Myth: BDSM Attracts the Ugly

We have some interesting conversations in the abyss.  Yet again though, a post delving into the Freak Zone (in which I’m carrying a V.I.P. card) has inspired the regurgitation of some popular myths in the comments.  One of them is that BDSM is particularly attractive to ugly people who can’t get laid.

Yeah, I know my entire friends list and many of you readers are doubling over in laughter now.  When you’re done, wipe your eyes and read on as I’ll explain why some people are under this (stupid) impression.

Old People Sex

A great many people don’t come out of whatever closet they’re in until they’re in their 30’s or older.  When they do, these are going to be drawn to communities because they haven’t had the time to grow up with fellow freaks.

So alternative clubs are always going to have their share of oldbies and old newbies tucked in a corner somewhere.  Meets, munches, and play parties are going to me majority 40+.  Thing is, not being stressed out about the same things most normal people stress out about, and a certain level of self care deems that most of us don’t look anywhere near our age…above the neck anyway.

Young people who missed being freaks in high school and university, and others who are newly out of the closet walk into meetings and see a bunch of imperfect people who don’t look particularly old, but mostly are.  Then there’s the fact that we don’t give a rat’s arse what someone’s rating on a 1-10 scale is, so long as they’re likeminded.  The community may not be particularly attractive to ugly people (for reasons I’ll explain later in this post), but we’re not holding it against anyone.  Everyone has a bit of ugly.

There is some ugly however, that is ubiquitous among the normals, that you just don’t generally see in the BDSM community.

One kind of ugliness that is extremely rare in the BDSM community is contempt lines.  My roomate L.E. calls this “butt face”.  Butt face is the reason so many women over the age of 27 are getting Botox.  It’s a particular wrinkle pattern that develops from a woman holding her face in an expression of contempt for too long, too often.  Contempt causes unconscious, uncontrollable contractions of facial muscles that start to show in the mid to late 20’s and get really deep by the mid 30’s.  There isn’t much of this “bad witch” look, even among Dommes who specialize in mean, because outside of playtime, we’re not generally mean people.

Another kind of ugly you don’t see that often in the community is plastic surgery scarring.  It’s not that no BDSM’er ever gets nipped here or lifted there.  It’s just rare to see the Frankenstein show unless someone has a particular fetish for looking like a cyborg…and when they do, they usually have a better outcome because they are concerned with actual aesthetics and looking “biomechanical”, and are not just desperate to fit into the mainstream.  It’s less 90210 and more Giger.

For the same reasons that you don’t see much butt face and Frankenbarbie, you also don’t see malnourished slim.  The skinny among us tend to be legitimately healthier…wirey men and soft women who don’t look like meth addicts with elephant skin.

In fact, especially for subs, skin care is extremely important.  If one likes spanking and such, it’s crucial to have skin that can take what one’s Master or Mistress has to give.  So you don’t see a whole lot of bad skin in the community.

We like sexy clothes.  Whether one is Dom, sub, sWiTCh, or like me, relative and 70% vanilla, we like to look good.  We’re very looks conscious people, just not looks obsessed.  I think this, aside of the community age issue, is what confuses people the most.  A girl can be a 10, but if she has the wrong attitude, no Dom wants to own her.  She’ll end up being pumped and dumped or picked up, run ragged, and put down.

Doms aren’t blind, and they aren’t totally disconnected from the sexual market.  They just have different priorities.  They’re also generally more aware of what they want, and a harpy is not it.  They make no apologies for this, and are quite often willing to pass over a smoking hot bitch to get to the fat, bubbly, pleasant, sensitive woman standing behind her.

Speaking of which, fat submissive women are quite uncommon under the age of 30 or so.  I’ve seen quite a few chubby ones, but a lower proportion than are in the general population.  Most young women I know into the rough stuff are slim…especially if they’re even mildly exhibitionist.

Dommes are often bigger likely because they’re often older, higher testosterone, and just generally more assertive and “together” than average.  Submissive men don’t mind a bit of weight leverage.

This leads us into another of the confusing aspects.  Some formerly hot attention whores who don’t want to do anything to better themselves but have too big entitlement complexes think that they can come into BDSM to escape from the realities of the general sexual market.  They are wrong.  If a Domme looks like she has no control of herself, she’s not going to be very attractive to subs.  The normal self-hating fattie attitude is going to look too dangerous.

A sub has to be able to trust you with his life.  If you are fat, you’d better still be taking care of yourself otherwise.  People in the community don’t demand media perfection in the way normal sheeple do, but because of this, their standards of behavior are going to be higher.

Big because you have health issues or are a higher T woman, or have a sedentary job, or hey, even because you followed the USDA for too long, isn’t going to be bothersome.  Resenting younger, hotter girls who aren’t even competing for the same attention is bothersome.  Getting insecure because your sub’s girlfriend is cute is bothersome.  Being domineering and irresponsible rather than dominant is bothersome.  Pigging out uncontrollably on chocolate every day, hiding food, and other addictive behavior is bothersome.

Big and bad assed is good.  Big and insecure is bad.

Now, I can understand some of the confusion, but what I don’t get is why people who’ve only dipped their toes in, won’t listen to the people who’ve been doing it for decades already.  One lady in the abyss comments said she went to a meeting for submissive women and felt “ousted”.  She thinks that the reason is because she was prettier than the other women there.

I highly doubt that she was the prettiest one there or in the entire community in her area, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.  I think the reason she got the cold shoulder is because of some…uncontrollable, unconscious facial expression that let everybody know she was juding them as less worthy than her based on looks.  Considering most submissive women are owned within a short time of coming out, and the ones who would be at a meeting were likely all owned, this would be rather presumptuous on her part.

Let’s just say she was a mini goddess who was actually benevolent and cool, who floated into the meeting on a cloud.  If this was so, and you had a poly Master, and were maybe Bi yourself, if she was that hot, wouldn’t you want to be her friend?  I sure would.  I’d be scared she might catch a bad one (there are bad ones in every scene) or some newbie who wouldn’t know how to handle her.

All us old broads who are sub, bottom, or relative, or even somewhat submissive vanilla, know what it’s like to be a dove among harpies.  It’s very easy to get one’s self hurt.  What I see happen every time a hot young girl who doesn’t act “fasnickety” comes into a group of kinky women is an immediate protective reaction.  Even if she is a little stuck up, one of the semi martyr brigade will befriend her and try to crack the protective snobbiness shell, for the girl’s own good.  BDSM or even vanilla submissiveness can be a dangerous adventure, and we all need understanding friends.

I was probably 10-20 years younger than a fair proportion of the women around me when I stepped into a TPE munch in the D.C. area for the first time.  This was the first time I entered a community that wasn’t mostly GLBT and people around my age.  They welcomed me with open arms despite my being relative.  Granted, I was fat, but so are a lot of people.

Before I was fat, I had loads of fun in the GLBT general “scene”.  Nobody ever made me feel unwelcome.  I bought my first riding crop at the little shop in the back of the Hidden Door in Corpus Christi.  I got a lot of help even long before that, in learning the ropes, and learning to be okay with not being sexually normal.  This kept me from becoming an absolute raging slut just because I felt nothing with or for most guys I encountered.

So what gives?

I think it’s as Hypatia says, “When the cat can’t get to the milk, he says the milk is sour.”  The confused girl entered a scene where her looks didn’t mean the same thing they mean to the normals.  We value health and beauty, but not at the expense of love and trust.

As to the guys who say I got into BDSM because I was fat, here’s a little reminder of what I looked like the year I realized that I liked the smell of sweat mixed with metal: