Author: tjm22

“I urge you all today, especially today during these times of chaos and war,to love yourself without reservations and to love each other without restraint. Unless you’re into leather.” 

-Margaret Cho

Sex, Politics, and Money: three of the major conversational faux pas within polite society. What about these three topics causes champagne to spill, and for pearls to be clutched? After all, they are all connected to the very things everyone wants: power and pleasure. What happens when one of three things are pushed to their limits? Well, usually a global outcry that ends in hysteria and shame. However, what is shameful about sex, politics, and money? Nothing, inherently, when it stays in the hands of the white man, but the subversive role of giving power and pleasure to a woman, creates an uproar. Tumultuous applause or heinous backlash: either way everyone will have an opinion on her and her body and it will surely get people talking. Through the artwork of John Willie (1902-1962), from his magazine, Bizarre (1946-1959), and other fetish magazines of the era, the ideologies of BDSM and Bondage practitioners, and the iconography of masks within the fetish and kink communities, we will uncover what it truly means to disrupt the sexist and hetero-normative social constraints of sex and power.

The sexually repressed society of mid-twentieth-century America can be traced back to the puritanical roots of the country. While the nineteenth century in Europe caused an update in the discourse on sexuality, American eroticism was shrowded in shame. The mid-twentieth century would start to subvert these troupes and open a dialog for American consumers. The conservative views on sexuality held true, however, people did pursue their fantasies and were given ample representation of sexuality within the media. Advertisers and artists, alike, have used the female, and to a lesser extent the male, body to “offer a utilitarian product to [people], assuming that attention to the ad would thereby increase.” (Jones 34) The nude body within art and media was not as perverse as people may have wanted to believe.

During the Second World War, Pin-Up, or Cheesecake photos, became a widespread phenomenon and were distributed for mass audiences during the period. Although they were considered taboo “the public enjoyment of pin-up women in movies, ads, and mysteries, however, only registered sexuality as the main signifier of the pin-up figure.” (Dietze 653) Furthering public interest in the idea of women as fetish objects. Not a decade later, Hugh Hefner (1926-2017) released the first issue of Playboy in 1953, which only got more salacious as the years drew on.

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However, as time wore on and people got more comfortable with the female form in media, things started to heat up in America. This is due to the strong delineation, but also a lot of imbrication between art and pornography. What constitutes each, and who gets to decide, are the questions at the forefront of many art historians’ and American consumer’s minds. “Categories such as the erotic and the sensual play an important role as middle terms in the system-defining what can or cannot be seen, differentiating allowable and illicit representations of the female body, and categorizing respectable and nonrespectable forms of cultural consumption,” (Nead 326) in order to keep the line, unblurred and understood from all parts of society. The delineation between acceptable and unacceptable forms of the nude derives from the need for social order. Thus this difference between the two hinges on the semantics of politics and class. But what happens when someone strays outside the norm, past the point of “acceptable”? Can people be honest about their untraditional sexual desires in a society that values conformity and purity?

Owning your sexual power comes to a head within these communities that practice kink and fetish. Kink, in a sexual sense, derives from the original definition of kink meaning to twist or bend from a straight path. In this context, we can assume that kink means any form of sexual activity or fantasy that does not conform to traditional sexual behavior in relationships. Fetish, on the other hand, has a more sorted history in terms of its own etymology. The mainstays of the word, fetish, hinge on the worship of an exploited object. “Fetishism emerges as an ever-shifting memesis, an ambiguous state that demystifies and falsifies at the same time, or that reveals its own techniques of masquerade,” (Apter 14) which challenges the power play between the person and the object or person they’re objectifying.

Fetish is highly discussed in the works of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), and psychoanalytic theory derived from his writings. According to Freud, “the concept of fetishism as a redirection of heterosexual desire to object or body part… [is a] displacement explained by the fear of castration incurred by the shock of having glimpsed at the mother’s genitals” (Dietze 653) The problem with the castration theory, is that society then puts all of the power in the hands of men, and emphasis of mother and woman as object. The male view of the world then hinges on “the beauty of the woman as object… [where] she is no longer bearer of guilt, but a perfect product, whose body, stylized and fragmented… is the content of the [image] and the direct recipient of the spectators look,” (Mulvey) which does not open many doors for feminine sexuality to flourish. Kink and fetish work together to disrupt the sexual social norms of a given period.

