Iconic Images 5

Some days ago a friend send me the link to this image. I had not seen it before but it immediately struck a chord with me. I looked at it and was fascinated by it. I realised that it was an iconic image.

What do I really mean by an iconic image? You know, by now, how self centred I am so the meaning is about how I look upon images. I think, that it mean that it represent or illustrates a fantasy or some important part of a fantasy, an idea or a sensation. Most iconic images I have written about are old favourites but I realised it didn't have to be like that. So here is a very new iconic image. The painting is old, no doubt about that but it is new to me.

When you look at an image you are an observer, you don't necessary identify with the people in it. So I will start there. This is an image of a woman, a very white woman standing naked in front of two reclining men. There is a clad woman behind them, standing and a half naked to her side, sitting. This is a very simple description.

But it is so much more. Perhaps she is a slave that is new to the harem and she is assessed by the master of the house. Or maybe one of the men owns her and is trying to sell her to the other.

I don't know for certain but that doesn't matter. I think she is a slave or soon to be slave. She stands naked before the reclining men. She is property, a thing and she can be bought and sold like an animal. She is naked and they are clothed, they have the power she is helpless, they give nothing, she everything, even her body, her person. When she is sold, someone else gets the profit. She gets nothing. What could be more degrading? And why is it still exciting?

Depending on who you are you may identify with different people in the image. I identify with her. She is the main character so this is not strange, I think. What would it be like, standing there, naked and vulnerable like that? Being watched and scrutinised, being seen and not allowed to cover up. Everything is visible, the whole you is visible. Why is it so exciting?

There is something immensely sweet and delightful in it. Watching from the outside everyone can see she is beautiful. Who doesn't want to be beautiful? She is exposed and in this situation it seems appropriate that she is being looked at. There is no shame in ogling her, that is what she is there for. Could that be part of the appeal for those of you who identify with the men?

Isn't there also a sense that being this beautiful and deserving to be at the centre of attention is nice, being seen as something lovely and knowing that you are lovely, just the way you are? Being naked is about being uncovered, being seen as who you are, not what you do or perform but who you are. Being beautiful as you are.

Being naked is also being attractive, being sexual, the promise of arousal and pleasure. Being that slave is being beautiful, sexual and desirable. And, perhaps, being forced, being at someone's command makes you free of guilt and free of responsibility. Being forced to be something that is good and delightful and pleasant.

These are just thoughts about some of the mixed feelings involved, how something that undoubtedly must be degrading and shameful on one level is desirable and sweet on another. And the strangest thing of all, in this mix the shameful and degrading becomes something desirable and the analysis breaks down. An image is an image and everything is there at the same time.

Fantasies are powerful and images that feed those fantasies are blessings. I am glad I was shown this image.

Iconic Images 4

What have we here? A picture by an artist called Mike Hoffman. I don't know much about him, almost nothing, to be honest, besides what I can see, myself, that he is immensely influenced by the master of fantasy art, himself, Frank Frazetta.

I don't know anything about this picture, where it comes from or if it illustrates a story or anything. I just like it as it is.

When looking at a picture like this we know a lot about it. The man in the middle is the villain and the hero is lying at his feet and beside the villain is a damsel in distress. This one is a little more daring than the mainstream illustration of a story set in the Wild West. Nothing unusual about the villain or the hero. They look quite as you would expect them. No, it is the heroine that is a little less clothed than what you would expect.

Enough analysis. I like this image. I wonder what is going on, what will happen. Why is the heroine almost naked? Looks kind of deliberate to let her have some kind of skirt or cloth hanging on her hips but almost falling off. Another step and she will be naked. Hands behind her back. Could she be bound? I believe she is.

She is in peril, isn't she? Half naked, bound, in the hands of a vicious bandit and with her hero on the ground. Will the hero rise up and fight her captor or will he get himself killed? What will the evil man do to her if the hero is not up to it?

I don't want the hero to pull out a gun and shoot the villain and then ride off with the heroine into the sunset but after he has giver her his shirt or something. No, I kind of, fancy the hero to be a coward and run away or simply be shot and the pretty lady is left in the hands of the bandit. What will he do? What will happen to her? Will this thug be able to restrain himself when he knows he is in possession of a half naked (or now naked) heroine somewhere in the wilderness?

And who knows, maybe this rogue is a blessing after all. Maybe he knows what he wants and in the process makes the heroine happy. who could resist something like that? Isn't it like that in fantasy land?

Iconic Images 3

Dear Reader, if you have read my blog you may find this iconic image a little different from the ones I usually post here, a little more brutal, a little more degrading, perhaps. Maybe you will find the earlier ones more stylish and lighter than this. Still there is something about this image that draws me in.

It is made by a person who call themselves Gnarly Thotep. This character has come and gone, reappeared and gone again on the Web. There is still a gallery of their work, here.

