Before you read this review, dear reader, please answer this question in the privacy of your own mind.
Which are you least comfortable sharing publicly? A) Your weight. B) Your greatest mistake. C) Your sexual kink.
If C is your answer (it is mine), you are not alone. In a recent survey of 2,000 Americans’ sexual habits and preferences conducted by a market research firm for a lingerie company, nearly half said they currently had a sexual act they’d like to try with a partner, but hadn’t, out of fear their partners would judge them. Another 40% feared that sharing their sexual cravings with a partner might end their relationship.
British writer, curator and self-described fetishist Anastasiia Fedorova wrote “Second Skin: Inside the Worlds of Fetish, Kink, and Deviant Desire” to vanquish the shame behind this type of fear. Her aim is to liberate humans from depriving ourselves, and our lovers, of the full-spectrum sunlight that shines on those who manifest their whole sexual selves. “I started writing this book because, while the world of kink and fetish was becoming increasingly visible in mainstream culture, there was still a lack of deeper understanding,” Fedorova writes. “We also seem to be on the brink of a shift, as people become more open to a nuanced and complex understanding of sexuality.”
Practicing what she preaches, Fedorova opens the book with a scene that discloses her “own deviant desires.”
“By the large hotel bed, my play partner waits on his knees, hands cuffed behind his back,” Fedorova writes. “Second by second, we enact a fantasy: him on a leash, me standing above him, wielding the control he’s entrusted me with. Like most sexual scenarios, it has been lived out countless times before us. We slip it on like a second skin…We have, above all, an insatiable drive to know one another. Naked is not naked enough. Two layers of latex stop our bodily fluids from mixing, yet the mental distance between us compresses until it dissolves into nothing.”
Lest that scene mislead you, a clarification. The author’s erotic experiences, and those of the people she interviews, are the place settings of the book, not the meal. The meat of the manuscript is Fedorova’s historical/sociological analysis of the elements of fetishism, also known as kink, each explored in one of 10 chapters: Leather, Latex, The Dominatrix, The Gimp, The Chaser, Feet, Medical Gloves, Cars, Monsters and The Fetish Club.
“To have a fetish,” Fedorova explains the basics, “means being drawn to a particular object for pleasure or excitement — and to be turned on by the possibilities and scenarios this object provides.”
Fedorova devotes much research and many pages to the costuming she says is a must-wear for fetishists like her. “A fetish garment,” she writes, “transforms how you view and inhabit your body. The moment you put it on, it creates a new, unknown erotic entity. In the mirror, I recognise my facial features, but I am not my usual self — I have stepped into uncharted territory, where I can temporarily embody something different. Rubber accentuates my curves, and yet I feel free of any gender.”
Reading this meticulously researched, passionately penned book, you’ll become knowledgeable about surprising subjects ranging from the Mesoamerican discovery of the rubber plant in 1600 BCE to the evolving social messages conveyed by the wearing of a leather jacket to the percentages of Americans who fantasize about feet (18% of heterosexual men, 5% of heterosexual women). You’ll learn which movies to watch if you’re a car fetishist; the erotic delights of wearing a dog mask, the unspoken rules of play in the “spaces of radical freedom” known as fetish clubs, “the first places where the exploration of who we are and who we want is possible. It also often leaves one feeling empty come morning.”
“Second Skin” is more sociological than sexy; more anthropological than animalistic. Its raison d’etre is not simply to convey the history, the mechanics, the meaning or even the sexual pleasures of fetishism. More significantly, in this American era, with basic human rights being violated in our legislature and on our streets; when being “different” and/or challenging the powers that be is punishable by death, this British-born book advocates for a person’s right to like what they like and to get it consensually. “An understanding of your own extended capacity for joy brings with it a terrifying demand,” Fedorova writes, “that you live your life in accordance with the joy which you know to be possible; that you ask for more; that you provoke, unsettle and reach towards personal and political power.”
Maran, author of “The New Old Me” and other books, lives in a Silver Lake bungalow that’s even older than she is.
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