All about Fetish!...

A fetish, according to the OED, is a thing abnormally stimulating or attracting sexual desire.

Fetishism historically has been a male preserve and most fetishes have their roots in things associated with women, whether it be their anatomy, something they wear, or something associated with them being sexually submissive to men. For trannies and transsexuals, of course, all three of these aspects come into play.

Although obvious in the conscious mind, a t-girl putting on a skirt or high-heels, is emulating the female, but she is also doing something that is so patently un-male and that has a profound effect in the sub-conscience. The greater the number of differences, the greater the pleasure that is derived. Once you have mastered one aspect of femininity, you want to strive for some new height. It could be getting your eyebrows plucked or it could be that heart-stopping trip to Dorothy Perkins, exchanging girly smiles with the changing room girl as she glances over your choice of try-ons, without a trace of comprehension.

Fetishism and trans-dressing are very much intertwined. I've yet to find a straight or bi tranny who is not more stimulated by a pretty bird in high-heeled boots than his or her 'normal' counterpart. A little part of you is saying, "that could be me, receiving those admiring looks" and "little do they know", as you sit there in your utterly boring male-mode attire.

There are probably many examples of fetishism in Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilisations, but I will stick to the modern influences.

Alfred Hitchcock was obsessed by blondes in stockings and stiletto-heeled court shoes. I think we can all relate to that particular kink, if kink is the right word. What of kinky boots, now there is something more easily defined. I'm sure that horsey types have lusted after hunting girls in their riding boots for the past century and beyond, but the mainstream kinky boot started at the turn of the sixties, fuelled by the images of Honor Blackman, the leather-clad vamp in the Avengers, and countless actresses and singers parading around in sexy mini-skirts and predominantly white knee-boots.

How far we have come on the boot scene nowadays. Thigh-length boots are no longer the preserve of Soho streetwalkers. Even nice girls wear (or would like to wear) thigh-boots, the more demure perhaps only in the bedroom. The sexual connotations of boots are understood by all healthy young girls out to tease their randy suitors. The higher the heel, the stronger the message. A literary wit once said that men like their women to be ladies in the street and whores in the bedroom and the maxim has reached universal acceptance amongst wives and girlfriends - and many take their tarty appearance into the street as well, much to the delight of mere males and t-girls alike.

A lady friend once astounded me by declaring that women, including herself, wear high-heels because they like to be taller. Since she was already 5'11", I took that with a large pinch of salt. I think there are three main reasons. Heels compliment the legs and cause the bum to become more pert; they mark out a girl as being proud of her sexuality; and they have the effect of making a girl look vulnerable, the latter being a turn-on for the protective male of the species. A bevy of pretty girls in high-heels might be quite intimidating to the lone male, but you know that there is little likelihood of them mugging you and less still of them making good their escape..

I mentioned Honor Blackman in her Avengers role as Cathy Gale. Her blonde good-looks and slender figure, encased in head-to-toe leather, spawned a myriad of fantasies amongst her salivating male viewers and provided an almost Darwinian link between leather and sexual desire that had not really existed before, certainly not in the minds of the masses.

A tight leather skirt and matching boots are now essentials in the wardrobes of most women still capable of lying on their backs. The sight of a pretty women dressed from top to bottom in leather is one of the few untaxed pleasures of life.

So what came next? PVC of course, silly. The essence of leather, apart from its wonderful smell, is that it causes the light to accentuate the female form and, I guess the male form for the gay man. The advent of PVC in the early sixties took this effect to even greater heights. It advanced rapidly from tarty macks and boots worn by streetwalkers to mainstream fashion. Fetish outfitters came to light in the late seventies, catering mostly for kinky swingers and bored housewives. I can remember getting an instant hard-on seeing Jilly Johnson clad in a PVC catsuit in an early She-n-Me fetish-wear catalogue. No doubt she is running an animal welfare farm on the Isle of Skye now - pity!

"You are not going out dressed like a tart", a common utterance of mums and dads in the eighties when PVC skirts and tops first emerged. How laughable now, after we have had a diet of 'nice girls' clad in PVC and now rubber in every magazine and shopping catalogue for well over a decade.

Viva la difference! No, viva la similarite! we trannies say. We love our fetish gear and love the fact that we no longer have to wear it under long, frumpy coats.

We sisters shed a tear for those real girls who cannot walk in heels - a truly miserable condition.