Reader's Diary (Week 31)

The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time... These are the only hours that are not wasted - these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance.
(Jefferies, 1884)

Cranach's Financial Domination, Part 1

The Ill-Matched Couples was a favorite subject in the Cranach workshop. Over 40 different versions has been made by Cranach and his pupils. The theme has been derived from various literary sources, but it became popular in 16th century thanks to then a bestseller from Erasmus of Rotterdam - the 'In Paise of Fooly' essay printed in 1511.

Cranach's versions are differentiated by emphasizing different aspects of the the theme. The Women are always elegant and Their clothing suggest high social status and economical independence. The elderly man usually repays a young Women's attention by giving Her valuable jewlery or letting Her take the only thing She is interested in - his money. The men are always awkward, they are in love and take everything very seriously. Women are amused, sometimes already a little disgusted, but They remain calm and playful. They own the man, They already own everything he has to offer.

Women in Ads - Women Supremacy

These ads by Brandt (part of the FagorBrandt group) are simply hilarious. Made in 2006 in Singapore the campaign is establishing a relationship between the brand and Women using a simple but very powerful trick. The Women are very well dressed up, elegant, intelligent, attractive, sophisticated and quite rightly They dominate the scene... and men, well, men are just pigs on these photographs, useless and dirty animals, so in need of guidance... Great advertising and something to think about.

Goddess GINA Recommends 9

Felicien Rops and Female Domination

Felicien Rops (1833-1898), a Belgian symbolist and decadent, created numerous paintings, lithographs and drawings, illustrated Baudelaire, Musset, Mallarme, was famous for his caricatures and also for his erotic metaphors. He was not interested in Femdom in any way, but it is making the pictures showed here even more valuable.

He captured our world as it is - men are being transformed into vulnerable and helpless dolls in hands of beautiful and omnipotent Women, Women who know Their power and are not afraid to use it. With just a little of attention and care, She can turn any man into obedient puppet with no will of his own, shake the money out of his pockets and make him Her slave for the rest of his poor life.

Reader's Diary (Week 29)

The things that seems beautiful, inspiring, and life-affirming to me seems ugly, hateful, and ludicrous to most other people. This may be the most painful part of being a sadomasochist; this experience of radical difference, separation at the root of perception. Our culture insists on sexual uniformity and does not acknowledge any neutral differences - only crimes, sins, diseases, and mistakes.

Most of the psychological literature is bent on demonstrating that alternate sexual practices or lifestyles are in some way sick. This is a consequence of the medicalization of psychology. I'm not very happy that psychology is seen as a medical process. It seems to be far more a philosophical issue.
(Miller, Devon, 1995)

Goddess GINA Recommends 8

Reader's Diary (Week 28)

The masochistic person escapes from the unbearable feeling of isolation and separateness by making himself part and parcel of another person who directs him, guides him, protects him; who is his life and his oxygen, as it were... The masochistic relationship can be blended with physical, sexual desire; in this case it is not only a submission in which one's mind participates, but also one's whole body.
(Fromm, 1956)

Goddess GINA Recommends 7

Reader's Diary (Week 27)

A lack of social skills proportionate to the penetration of masochism into the personality.
(Rathbone, 2001)