Feeling grown-up vs feeling small
A topic of conversation on Twitter this morning has got me thinking. It was kicked off by this message from Emma-Jane:
Dressed in smart dress and heels for my presentation today. A painful 6 strokes with the dragon cane reminded me I'm not a complete grown-up though!I couldn't help bring struck by the difference to my own responses. If I were to take a firm caning before dressing up smart and going off to do a grown-up, slightly scary professional thing, I think the caning would make me feel more grown-up. Or at least, if I was going to play before a day like that, I would want play that reinforced my sense of competence and confidence, not undermined it.
It got me wondering: is there a difference between bottoms/subs who seek play that makes them feel small, and those who seek play that makes them feel grown-up?
I opened the subject on Twitter, and quickly got an interesting variety of answers. A few people explicitly said they preferred that makes them feel little, secure, and safe. @SarahLRH said that "I choose the type of play that makes me feel small and protected. Too much in life is grown-up, I like to escape from it." This is a familiar point of view. It's one I've used to describe my own playing style before, on occasion. Bottoms who are very grown-up and responsible in real life often use play to escape from the stress of having authority, to seek a place of sanctuary where, for once, the buck doesn't stop with them. I can certainly identify with that. I've always seen myself in the gendered stereotype of the stressed-out businessman who carries the world on his shoulders but sees a Domme at weekends - and I know a fair few hardworking, high-achieving female bottoms who play for similar reasons.
And yet, in my case, I think I tend to seek that sort of stress relief after I have been grown-up, as a way of psychologically winding down and defragmenting, rather than beforehand to relieve my anxiety. Perhaps, then, that's the only difference between me wanting a hard caning after a stressful day, and Emma-Jane wanting one before it?
But too many people enjoy a variety of playing styles for it to be that simple. Scarlett de Winter said that "BDSM play makes me feel grown up, age play and CP makes me feel young." This chimes with another reply I received, from Jessica Davies: "Feeling small somehow makes me feel secure and so, more grown up. Roleplay characters affect this. If I want caring and loving play, I play small. If I want abuse and fear and pain, I am grown up!" It seems that quite a few people characterise sexy, scary BDSM-type play as grown-up, and safe, reassuring spanking play as the opposite.
There are definitely times when I seek the sort of play that is comforting, emotionally straightforward, where I am a little girl being taken in hand and looked after, where I don't have to make decisions or think or do anything other than be obedient and let me Dom carry me to a place where all my stress and anxiety has fallen away. It's rare for me, though. Far more common is the kind of play that makes me feel bigger, bolder: play where I am tested and challenged (or challenge and test myself), play in which I can be brave, can feel proud of myself. Play that allows me to hold me head up high and know that I'm doing well. The sort of play that leaves you feeling if I can take this, I can do anything. I like affirming play that makes me feel in control of my body. Holding position, making deliberate, graceful moments. Play that makes me feel strong, beautiful, elegant and sexy. This kind of play is empowering not just in the abstract sense that I am fulfilling my true desires, it is literally empowering: it leaves me feeling good about myself, more confident, more capable, more grown-up.
This kind of play, which leaves me feeling more able to face my responsibilities, is different for me from the sort of "little girl" play where the good feeling comes from feeling free of responsibility. And on a general basis, I am definitely more inclined to seek the former. But I'm not sure if those two categories make sense for anyone else. So tell me about play and grown-upness. Do you play because it makes you feel more grown-up, or because it makes you feel less grown-up? Or is it more complicated than that?
More complicated, P.
ReplyDeleteBut what a pity being 'grown-up' is taken to mean responsibility, stress and burden. Why can't it be grown-up to have fun? Fun in a grown-up way, of course. For some people that's all 'play' is - the word is well suited.
On the other hand, my life is sometimes (often) spoiled by work stress and that totally puts me off kink: stress kills my appetite. So I envy those who find play soothing when under strain.
For me, I have to have a clear head, well away from the 'real world'. Mostly, I am not real, rather I'm an invention designed for public consumption. I have to go on a long journey to find the inner me and that requires planning. Going quickly from busy responsible professional to character or vice versa just won't work. Mixing the two is out of the question.
For me most of my play is about surrendering control and responsibility. My real grown-up world ceases to exist for that brief period.
ReplyDeleteAnd in order to do that I retreat to feelings of smallness. Even when I play dark and abusive scenes that I inevitably come out of stronger and bolder, I still play them to feel small, diminished, less than I am.
The only grown-up scenes I play are those BDSMy scenes where it’s about both pain and pleasure, where I submit for sexual release and an adult mind fuck and wher I actually want to please the other person.