The name sounds a little ancient Egyptian to me and perhaps this is intentional. Although it should, really, have been Gnarlyt Hotep to be Egyptian, ''hotep' being a common element in names, meaning an offering to a god or a goddess.

Enough of that. Why have I decided to put this image on my blog? It is a horrible image in many ways. A naked woman is hung upside down, her arms tied behind her back. She is not only suspended in the air but hanging in her toes. That must be excruciatingly painful. She seem to react accordingly, her face contorted in pain and agony.

There is a man, clad in what seems like a leather jacket crouching by her side. He seems calm and composed. The impression I get is that he is responsible for her ordeal. He seem to relish the situation in a way she does not.

This is really a common theme, not only in the fantasy world of bondage and torture but also in mainstream media. A person in peril in the hands of another. The one in peril is often a woman and the one in control a man (but there are many varieties).

I do find this image both exciting and intriguing. It is something about the contrast between their situations. He is in control, clothed, calm and at ease. She is bound naked, in agony and very much not in control. He has everything and she has nothing. She is totally in the hands of the man.

It is exciting to see this contrast even if I would never ever consider hanging in my toes without clothes, head down in the presence of a man in a leather jacket.

And there is something in the way the artist has rendered her. The lines of her body, the composition of the picture that is, actually, quite beautiful.

Have you noticed one thing? I am very distanced in my way of talking about this image. It may have to do with the fact that I am embarrassed that I find this cruel image both beautiful and sexy. Analysing and being intellectual about it is a way of keeping the distance.

The image is both horrible and sexy, cruel and beautiful. That is the truth. And I dared say it.

Iconic Images 2

I think this is a lovely image. And very exciting. To me it seems almost as if someone had illustrated my favourite spanking fantasy. In its simplicity it contains so much tension and excitement.

There are no faces in the image and that makes it a little impersonal but then it is so much easier to identify with the people in it. The main part is the woman who kneels on a cushion like something. She is wearing something that looks like riding boots and trousers. Her top is pushed up and her trousers pulled down. Someone is standing beside her, I think it is a man but I am not sure. They are holding a riding crop to her bottom. We all know she is to be whipped by it.

But if you think about it. This is an image of pure evil. We get so excited by spanking and images of it so we forget what we see sometimes. Here is a woman kneeling, bared and exposed. Beside her stands someone who is holding a riding crop to her buttocks about to whip her. A riding crop is designed to sting through the thick hide of a horse. Now, someone is taking it to the tender skin of a woman. The purpose is to cause her pain. Furthermore she has had to expose her skin to make the pain even worse. That is immensely cruel and humiliating. She is not tied there but kneels obediently. She accepts being whipped. By force or by own will we don't know but she accepts it. She is already defeated and now she will be whipped.

Think about it! Isn't this a very cruel image? An image of evil. How could you think about whipping someone with a horsewhip like that? No one can really deserve that.

Still, and that is the strange thing, I find this image immensely exciting, attractive and even arousing. I know many others share my view. And for me it is the very cruelty of it that attracts me. The thought of that woman having to surrender to that cruelty. How is it, kneeling there, exposed, waiting for to be whipped? What does she feel? Is it just horrible or is there a kind of excitement in it?

The fact that she has had to expose herself for the whip adds something to it. The mere fact that someone deliberately is going to hit her to cause pain and that she has had to expose her body to make it even worse make this image very exciting. It scares me beyond anything and at the same time it excites me. Do I wish I was that woman? Sometimes I do, but why do I do that?

Am I just trying to convince myself that I am weird? Am I weird? Or is there a contradiction in the fascination with spanking and similar things?

Iconic Images 1

This blog is not about images (as you may have noticed) but I don't mind a good image here and there. And images are sources for fantasies as well as many images are created from fantasies. So I have decided that now and then present an image I find special for some reason and say something about it.

This image, I believe, is from a spanking magazine, most probably its centrefold. It was one of the very first spanking images I found on the Web. In its simplicity it is a very iconic image in my mind. A man is sitting with a young woman in his lap, lifting his hand, spanking her. She is lying there, her dress is flipped up and her knickers pulled down, exposing her bottom for her spanking.

This is a typical over the knee spanking, the image that most people think of when the word 'spanking' is mentioned. Still it is a bit constructed. The woman is young, her dress, shoes and socks a bit girlish. Still she is a woman, not a small girl and the image is for to satisfy people with a desire for spanking rather than anything else. The man wear a suit, he may be a guardian or a teacher, perhaps. There are many a scenario that this image evokes and I know nothing about where it was published or what story it illustrates.

I find this picture lovely in many ways. The man is clothed and seems strict but not evil. The woman is slim and young and desirably exposed. There is an intimacy and sensuality in the image together with the strictness and neutrality that may be called for if she is a student being punished or something similar. In other words; a typical spanking picture.