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The Man Behind the Fetish is so… Bizarre

John Willie, nee John Alexander Scott Coutts was born December 9, 1902, in Singapore, but quickly moved to Britain. With the upbringing of the upper-middle class, there are certain rules and regulations that guided how he was meant to act. Of course, these restrictions were not as harsh as those placed upon the women and girls of his class. However, he was still meant to fit into the milieu of whiteness, heteronormativity, and class-based structures that held him and his family toward the top. Willie rejected many of the social standards and “had a predilection for bondage and women’s footwear from a young age, his first contact with the fetish community appears to have occurred during a visit to Sydney, where he discovered a shoe store that had a sideline catering to those with an erotic interest in high-heeled shoes and boot.” (Pine 10) His love for the voyeuristic nature of fetish then turned into a hobby of artistry. He began creating sketches and drawings that would inspire him. “Coutts, in a large part focused upon the subject of fashion and dress as a pretext to present kink subject matter and to generate dialog,” (Pine 18) within the community, for not only circulation but also support.

“The fact that Coutts was British and had therefore been exposed to a particular visual tradition perhaps goes some distance to explain his fluency in the sexual semiotics of dress,” (Pine 11) which would help him create illustrations that were not considered pornography. Thus solidifying the idea that the delineation between pornography and art is merely semantic. His interest in eroticism and sensuality grew until he was 43, in 1945 when he decided that he wanted to start a new magazine focused on the fashion of bondage and BDSM, which catered to fetish communities.

I Read it For The Articles… Fetishistic Desires in Magazines

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This magazine would go on to be called Bizarre, and the first publication was printed the following year in 1946. Willie was not only the publisher and editor of the magazine but also the illustrator and photographer behind many of the iconic images within the pages. In this magazine, Willie would go on to “champion freedom of expression and sexual tolerance and bemoaned the general state of politics and social control in midcentury America” (Pine 17) in order to disrupt the power play between societal norms and personal fantasy.  Postwar America was able to have a budding BDSM and fetishistic market due to magazines like Bizarre that “presented itself as merely a slightly saucy girly magazine dedicated to women’s fashions, fancy dress, [and] lingerie… [but ultimately] unified and codified that [fetishistic] subculture and influenced sexual styles and practices as well as the look and content of both “alternative” and popular culture and fashion.” (Pine 2) Willie would go on to be the publisher, editor, and artist of Bizarre for twenty prints of the magazine until 1956 when he sold it to R.E.B; who would have control over the publication until it fell out of print in 1959. However, Willie and his art went on to inspire many different styles of art from the “pin-up” art of Irving Klaw (1910-1966) and fetish artists like Gene Bilbrew (1923-1974) and Eric Stanton (1926-1999).

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There was one problem, due to midcentury America’s disavowal of representations of sexuality, Bizarre and other magazines like it needed to follow certain rules in order to stay off the radar of censorship. Willie utilized “nuanced and doubly coded language he employed in Bizarre, he took great pains to avoid nudity, homosexuality, overt violence, or obvious depictions of things that might be read as perverse or immoral and that might rankle those parties who were capable of banning, censoring, or blocking circulation.” (Pine 15) Artists have always tried to ride the line without crossing the boundaries of scandalous topics to tantalize their audiences. “While much fetish-oriented print matter was also of sexually graphic nature and therefore “pornographic” much of it is not, functioning through innuendo and double meaning,” (Pine 8) keeping the magazine from crossing the line of unacceptable in many peoples minds. This attached to the “under the counter” nature of the magazine’s circulation lead way for a more disseminated message. (Pine 15)

Willie’s cartoonish art style was heavily influenced by “the more transgressive fin de siécle print erotica being produced in Paris, Berlin, and London,” (Pine 8) mixed with the style of fashion illustrations found in magazines such as Vogue (1892-). Although he mostly focused on erotic art and an idealized female form bound, gagged, or in another form of fetishistic fantasy within his publications, he “very rarely printed any depictions of full or even partial nudity in Bizarre, and if he did, renderings were decidedly comedic or ‘artistic’.” (Pine 18) This helped avoid the censors and conform to the idea of Bizarre as a “fashion magazine” for extreme fashions. His illusions can be seen in seam bursting corsets, high heels, thigh-high boots, leather opera gloves, lingerie and with some restraints such as a gag, blindfold, rope, or in a cage. These are all staple fashions worn by practitioners of BDSM and Bondage.