But that’s very rare for me. My core kink is where I am choosing not to be grown-up or another way.I.e to be in positions where I am vulnerable in the face of someone else’s power and that makes me feel small.
A. Could you look cuter in those pigtails?
ReplyDeleteB. My thusfar experience with CP play has definitely been that empowering, emboldening kind you describe... I hadn't quite gone into it looking to get that feeling, but that's certainly how it affected me. Even with all my newbie greenness I still felt sexy and grown-up. Like, hey, check out my body doing these new tricks! I do think that there is a place for the 'being rendered small' experience in my kink; it comes up plenty in my fantasy life. But to actually do it would require a very high level of emotional trust.
C. The word verification is 'menlord.' Yes, that's right -- 'menlord.'
Interesting post. I think I always feel protected when I play (at least if it's a good scene and with a good partner).
ReplyDeleteI like playing small because perversely I feel like more terrible stuff can happen to me when I'm in little headspace. As a child, I've no ability and therefore no responsibility to protect myself. I can be controlled, molested and abused and it's totally up to the person in charge.
As an adult partner, I do worry more about the pleasure of the person topping and, ironically, find it much harder to give them control.
Nessy - I'm surprised you get that from my post. Yes, being grown-up is stressful and involves having responsibility - but I cherish it, the independence and self-esteem and control over my life it gives me. I spend far longer in the post talking about the good associations with grown-upness - courage, self-control, self-esteem, grace, elegance, deserved pride, confidence, self-belief, a sense of one's own power - than I do talking about the stressful side!
ReplyDeleteStress can go either way for me. It's hard to say, as well, because I quite often feel like play would de-stress me, but don't have the opportunity to test the theory (due to partners living apart/suffering from chronic illness), so can't tell whether on that occasion the reality wouldn't have matched up to the fantasy.
I love your remarks about being "an invention designed for public consumption". I think that's true of everyone who's learned to function in public. I'm happiest when that invention most closely matches the inner me, though, which is the main basis on which I've chosen my lifestyle and career. I can't sustain much distance between my familiar self and the invented projection for long, and I don't often meet people who can and still be happy.
But yes, absolutely, there's a sense in which by ourselves and with loved ones we have access to a truer version of ourselves than we'll ever deliver in public, and for that reason alone play provides a valuable balance to public 'grown-up' performance.
It's taken me a long time to process this post, because I think this dichotomy is at the root of my current confusion as to what the hell I want from my kink.
ReplyDeleteI always used to find the most comfort from playing small: not necessarily a child, but also a subordinate adult. Recently these old, familiar headspaces have stopped being attractive, because they seem to undermine my real-world fight for competence and independence.
I haven't stopped wanting to bottom - but I can't figure out how I can do this without feeling I'm giving up my hard-won sovereignty. More BDSM and no-frills beatings may be the answer.
I'll go away and ponder it some more.
P.S. You and Tom are Fucking Hot together in those pictures. *enormous carnivorous grin*
ReplyDeletePandora, this post is one of a group of recent posts by different authors which made me think about my kink and the question how it works for me and what I get out of it. Thank you for the thought fodder! I'll try to put all of my thoughts together for the next edition of Kaelah's Corner (I just hope three days will be enough time).
ReplyDeleteAs for feeling grown-up vs feeling small, I can definitely say that like Graham and you I love to play out the empowering type of scenes. Some of my fantasies are age-play fantasies, but they're usually M/m and I'm just an observer. My own play is either empowering or for stress relief (but then as an adult with the help of my equal partner) or for sexual stimulation (then I often want Ludwig to be very dominant and my fantasies can be rather “abusive”, but due to the explicitly sexual context and the fact that these fantasies only occur with my partner, I still remain adult during those scenes).
Like for Adele nowadays, playing small doesn't fit into my real life and my relationship with Ludwig. Self-confidence from empowering play, moments of stress relief and sexual satisfaction going together with the chance to let go make me feel happier in my everyday life as an adult self-reliant woman, playing small wouldn't work for me in the same way than feeling grown-up during a spanking does.
what ever you feel like when spanking be it grown-up or a little girl as long as you get pleasure from it also i like the look of you in your nightshirt getting your knickers pulled down i got pleasure from that.love simon.
ReplyDeleteThe pic on the left best illustrates my spanking kink. On a surface level, you look so cute, and I'm attracted to that---not that the pic on the right isn't sexy. The pic on the right is hot; the pic on the left is much more relevant to what makes me a spanko. My excitement/fascination is still centered around the kink I grew up with, which involves the dynamic of an authority figure (relatively mature adult) and their charge, who is relatively "little"---helpless, exposed, judged, ultimately submissive, humbled, and shamed, though somehow not in an injurious way. The "fall" from adult to little is the drama I'm looking for. The female is attractive in either the "adult" authority role, or showing her inner "little girl."
