The apparel oft proclaims the man …

Following a now-quite old post here on why spank pay sites give me cause for pause, someone popped up in the comments box to helpfully point me to Spanking Tube. Thanks. Of course I already know about it. Yes, there are some real couples posting their own clips. But it is mostly a forum for the pay sites to show their trailers and the whole thing is set up by ‘Real Spankings’.

Anyway, not to say that the pay sites don’t do some good work (and I happily pay to see a movie or buy a CD in the vanilla world). It’s just not clear to me what the levels of real exploitation are, that’s all, and as much as I can find ‘play’ or chosen exploitation sexy, real exploitation is a huge turnoff. The thin, um, red line is crossed. And in pay-spank sites (as in all pornography) I often can’t tell whether it’s been crossed or not.

Cargo shorts? Dude, like, c'mon

Anyway, thus cycling back to Spanking Tube after a few months and seeing what’s out there currently, I was given to the following thought. It’s clear that one can’t in the spanking world generally say “what is good for the goose is good for the gander.” The whole field has an awkward double standard: If she’s been bad she get’s spanked; if he’s been bad, well, what happens? And I’m not saying switching is the answer. It’s just a pickle.

But there is one area where I feel certain goose gander eqivalency can and should apply — or at least, speaking for myself, I like to apply it — and this is in dress. I feel if she’s well turned out, in a nice skirt, with elegant heels and so on, I should be more-or-less in the male equivalent: proper trousers, formal shoes, collar shirt. If she’s  in an evening dress, with perhaps …mmm… stockings and suspenders (US translation: garter belt), I should be in a dinner jacket or equivalent.

The blog commenters are going to kill me, I know. (Just kidding, I love it!) I’m not saying one needs to dress formally to spank or be spanked, just that it’s meaningful if the couple dress more-or-less equivalently.

I feel it does two things. First it shows respect. We all want respect, dominants, submissives alike. It just takes different forms. A submissive doesn’t want respect in the sense of simple reciprocity (you spank me I spank you back) but she does surely want it in the sense of having her submission honoured, that is, honouring what she is giving, which is a lot. We dress up for client meetings or job interviews and so on to show respect. Taking the time and care to dress equivalently to her level of dress shows respect in that same way.

A bonus applies too: Dress helps put us both, dom and sub, into the frame of mind. That’s what the heels and stocking are all about. For my part,  I know I feel different in formal dress, real trousers, a suit, or even a tux. I feel more “executive”, a little more styalised in my masculinity, and I intuit that this plays a not inconsequential role in switching on feminine submissive fantasies.