Fetishes seem much more prevalent these days than they were in the past. Of course moralists will say it is because our society is rotting in decadence. Others will say it is because we are more open and free to express ourselves. Maybe both are true to an extent. But I believe that pop culture has played a part in whatever the reasons are. I believe I can personally trace some of my fetishes back to pop culture, specifically t.v. and movies.
I think everyone knows that there was a bondage element built into Wonder Woman by the creator William Moulton Marston. Well, my very first crush was on Lynda Carter, the actress who played Wonder Woman in the 70's t.v. show. I was too young to watch in first run, but I saw reruns, and it was true love. It may have been in part die to her charm and her wholesomeness, but it also had no little part due to her almost spilling out the top of her red white and blue bustier. Batgirl on the Adam West Batman show had a similar if less strong effect on me. Spandex and vinyl outfits, and getting tied up were things that very early on became exciting to me through these shows. There were also the skimpy and/or tight costumes worn by women in shows like Star Trek and in movies like the James Bond flicks.
I was young when shows like Cheers hit the airwaves. There would be jokes about spanking that I didn't get, but knew were sexual in nature and just a tiny bit transgressive. Sex comedies were all the rage, so I was seeing Porkys and Revenge of the Nerds well before puberty hit. Speaking of puberty, I credit Madonna with kick starting mine with her performance of Like a Virgin on the MTV Video Music Awards. Watching her writhe around on stage in a wedding dress, I felt my body doing things it had never done before. Years later she would expand my sexual consciousness with the video for Justify My Love and her Sex book.
Now to enter a topic that is a little embarrassing for me, because it involves a fetish that is not exactly obscure, but isn't shared by the mainstream. You see, I find the image of a woman smoking a cigarette to be extremely sexy. I attribute this to 3 things. First, the omnipresent jokes in media about women smoking after sex. I think this linked in my brain the image of a woman smoking with the idea that she is also fucking. Then there were the reruns of old film noir movies, in which the femme fatales were always smoking. These movies seemed to be promoting the idea that a smoking woman was a sexy woman. Then a little later there were the soft core porn movies on Cinemax. Most of the women in those movies smoked, either constantly, after sex or sometime even during sex.
So you see, if I am a degenerate who wants to get tied up and spanked by a smoking woman in a vinyl catsuit, I really didn't have a chance to turn out any other way. Sex was omnipresent in my childhood, but it was still taboo enough that they didn't show it outright. They snuck it in in ways that made it seem more deviant, more dangerous, more alluring. The symbols became more indicative of the real thing, which is of course how fetishes are created. So while yes, I may in fact be a pervert, I contend that it was the pop culture of the late 20th century that made me that way. And quite honestly, I wouldn't trade it for the world.
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