So, as I've mentioned in passing a couple of times, I took a six week burlesque class. We learned a cloyingly sweet 50s pinup routine which included glove peels and bra and panty removal as well as a few different types of shimmies.
Shimmies are kind of the bread and butter of burlesque. They're what get all your fun lady parts shaking and jiggling in provocative ways. I need lots of shimmy practice. My motions aren't exaggerated enough and I tend to tense up at some point and that doesn't work. I try to practice at least like 15 minutes every day. I just go through all the shimmies I know and try to do them for a couple of minutes each.
I still need lots of practice on lots of things, actually. And I know for next semester to run through the choreography way more than I did. I never got to that point of feeling so comfortable with the moves that I could inject any personality into it. I sort of felt like a robot doing the motions in the final class when it was my turn to do it on my own. My instructor said I did a great job, but my classmate really pulled out the sass and it was fantastic! I was too busy thinking about what move comes next to do much more than smile. Plus I'm still getting over feeling ridiculous watching myself in the mirror.
So that's that. I was thinking only a couple of weeks into it that I would take another round of 101 after this semester. But all my classmates are doing 201 and I'd really like to stick with them. We've just started getting to know each other and we all get along really well. I had to think about it for half a second after finishing my final run-through of the routine. I decided to commit to this thing and see it through and that I'm going to devote the time necessary to do a better job in 201. Because I know I can. And it's fun and totally worth the effort.
Now to design some costumes...
Monday, October 29, 2012
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Compliment Or Crass?
When I first started sharing nude photos with the internets, I took all positive comments as a compliment. Even if that positive comment was something really uncouth like, "I want to lick your pussy." I mean, I'm posting nude photos on the internets. I kind of expect this sort of language thrown at me. But after a while, you get enough comments which fall all across the board that these start to rub you the wrong way (no pun intended). More and more, I notice I'm kind of put off by these, "damn, I want to suck your nipples" comments as opposed to how I feel when someone says something seemingly sincere like, "your husband is a lucky man" or "you're beautiful/sexy/gorgeous/hot" or "I love your poses" or hell, even "I love your tits" is usually okay. When I get these comments, I'm quick to smile and thank the person giving me the compliment. When I get the other sort of comments, I have to really stop and ponder how I'm going to respond. Let's go through a few of the scenarios that play through my head when I'm facing down an "I want to fuck your brains out" comment, shall we?
"Seriously? I mean, I know I'm putting my vagina out there on display, and I like the fact that you appreciate it, but just because I put it out there doesn't mean I want to fuck every person who likes my photos. And really, don't you have something a little better to say than how much you want to break me in half with your cock?"
This is often how I want to respond. It's my first, knee-jerk reaction to those crass comments. They seem so unimaginative. So lowest common denominator. You see a vagina and you want to fuck it, I get that, but does it really need to be said? I don't often respond with anything like this because I'm afraid of getting called a bitch and a tease and someone who can't take a compliment and anything else that might turn it around on me for not appreciating these explicit comments. And that's not okay. I shouldn't be the one afraid to overstep some boundary here. They're my photos. It's my body. And when you comment in this manner, it feels like you don't respect any of my desires at all. You just assume that when I put it out there, it's for anyone to have a piece of it that wants it. It never crossed your mind that I might just enjoy getting naked and taking photos. You assume I want to hear all the filthy things my photos make you want to do. I have a pretty good imagination and I'm perfectly capable of filling in the blanks with what you probably want to do to me even if your comment only says, "hot". Most importantly, it's like my burlesque instructor was saying about a guy she worked with when he found out she danced. He asked if he could stick it anywhere he wanted. And he subsequently got written up for it. Just because I take my clothes off in a fairly public forum doesn't mean I want you to touch me. And hell, I might be really attracted to you, but there are boundaries and I wish people would respect those boundaries. We'd all have a lot more fun.
"Teehee! Thank you for wanting to fuck me. And especially thank you for saying you wanted to fuck me. Because, as a woman, what I really need is for a man to tell me I'm attractive. All the time. As graphically as possible. And that's why I share nude photos.
