), and a hair fetishist, but the hair fetish would not be for one’s own hair.

Fetishism is both profane and sacred, and can involve the breaking of taboos, a very delicious thing. It often includes elaborate rituals—rituals that are now familiar to you as part and parcel of your BDSM games. Being a fetishist myself means I really understand fetishism in others. Remember the differences between a dungeon mistress and a fetish domina? One can be both, or only understand or enjoy one style and not the other. I am a fetish diva and as such I am a receiver of foot, boot, shoe, leg, stocking, hair, latex, leather, and glove worship, as well as being a devotee of corsets and uniforms, a tickling temptress/torturer, gas-cat (farter), and a smoking syren. Because that is a Iol of ground to cover, I have divided fetishes into two chapters. This chapter discusses latex, leather, hair, gloves, corsets, uniforms, tickling, smoking, and “aroma therapy." The next chapter discusses foot, legs, shoes, boots, and stock-ings/leg wear. In each, well spend some lime discussing their possible origins, planning new scenes, and share a funny story or two.