Bondage Blog

I love the way Holly nails the difference between real life kink culture and the version you always see on TV:

If there was one fact about BDSM, just one, that I could communicate to the culture at large, it would be this: at just about every BDSM play party I’ve ever been to, there has been a bowl of M&Ms.

Those M&Ms may be, as last night, part of a nice spread with cheese and fruit and cookies. They may be the dessert to a full dinner with hot meat and veggies. Or they may be jammed in the back corner next to some ripped-open jumbo bags of chips and 2-liters of Coke. But they’ll be there.

These M&Ms are, in some deep way, symbolic of the essential humanity and normalcy of kinksters. We may be freaky perverts, but we still like candy just as much as anyone else. And we still like to stand around the candy bowl talking and joking. And we’re still considerate enough of each other to remember to put out candy. The little M&M bowl stands as silent and delicious proof that even the most bizarre-seeming parties with people running around in diapers and chastity belts getting beaten and shocked and lit on fire are still parties, still places people go to relax and connect with one another.

Every time I see “S&M” represented in the media, I look for that M&M bowl. Or if not literally, something akin to it, some small indication that the same person can be genuinely and seriously kinky–and damn sexy about it–and also be a “gotta leave by 12 because I have work tomorrow” real person. TV bondage clubs never have M&Ms.