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Bondage, Bondage, Bondage, Always Funny in a Rich Mans World

Bondage is just one part of the BDSM and kink communities fantasy. BDSM “represents three categories: bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. The practice is a sexual exchange of power between consenting participants.” (Wheeler) This is a sexual practice that favors roleplay and the act of transformation and as in any act of disrobing there are “references to perceived notions of agency and change.” (Dodds 78) Within this community, there is a thought that all BDSM is about “the giving and receiving of physical or psychological pain for erotic pleasure, and its practices include “corporal punishment” activities such as spanking, caning, paddling, flogging, and whipping,…shocks (electric play) and genital piercing. However, not all activities in which pro-dommes and clients engage involve pain…Most, on the other hand, are about dominance and submission (D/S) – a term that refers to one partner assuming control while the other relinquishes his or her power. ” (Lindermann 592) Powerplay is the most important aspect of a relationship that involves BDSM.

From Lace to Leather: The Masks of BDSM (and how to be careful while in them)

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Pushing the limits of sex is not the only thing that BDSM and Bondage do to create fantasy and powerplay. The fashion that surrounds the conversation helps the practitioners feel and fulfill their parts within their “playtime”. Corsets, high-heels, rope, leather, and latex are all mainstays of the community. However, those garments and materials only constrict the body, but a mask, in many different forms, given to a partner can enhance the sexual response of both practitioners. The blindfold and the gag, as seen in John Willie’s illustrations are not only meant for aesthetic purposes. The mission of the blindfold and gag is to take away at least one of the senses, most notably visual and auditory, respectively. By taking away one of the senses, the other senses become even stronger. Human touch is the most significant when having a sexual encounter, so by heightening that sensory response a person is able to derive a better sexual response. In the broader consciousness of BDSM and Bondage, pain and sensory Deprivation are mainstays of the community and they are two sides of a different coin. As described in a 1960 report done by researchers at Harvard Medical, “sensory pain characteristically accompanies an excess of stimulation, whereas the stress of sensory deprivation (lack of stimulation) and monotony (lack of change in stimulation) are associated with a dearth of stimulation.” (Petrie 80) With stimulation at the forefront of sex, there is no question as to the way power, pleasure, pain, and sex are all linked.

Regardless of the masks being used for sensory deprivation, they also have another function: to act as an entryway to transformation. Any “act of disrobing, the audience-performer interface was also marked by a distinct process of change.” (Dodds 76) Masks and veils of any kind can enhance this effect. They act as a shield of true identity. In a mask, as it is in roleplay, is a way to “put on” a new persona that is as close or separate from the wearer and practitioner as they would like. “Female masquerade in its textual and erotically challenging vacillations allows women who may feel compelled to disavow, in this case, their own desires, to locate desire differently,” (Hinton, 176) both metaphorically and physically. This can shift the way that the power play between two individuals who are participating to shift back and forth, as equally as they are comfortable with. Meaning that “the body and the self will not only be transformed by also exalted or empowered by the fetish,” (Fernbach 27) which is given light by the masks.

With such an intensified form of intimacy, the concept of consent and aftercare are the linchpins of a healthy BDSM relationship. Throughout the experience, “it [is] imperative that all partners feel safe and cared for, but everyone must also have a deep understanding of the other’s boundaries, comfort levels, and sexual interests” (Wheeler) and ultimately the submissive, in the dominant and submissive relationship, has the most power. They set the boundaries and the expectations that they are comfortable to consent to. This is why having a “safeword”, a word that communicates stop, redirect, or pause within the confines of sex, is so important to communicate within not only the world of BDSM but in any partner anyone has.

Consent during sexual activity is not the only conversation that needs to be continually had. After a sexual encounter is finished, there is an important step that many people forget about and that is aftercare. Aftercare can be defined as “Cuddling, Holding, Pillow-Talk, Sensual Touch, Laughter, Taking Care of Your Partners’ Physical and/or Emotional Well-Being, Discussing Things That Went Well (Giving Positive Reinforcement)”, (Atwood) in the hopes of making sure that your partner is continually safe and in a good headspace. This practice originated in the BDSM community but can help form a more intimate relationship between any partners, regardless of practices. Neglecting this step can lead to partners feeling used, unloved, unimportant, and ultimately not taking care of a submissive partner can lead to abusive use of power that should not be present in the community.

A Woman Can Have It All, Can’t She?

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Within the community of BDSM and Bondage, the power of who sees and gets to see is highly important in the powerplay between individuals. Although submissives are able to have control of their experience, the in-between is dictated by the dominant. This makes for a perfect territory for women to play with power and control. “Ideologically, the hedonism central to the Playboy [and Bizarre] lifestyle would not have been possible without women free to live and love as they like,” (Pitzulo 260) meaning that women are able to choose which role they play. Women, in this sense, get to experience the ideas of power and control that are often stripped from them in a society that still does not have equality between sexes. This is supplemented by the idea that all art that Willie created depicting a couple was a female-female relationship. This not only took away the sexual politics and power dynamic that surrounds a heterosexual couple but is a way for both women and men to find their fantasy in the dominant and submissive relationship.

