Frills & Fantasies: A Look into Feminine Fetish Play

So, you love the feminine. There's nothing wrong with that! In fact, quite a few fetishes in the kink community focus on the feminine.

Not sure what your options are? Let's dive into feminine-focused fetishes like sissification, feminization, dollification, and bimbofication. We'll talk about what they are, how they're different, and how they affect society at large.

Feminization

When someone has a kink for feminization, they're turned on by being associated with or dressed in feminine ways. This may involve feminine clothing, lingerie, heels, or make-up.

It also can go beyond the physical, and many kinksters turned on by feminization will also be turned on by behaving or being treated like a woman. Imagine the highly-structured "etiquette for women" classes you may have heard about where women are taught to walk in heels, how to properly address strangers, or how to sit primly in a dress.

"Forced feminization" is a subset of the feminization kink. In this, the bottom wants to be "forced" into the feminine trappings. These scenes may simply require the bottom to wear feminine items under threat of punishment, or they might be more (consentually) coercive like faux blackmail scenes.

Sissification

Sissification is generally hallmarked by over-the-top "femininity" with a strong focus on sexual subservience and humiliation.

The line between feminization and sissification can be thin, however, with some kinksters considering them one-in-the-same. This can make communication about the kinks difficult as the behavior and desires between the two can be very different.

Often, sissification includes a very strong focus on humiliation. This humiliation may be paired with sexual activities, but it might not be. Imagine anyone dressed to the 9's in an extra-frilly, lace-adorned outfit that looked in-place for a 90's newborn photoshoot at a big box store. Dressing any adult in this, regardless of sex or gender, could offer a lot of opportunities for humiliation.

Focusing on the over-the-top choice of clothing is one way to easily enjoy humiliation with sissification without touching on sexist themes. However, some bottoms into sissification are also turned on by being associated with sexist themes like a woman's "expected" role in society as a sex object.

Bimbofication

It's easiest to think of bimbofication as the kink of being turned into a living sex doll. Most bottoms into bimbofication want to be turned into a "bimbo"; Oxford defines that as a "an attractive but unintelligent or frivolous young woman."

In bimbofication scenes, the bottom will dress over-the-top in slutty, sexual clothing. They'll behave like someone who is extremely sexually available with over-the-top advances and a playful, faux-innocence that encourages their top to take advantage of them.

Bimbofication, taken to its furthest reaches, will often include plastic surgery for wider hips, a larger butt, a larger chest, and puffier lips. Push-up bras, panty padding, and lip-enhancing lipsticks can also be used as temporary methods to achieve similar results.

Since a kinkster into bimbofication enjoys being the "epitome" of sexual availability, many bimbos are also into exhibitionism or, even if not sexually exposing, may enjoy being the center of others' lust.

Dollification

In dollification, the bottom is looking to, quite literally, be made into a doll. This usually involves a scene where the top dresses and styles the bottom's looks and clothing to match the top's ideal doll.

While a lot of dollification kinksters fantasize about being out-of-body and unresponsive to a top's ministrations, most tops are unable to fully move around another full-sized human being without a bit of the bottom's help. In this kink, bottoms usually offer minimal help but may aim to turn off their brain entirely, simply helping lift a limb when the top starts to move it or following basic commands without speech or critical thought.

People into dollification have a wide range of reasons for their interest, but commonly, they're turned on by the idea of being used for someone else's pleasure and being dressed up to do it. Some people also fall in love with the "no thoughts required", meditative state that dollification can provide.

It's worth noting that dollification does not necessarily have to be sexual. While you'd "assume" the kink is focused on turning the bottom into a sex doll, that isn't often the case. Instead, someone may dress up the bottom like a Barbie doll, having a fun time playing mix-and-match with a person of a different body than their own. They might also dress up them like a comforting, childhood doll then "cuddle" the doll.

How Do These Kinks Fit Into Society?

First off, we should recognize that all of these kinks offer a "safe" space to explore gender identity, sexuality, and feelings about gender. While this is especially true for people raised as male, it's also true about people who were raised as female. Any activity that brings gender play, gender expression, and overt sexuality to the focus of play is going to offer some opportunities to critically think about how that applies to you (and, y'know, have a good time too!)

Dollification and bimbofication are especially great exploratory avenues for cisgender women. They offer guilt-free ways to explore the turn-ons of existing purely for a lover's sexual pleasure. In many cultures, a cisgender woman's value is directly linked to her sex appeal and availability for sex. For many, the idea of consenting to and actively seeking out that treatment can be tied to feeling of shame and guilt. Dollification and bimbofication offer guilt-free ways to explore that within a preestablished "kink".

For people raised as male, sissification and feminization can be great ways to explore the softer, traditionally "feminine" things. Many cultures have very strong cultural norms against men enjoying or partaking in these "weak" activities and clothing, and having the freedom (or, literally, the "requirement" if this is done as part of a scene where the man is forced into it) to try them can be one of the few socially acceptable ways for someone to try out this clothing or behavior.

However, for their benefits, they aren't without their criticisms either.

If you'll note, all of these kinks are focused around the idea of women as soft, feminine, sexually desirable, and sexually available. People who criticize these kinks point out that these kinks can just be reinforcing the damaging, overarching ideals we have about womanhood in our societies. This can be especially true when you start getting into the porn of these fetishes which can focus a lot on "Real women do X, Y, and Z for men, and you're dressed like a woman now". You can imagine that X, Y, and Z have nothing to do with fixing the shower or becoming a CEO.

This is why I'd generally recommend approaching these kinks with open communication in mind - especially if you're broaching them with a new female partner. A lot of the tropes and stereotypes that your lover has seen about these kinks may lead them to believe that you want something different than what you're looking for. Be upfront about what this kink means to you and how you see it being practiced within your relationship.

And more importantly, after this conversation with your lover, take a moment to stop and think about your kink. If you're receiving some push-back, are the things they're saying true about how you approach your kink? They might or might not be. (Exploring sexism and cultural norms via scene is a thing people do, but that might not be what you're going for here!)

If that's the case, think about their requests and see if there are different ways you both can enjoy the same activity without the sexism, stereotypes, and tropes that may make them uncomfortable.

Let's take a quick example here:

You're really turned on by wearing women's panties. You express this to your new lover who is disgusted and appalled. They've occasionally seen porn about your fetish, and it usually has captions like "Now that I'm dressed like a woman, I'm made to suck cock" and “Wearing lipstick lets all the men know exactly what my lips are good for.”

You, on the other hand, actually just really love the softness of women's panties. Men's underwear is always so scratchy, and the soft, delicate fabrics and beautiful designs of women's underwear has always turned you on.

You can see how there's a large communication gap here. The "idea" of the fetish is different than what you're actually into. In this case, I'd recommend being really upfront about what you enjoy about the kink and seeing if your partner can meet you in the middle.

In this case, they might be okay with women's panties after the explanation. If they're still uncomfortable with the idea, a compromise might be made for you both to explore soft, satiny fabrics in men's underwear cuts to see if that's something your lover would be comfortable with. As they see that your arousal isn't necessarily in the sexist tropes that they've associated with the activity, they often become more comfortable with trying more things within the kink with you.

Mistress Kay lives in the world of sexuality and kink. With a house that's quickly running out of space for things that aren't sex books and sex toys, she spends what free time she has writing femdom help articles (http://kinky-world.net/category/bdsm-advice/femdom-advice/), trying the latest and greatest in sex toys, and exploring the sexual universe with her partners. She can be reached at Kinky World (http://kinky-world.net/).