ReplyDeleteI have no experience with spanking used in a practical sense, as for stress relief or real discipline. There are no feelings of real empowerment or weakness because it's just about satisfying the fetish. I like where the spankee is made to feel less grown up, whatever role I assume in or outside the scene.
Afraid I can't throw much light on the subject, but I just have to say that "small" Pandora in nightshirt and pigtails looks really hot!
ReplyDeleteI don't know, they both look kind of "Small" to me. In neither picture does it seem she that you are being empowered by the spanking, which at least in my mind would make you feel like you've been naughty, and little girls are naughty.
ReplyDeleteEJ - Thanks ever so much for your comment, and your fascinating post, which I still intend to respond to! You explain where you're coming from so articulately that I really identify with it. I think there's a lot of overlap between how we approach our kinks. But when it comes down to it, I don't find it affirming to characterise most of the play I do as belittling. Yes, for me it's about the release that comes with surrendering control and responsibility - but that experience makes me feel bigger, not smaller. I'm proud of it, it's good for me, it's mind-expanding, it loosens me physically and mentally - all the metaphors and language I approach it with is about growing rather than shrinking. It's hard to explain!
ReplyDeleteThat said,
where it’s about both pain and pleasure, where I submit for sexual release and an adult mind fuck and wher I actually want to please the other person
... describes all of my private play, the spanking side as well as the BDSM site. The only exception is roleplay or performing in spanking films. So I guess we are quite different after all!
Graham - I was very wee in those days :)
I totally get what you mean about the experience of your body doing new things feels like growing up. I think to date, unless I'm acting (and I enjoy acting small, it's fun - but it's acting, it's not me; the me that's doing the acting grows through the experience, even if the character is belittled) I've only played that sort of "rendered small" scene with my two long-term male partners, and were very emotionally raw. It's certainly not a type of play I'd do in public, or with an occasional play partner. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily more "real" or "important" than the more grown-up kind of play - just that it's closer to my comfort zones, and my enjoyment of it is complicated.
Mija - Protected - yes. I wouldn't play with someone if I didn't feel protected. But that isn't connected to playing small, for me.
I like your description of increased vulnerability leading to increased intensity, though. I can relate to that. Quite a few of the scenes in which I've played small have had that flavour, rather than the loving/caring one.
Adele - Oh man, I empathise! For me, leaning more into this "grown-up" kind of response has enabled me to reconnect with my submissive side - if the emphasis is all on my pride, my capabilities, my desires then it's much easier for me to feel comfortable with it, rather than something that makes me feel less than I am. It's not quite "BDSM and no-frills beatings", but the "proud, pleasing adult submissive" model is certainly more empowering than the "naughty girl" one, for me.
Kaelah - the more I read about your kink, the more similar I feel we are! I really enjoyed the first part of your posted response to this - I'll comment there in more detail - but I'm glad to have provided food for thought :) Like you, I think almost all my play can be fit into the categories of "empowering", "stress relief" or "sexual stimulation" - although I'd add "wanting to please my partner" as its own category, because that's the basic premise of my submission, and it's a very powerful motivation for me. That's one of the reasons I'm so "unsubby" in my professional demeanor as a model - because if I were to extend that submissive response to more people, it would be totally unmanageable and I would go mad! I think if I was less eager to please with my partners, I would need to seek less balance in being so overtly assertive and independent in my professional persona.
Simon - Thanks! Glad you liked the pic :)
ReplyDeleteBrett B - What you say makes a lot of sense, and you're certainly not alone. In fact your approach is far more common among spankos, I think!
There are no feelings of real empowerment or weakness because it's just about satisfying the fetish.
I would disagree with this, though. I DEFINITELY get real empowerment from my kink, just as I from sex. That's "just about satisfying my libido", but it can still be genuinely empowering!
Wizard Birchwand - Well, small Pandora is perfectly happy to come out when she's modelling - where I have much more emotional flexibility than my personal scenes in private! So that's good :)
Madmonkey - yeah, it was tough to find a "grownup" photo - most of the scenes I've done which have been photographed are geared towards that kind of emotional "takedown". All I can say is that some takedown scenes leave you genuinely feeling stripped of dignity and power - and others are a force which is matched by the equal force of your will, and that unresolved conflict is what is exciting (to me as a spankee, anyway - I imagine a dominant player would hate the idea that their takedown had "failed!). But there are a thousand reasons to be spanked other than because I feel naughty, and I would say that the vast majority of the spankings I enjoy don't make me feel naughty, and aren't intended to make me feel naughty. Naughty is a fun game to play pretend with, but it's completely outside the main core of my kink. Everyone's different!