This is the obvious sarcasm route, which I often type out just to get it out of my system, and then hit Ctrl+A and Delete before typing a quick offhanded, "thanks", usually in all lowercase and with no punctuation. Because really, I feel like I have to say something because you'll just think I'm ignoring you and being a high and mighty slut, but that somehow my lack of effort to engage with you by not even hitting the shift key will convey to you what should already be apparent. That telling a woman you want to lick her pussy right off the bat doesn't often get you any closer to that desire. Women, even we whores, like to be romanced. We want to know you saw something in our photo other than the glistening, wet vagina on display or the fully erect nipples in clamps. We want to know that you saw the woman attached to the lady parts. That you appreciate the composition or the pose or the lighting or anything besides the fucking nudity. Maybe I'm doing this wrong. I don't know. But again, answering in this manner really is bitchy and if I was afraid of getting called a bitch from the first option, then I know I'd get called a bitch for this one.
"Thank you so much for the compliments!"
This is what I used to write. When I was battling my own self-esteem and body image issues and struggling with every photo to find the beauty in myself, I'd take it and sometimes, I'd even engage in a back and forth that started like this. And a couple of times, I met really great people this way. But, ultimately, this is what I responded with because I guessed that a huge chunk of the audience to which I would appeal would be fetishists who didn't know how to be anything but animals (which is a very small population of the fetish community, in my experience). I mean, I'm not a conventional looking woman and so I thought I just had to take what I could get. I'm learning this is not the case and I'm going to stop responding in this way. No exceptions. If we don't have an established rapport where it's okay for you to message me and say, "come suck my cock," and you message me and say, "come suck my cock," the best you can possibly hope for is getting ignored. Again, NO EXCEPTIONS!
"Heh, I'm married, but thanks."
This has been my resent fallback. As these comments started to irritate me, I still felt I needed to respond and I still felt I needed to play along, or at least be cordial. I needed an out and playing the marriage card seemed the easiest thing to shut down any potential boorish comments or subsequent backlash for me shutting them down. But I shouldn't need to come up with excuses about why I couldn't let you shove your entire fist in my pussy any day of the week you might want to. Bottom line, those sorts of notions are really something you should keep to yourself unless you're sure the other person is down with exploring that with you. How do you find out without straight up proposing it like this? Well, maybe take some time to get to know the person before you make such comments. You can usually gauge the likelihood of your fantasies coming true with them after some conversation. And it doesn't have to be explicit conversation. Just because we're kinky people and you're looking at nude photos of me doesn't mean we have to jump right to the sex. I'm here to make connections as well. I'm everywhere to make connections. Connections to real people I can learn something from and people with whom I enjoy spending time. But by all means, there are people out there who love these comments. They love making them and receiving them and you can find out if that's what they're into the same way. Talk to them. Connect with them. I do not love these comments and I'm getting to the point where I hate them and I need to do better about expressing that. So here we are. Consider it expressed.
[ignoring]
This is what's going to happen from now on. I'm a busy woman and if you don't have the time to come up with a more original comment than, "I want to fuck you so hard," then I don't even have the time for that lowercase, non-punctuated "thanks" anymore. But at the same time, this is kind of unsatisfying. Because these asshats have no idea they're doing anything wrong. And I feel like it's my civic duty to inform them of their social faux pas. But that's likely only going to get me some of that backlash I mentioned above.
See a trend here? I've seen all these essays lately on sexual harassment and rape culture and dealing with creepers in social situations. And there's this ongoing dialog that goes something like this:
Victims of bullshit: "This is fucked up! Something must be done!"
Bystanders: "Don't be so hard on them, they don't know what they're doing. Maybe go the extra mile to give them some guidance."
Victims: "Yes. I will do that. With my copious amounts of spare time and my endless patience and all that personal responsibility I have toward everyone I meet. I will make sure that these penis wrinkles who feel the need to make these obtuse comments leave my presence with a well developed sense of how to interact with their fellow human beings."
Bystanders: "Well, okay, I see you have a point there."
Douche canoes who say stupid shit to naked women: [silence] Or alternatively, they're standing with the bystanders, looking around nervously, saying, "maybe these guys are just socially awkward?"
