Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Stripping for the TSA

Violet Blue writes about her public stripping experience:

Sometimes there are women, but it's always mostly men. They are there to watch me, and I am there to be watched. I start at one end, smile at the first man I encounter, and begin. Slowly. Carefully, I take off my glasses and fold them neatly, just like my nighttime bedroom ritual. Then I lean over and unzip one long black platform boot, and then the other. I present each piece of footwear as proof -- as if the sudden shortness in my height, and its message of vulnerability isn't evidence enough. [...] I'm usually still smiling now, because it's time to take off my belt. I know what's going to happen. I unbuckle the metal and leather, sliding the belt through its loops around my waist, which serves to loosen my pants and move the denim to and fro as I work the belt free.

She's not being a naughty girl -- she's boarding a plane.

There is no coincidence that since I've started editing the Best Women's Erotica series that I regularly get erotica submissions about airport security screening search scenes.

Violet Blue lists ten reasons why airport security searches have become eroticized, including:

  • While you undress, you are being watched and sized up.

  • Your submission is unspoken, it is a rule, and it is unconditional. Your submission is for public consumption.

  • There is a constant threat that a stranger will touch you. They can touch you anywhere, and in your most intimate places if they want to.

  • It is nonconsensual. And in garden-variety BDSM practice, even this is forbidden territory.


No doubt this is all just annoying, even distressing, for most people. But as Violet says, "I think people pay like $700 an hour in New York dungeons for this kind of thing". There is no doubt there are people -- passengers and security guards as well as writers of erotica -- getting off on this.

1 comment:

Metro said...

Judas Priest ... think I'm gonna have to blogroll you.

My workmates are wondering what the hell I'm snickering at over here.