Visual spanking stories analysis: the corset

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(Today's analysis is about this post from yesterday.)

The corset by itself is a hotness that I think many BDSM folk recognize. Constriction and adornment in a single strip of cloth, whalebone, and laces. Add in all the wonderful shame-laden mores of a bygone time where, as my character Emily Orn Wilkes (Victorian bride) puts it, the corset was like a woman's breastplate--a strong bulwark against dishonor--, and you have the most paradoxically sexy piece of lingerie ever imagined.

(As opposed, say, to my very favorite lingerie, the lace thong, which is I think much more straightforward--though in the color white, which is my favorite for it, it is obviously the play at innocence that adds that final frisson.)

In the picture that inspired yesterday's little story, the corset itself is combined with no fewer than seven other elements to produce that moment where I suddenly grab my desk as if to keep myself either from fainting with arousal or from putting that hand farther down. Those elements: 1) the indeterminate blue garment on the left side, which the character has clearly just removed; 2) the bent head, indicating submission or penitence; 3) the unseen hands, which must, given the appearance of the shoulders, be held together in some way, in front of the character; 4) the hair, swept down over the right shoulder to give an unobstructed view of the back, made submissive by the implication of bound hands; 5) the pearls, which for reasons I'll probably try to investigate in a future post, somehow always seems to convey submission (the most obvious resonance is with the well-known trope of the "pearl necklace" of semen that the successful fellatrix sometimes receives, but I'm convinced that there's much more to pearls than that); 6) the absence of any other garment besides the corset, implying that the character has been forbidden them, and that she has been prepared for punishment, or for sex; 7) the laces, in back (so that she herself can't easily reach them) and hanging down so that her Master, should he wish, can hold them as he rides.

The perfection of this photograph is clearly, then, in the way it elaborates the central element of the corset itself into a constellation that focuses the corset's essential BDSM hotness into a kind of searing flame of submission. Each of those six elements occurs on its own in countless photographs, but the achievement what I think of as breathtaking hotness seems to happen when a single trope (here, the corset) is elaborated, visually, into other supporting elements.

That elaboration, in turn, makes me want to elaborate myself, in my own familiar way: that is, narratively. 

Why is she wearing the corset? Because her Master (the pearls and the notional age--judging from the back--of mid-20's to mid-30's make "husband" the natural choice for the role) commanded it, of course.

Why only the corset? Because her Master likes it that way, so that he can enjoy her, taking the long, dangling laces in his right hand, like reins.

Why are her hands bound and her head bowed? Because she's going to be punished.

Why the pearls? Because she went to a party where, of course, her offense was committed.

How did her hair get over her right shoulder? Master put it there. Why? So he could see her back while she had "penitent time."

Some girls might wonder why we cry when Antigone kills herself; I wonder why I can't keep my hand away from my lap when I think about why a girl in a corset's head is bowed. (OK, I wonder about both things, but this blog is dedicated to the pursuit of the latter question.)