Victims: "Sure, that's a very likely possibility. But how exactly is that my problem? How exactly should I have to put up with being treated like a blow up doll just because these dick trickles never learned to respect women?"
Douche canoes: [silence]
But that's about where it ends. We're in a back and forth and that's good. It's an improvement, at least. But we need to have some solutions to deal with this. I, personally, need to have a way to politely comment back to these people (and I know I've been really hard on men specifically here, and the comments are overwhelmingly by males, but certainly there are females who do not know how to respect personal boundaries as well, I don't want to seem like I'm singling out men) and let them know that while I appreciate that they appreciate my body, I'd rather them say it in a more appreciative way.
Tl;dr - Just because someone makes their body intimately available for you to look at does not mean they want you to intimately touch their body. And just because you think something doesn't mean you should say it. Test the waters. Get to know them. Figure out if telling them you want to fuck them so hard you'll make them cry is something that will garner a positive response or a restraining order before you say it.
So, that's where my head is today. And this is not at all the recap of my first semester of burlesque classes that I set out to write. But, oh well, I needed to write it.
"Seriously? I mean, I know I'm putting my vagina out there on display, and I like the fact that you appreciate it, but just because I put it out there doesn't mean I want to fuck every person who likes my photos. And really, don't you have something a little better to say than how much you want to break me in half with your cock?"
This is often how I want to respond. It's my first, knee-jerk reaction to those crass comments. They seem so unimaginative. So lowest common denominator. You see a vagina and you want to fuck it, I get that, but does it really need to be said? I don't often respond with anything like this because I'm afraid of getting called a bitch and a tease and someone who can't take a compliment and anything else that might turn it around on me for not appreciating these explicit comments. And that's not okay. I shouldn't be the one afraid to overstep some boundary here. They're my photos. It's my body. And when you comment in this manner, it feels like you don't respect any of my desires at all. You just assume that when I put it out there, it's for anyone to have a piece of it that wants it. It never crossed your mind that I might just enjoy getting naked and taking photos. You assume I want to hear all the filthy things my photos make you want to do. I have a pretty good imagination and I'm perfectly capable of filling in the blanks with what you probably want to do to me even if your comment only says, "hot". Most importantly, it's like my burlesque instructor was saying about a guy she worked with when he found out she danced. He asked if he could stick it anywhere he wanted. And he subsequently got written up for it. Just because I take my clothes off in a fairly public forum doesn't mean I want you to touch me. And hell, I might be really attracted to you, but there are boundaries and I wish people would respect those boundaries. We'd all have a lot more fun.
"Teehee! Thank you for wanting to fuck me. And especially thank you for saying you wanted to fuck me. Because, as a woman, what I really need is for a man to tell me I'm attractive. All the time. As graphically as possible. And that's why I share nude photos.
This is the obvious sarcasm route, which I often type out just to get it out of my system, and then hit Ctrl+A and Delete before typing a quick offhanded, "thanks", usually in all lowercase and with no punctuation. Because really, I feel like I have to say something because you'll just think I'm ignoring you and being a high and mighty slut, but that somehow my lack of effort to engage with you by not even hitting the shift key will convey to you what should already be apparent. That telling a woman you want to lick her pussy right off the bat doesn't often get you any closer to that desire. Women, even we whores, like to be romanced. We want to know you saw something in our photo other than the glistening, wet vagina on display or the fully erect nipples in clamps. We want to know that you saw the woman attached to the lady parts. That you appreciate the composition or the pose or the lighting or anything besides the fucking nudity. Maybe I'm doing this wrong. I don't know. But again, answering in this manner really is bitchy and if I was afraid of getting called a bitch from the first option, then I know I'd get called a bitch for this one.
"Thank you so much for the compliments!"
This is what I used to write. When I was battling my own self-esteem and body image issues and struggling with every photo to find the beauty in myself, I'd take it and sometimes, I'd even engage in a back and forth that started like this. And a couple of times, I met really great people this way. But, ultimately, this is what I responded with because I guessed that a huge chunk of the audience to which I would appeal would be fetishists who didn't know how to be anything but animals (which is a very small population of the fetish community, in my experience). I mean, I'm not a conventional looking woman and so I thought I just had to take what I could get. I'm learning this is not the case and I'm going to stop responding in this way. No exceptions. If we don't have an established rapport where it's okay for you to message me and say, "come suck my cock," and you message me and say, "come suck my cock," the best you can possibly hope for is getting ignored. Again, NO EXCEPTIONS!
