Fetish Fuel In Life Magazine, 1939
Bondage Blog has a great piece this morning featuring a pretty girl being shrink wrapped, in a latex balloon. In 1939. By a meat packing company. In the pages of Life magazine, in front of God and everybody and your prissy great-aunt Beatrix.
Granted, treating girls like meat was probably uncontroversial back in 1939. But what fascinates me is the fetish fuel question. In 2010, this is fetish fuel of the highest octane. Bondage Blog rattled off six or seven fetishes it touches on, and I could add several more without a strain. (Lingerie, breath control…) But was it obvious fetish fuel then? Was this a bit of clever marketing by kinky bastards who knew how to get a press release covered by Life, which in turn knew that it could publish the kinkiest shit in front of Aunt Beatrix and everybody just by playing dumb and keeping a straight face?
Or was it, in all innocence, the “gosh-gee-whiz this is how you’ll be getting your beef” celebration of marching technology it presents itself as? Were people really that innocent in 1939? I find that very hard to believe.
Complicating all this is the fact that fetishes evolve over time, and I’m not aware of anybody who has tracked those evolutions in any rigorous way. When did rubber even become a fetish material? (I know it was well established as such by the time John Willie started publishing his Bizarre magazine in the late 1940s.)
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Today the discussion of such “taboos” is common, even if not everyone considers them acceptable. In 1939, I wonder if it was simply that it was all so under wraps (pun intended, thank you very much) that while those with that fetish would’ve recognized the impact, the wouldn’t have acknowledged this to anyone publicly.
I’d also argue that there wasn’t as much fetish camaraderie then and so while they knew of their own fetish, they were unlikely to know that there were OTHER fetishes, let alone be able to recognize them. Breath control, rubber, wrapped immobile… all fetishes one wouldn’t have reason to have heard of just because on enjoys, say, footplay.
What did rubber fetishists do before Charles Goodyear discovered the process of vulcanization?
Right on, tim.
I can remember as teens my best friend and I wrapping each other neck to foot in plastic wrap as a weight loss experiment…and all I felt was stupid. But, the first time I put on opera length gloves for a formal prom, it was so erotic I almost fainted.
Oh, I think the shrink-wrap company (or at least its PR firm) would have known what they were doing. I agree with you–it’s not just “ooh, this is how you’ll be getting your beef”. Because, after all, if that’s what they wanted to show, they could accomplish that by showing, yes, the BEEF getting shrink-wrapped. Like any other ad that features a “pretty girl” (or pretty boy) half-dressed, the point of this is the sex appeal. The fact that it touches on a zillion fetishes is a happy bonus, but I think one that people were probably not totally insensitive to.
I’ve seen some work done about the evolution of fetishes–in general there’s Beauty in Darkness about the history of BDSM, and Gloria Brame has some stuff. But I would think that, given the way human minds work, the date of origin of a fetish for an item is the date that item actually exists–if not earlier. (I can think of a few things I’ve fetished but never seen . . . )
Cool pics.
Well, rubber condoms appeared in the mid 1800’s, so the fetish may have begun then. I’ve read that many Brits became aroused donning rubber gas masks and such in WWII bomb shelters, and gas masks have been around since WWI. Corset and bondage fetishes were already popular way before this magazine photo was created.
Bernard Montorgueil’s erotic drawings from the twenties and early thirties had plenty of tightly-clad women in some sort of shiny rubber-like material, though it may have been leather-inspired.
I personally have to believe someone knew EXACTLY what he was drawing on here. Pretty girl… skimpily clad… hands immobilized BEHIND her back… and is that a hint of a camel-toe I spy?