Willie’s artistic style then brings into question the ideologies of the male versus the female gaze. While “the gaze is used to help explain the hierarchical power relations between two or more groups, or alternatively between a group and an “object,” (Manlove 84) there is always room for troupes and stereotypes to be subverted. Bizarre did not bring light into a darker, more maligned condition of sexual behavior, it also created discourse on female sexuality. In her 1975 work, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey notes that “in a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.” (Mulvey) Due to the lack of male figures, there is no active male participant, except for the spectator. However, because they are drawings and not photographs they do not carry the same ramifications that a centerfold or pin-up would.

“Woman displayed as a sexual object is a leitmotif of erotic spectacle… she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire.” (Mulvey) However, in a post-sexual liberated society, women are allowed to take back the power that the male gaze has held over them. This is why Bizarre and Willie’s illustrations were disruptive to the sexually repressed society. They “provide[d] the matrix upon which 1950s masculinity imprints its complex and conflicting fears and desires. At the same time, the naked beauty is a symbol of rebellion against the burden and frustration of domesticity and advocates a new, less restrained sexual economy.” (Dietze 656) In this, we are lead to assume that, the male gaze can be broken because not only men felt the trepidation and ennui with domestic life- women also felt it, and needed freedom from the confines society put them in.

John Willie’s Lasting Legacy

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“I think women want to be seductive; I hope they don’t turn into nuns covered up head-to-toe. There needs to be attraction between men and women; you can’t hide from that and it must exist. We just have to be careful and what’s important is the respect…I’m not going to start taking pictures of women wearing boxy clothes looking sad or harsh. No, women want to be beautiful and I want to show that.” -Ellen Von Unwerth (Alexander)

While John Willie may have been among the prominent pioneering figures in the art of fetish and female sexuality, he is certainly not the last. Ellen Von Unwerth (1954-) is a contemporary German fashion photographer that utilizes the imagery and ideologies of Willie with a feminist lens. This subverts the narrative even more. Through this, she is able to create dreamscapes of a world that are entirely made up of women in power, who also own their sexuality.The power to choose is strong in the sentiment of Unwerth’s oeuvre. She not only knows how to respect her models and their choices, but she understands them because she herself was a model. This makes a stronger push toward fetishistic desires to become more aligned with female sexuality. For so long people have thought that kink and fetish catered only to the male gaze, and to a certain extent it does, but with photographers like Unwerth- a safer space for females is opened for women to explore their desires and push their own narratives of sexuality as Willie had intended originally.

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Unwerth is not the only person in popular culture that is inspired by the fetishistic imagery of the mid-century. Violet Chachki (1992-) is an American drag performer, model, burlesque dancer, and aerial acrobat who is a self-proclaimed John Willie enthusiast. Her costumes and makeup are inspired by bondage and fetish magazines but with a sense of opulence. “Her drag aesthetic is a lesson in sartorial history. Often inspired by vintage glamour, Chachki’s drag is often inspired from Dita Von Teese, with a hint of fetishism to it—bold, but detailed with an intelligent and sophisticated understanding of fashion.” (Chaudhri) With Chachki’s references to Willie’s fetishistic glamour, she opens the conversation to the queer community. Thus even broadening the ideologies of power and pleasure to more marginalized groups of people. Willie was able to open the floodgates of sexual liberation for all types of people just because he started a magazine and talked about something he liked. The story of Willie is not a grand one, but the legacy of him and his ideologies have changed the world of sexuality forever.

Masks within the community of BDSM represent much more than just a piece of fabric. They help partners embody, transform, and experience sexual pleasure and power. Like in any performance the suspension of disbelief and liminality of transformation can create out-of-body experiences only enhanced by the sensory deprivation of masks. However, it was never about the masks, it was never about the clothing- it was about owning your sexual power. In any regard, that is the most powerful thing anyone can do, as intimacy and power walk alongside each other.  Without artists and pioneers like John Willie, marginalized people who are historically excluded from conversations of sexual agency would not be able to have sex-positive notions within the discourse of sexuality.

Thomas Mossey
Dr. Alla Myzelev 
ARTH 300: Fashion, Art and Politics  
Spring 2021

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