"Heh, I'm married, but thanks."
This has been my resent fallback. As these comments started to irritate me, I still felt I needed to respond and I still felt I needed to play along, or at least be cordial. I needed an out and playing the marriage card seemed the easiest thing to shut down any potential boorish comments or subsequent backlash for me shutting them down. But I shouldn't need to come up with excuses about why I couldn't let you shove your entire fist in my pussy any day of the week you might want to. Bottom line, those sorts of notions are really something you should keep to yourself unless you're sure the other person is down with exploring that with you. How do you find out without straight up proposing it like this? Well, maybe take some time to get to know the person before you make such comments. You can usually gauge the likelihood of your fantasies coming true with them after some conversation. And it doesn't have to be explicit conversation. Just because we're kinky people and you're looking at nude photos of me doesn't mean we have to jump right to the sex. I'm here to make connections as well. I'm everywhere to make connections. Connections to real people I can learn something from and people with whom I enjoy spending time. But by all means, there are people out there who love these comments. They love making them and receiving them and you can find out if that's what they're into the same way. Talk to them. Connect with them. I do not love these comments and I'm getting to the point where I hate them and I need to do better about expressing that. So here we are. Consider it expressed.
[ignoring]
This is what's going to happen from now on. I'm a busy woman and if you don't have the time to come up with a more original comment than, "I want to fuck you so hard," then I don't even have the time for that lowercase, non-punctuated "thanks" anymore. But at the same time, this is kind of unsatisfying. Because these asshats have no idea they're doing anything wrong. And I feel like it's my civic duty to inform them of their social faux pas. But that's likely only going to get me some of that backlash I mentioned above.
See a trend here? I've seen all these essays lately on sexual harassment and rape culture and dealing with creepers in social situations. And there's this ongoing dialog that goes something like this:
Victims of bullshit: "This is fucked up! Something must be done!"
Bystanders: "Don't be so hard on them, they don't know what they're doing. Maybe go the extra mile to give them some guidance."
Victims: "Yes. I will do that. With my copious amounts of spare time and my endless patience and all that personal responsibility I have toward everyone I meet. I will make sure that these penis wrinkles who feel the need to make these obtuse comments leave my presence with a well developed sense of how to interact with their fellow human beings."
Bystanders: "Well, okay, I see you have a point there."
Douche canoes who say stupid shit to naked women: [silence] Or alternatively, they're standing with the bystanders, looking around nervously, saying, "maybe these guys are just socially awkward?"
Victims: "Sure, that's a very likely possibility. But how exactly is that my problem? How exactly should I have to put up with being treated like a blow up doll just because these dick trickles never learned to respect women?"
Douche canoes: [silence]
But that's about where it ends. We're in a back and forth and that's good. It's an improvement, at least. But we need to have some solutions to deal with this. I, personally, need to have a way to politely comment back to these people (and I know I've been really hard on men specifically here, and the comments are overwhelmingly by males, but certainly there are females who do not know how to respect personal boundaries as well, I don't want to seem like I'm singling out men) and let them know that while I appreciate that they appreciate my body, I'd rather them say it in a more appreciative way.
Tl;dr - Just because someone makes their body intimately available for you to look at does not mean they want you to intimately touch their body. And just because you think something doesn't mean you should say it. Test the waters. Get to know them. Figure out if telling them you want to fuck them so hard you'll make them cry is something that will garner a positive response or a restraining order before you say it.
So, that's where my head is today. And this is not at all the recap of my first semester of burlesque classes that I set out to write. But, oh well, I needed to write it.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Guilty Pleasures: Tentacle Hentai
I fucking love hardcore tentacle hentai. The more non-consensual and extreme the better. But I don't like egg laying or girls getting fucked so hard they split in two or explode because they're filled so full of cum. That's a bit too extreme for my tastes. But this scene from Bible Black is like the Goldilocks of tentacle porn for me.
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