When is a Fetish Not a Fetish?

I once had a conversation with a guy who said he had a Catwoman fetish.

He was totally serious.

Knowing a thing or two about fetishes, I never heard of this one--although fetishes can be as unique as the men who profess to have them. Curiously, I asked him why, specifically, Catwoman--was it the shredded leather costume Halle Berry wore in the movie? Did it have anything to do with Julie Newmar or was it Michelle Pfeiffer in black vinyl? Was it the idea of a statuesque woman towering over him, and he on his knees in fear and trembling?

Or, stranger yet, had he watched one too many episodes of CSI and, as a result, want me to dress up in a big, furry costume, call myself Miss Purrfect,or something of that sort, and skritch him in a furpile?

His reasons were very simple and pretty normal, as far as nascent fetishists go. The particular Catwoman of his fascination was the comic book vixen--masked, raven-haired, wearing a purple spandex catsuit and black stiletto boots. He had a long fascination with comic books, starting in childhood and loved the character. She was, in his mind, the ultimate rebel, and used her stiletto boots to stomp on the male status quo embodied in somber, midnight blue and gray-clad Batman. His Catwoman wasn't a feminist, but she was the ultimate female--and this perfect personification had nothing to do with Berry or Pfeiffer. But it did with Julie Newmar. He thought she came closest to the Catwoman ideal.

As a matter of fact, he continued, he found Halle Berry's portrayal, and the movie overall, to be the antithesis of anything truly Catwoman-like.

I was relieved that his fetish had nothing to do with a big, furry, mascot-style catsuit.

Still, I wondered why he believed his particular interest in Catwoman constituted a fetish. It what he described didn't really qualify his fascination for the psychology-textbook definition of a fetish.

Finally, I got it out of him--it wasn't really a fetish per se. He just wanted to have a woman dressed like Catwoman do him with a strap-on.

Now, that's more of a fantasy then a fetish. But, quite often, people confuse the two concepts. That's not really a surprise. The ideas and images surrounding various sexual practices that can be quantified as kinky, including fetishism, have crept slowly into the mainstream media over the past fifteen years. Episodes of Roseanne (where her mother appeared in a dominatrix costume and Roseanne herself kissed a girl) and ER (medical fetishist looking for a catheterization and an adult baby) were more than likely the first highly rated shows to hint at sexual fetishism. Since then, CSI, with its cavalcade of dominatrices, furries,transvestites and even an adult baby, has been the showcase of kink on TV, with Desperate Housewives highlighting what might happen when happy hubby's bigtime secret comes home to roost.

Not to mention a plethora of videos from bands ranging from overtly sadomasochistic Nine Inch Nails to little Britney Spears that at various times employ fetishistic imagery--sometimes without any connection to the song being sung.

Is it then any wonder why some guy who has dreamed about a comic book character since puberty would think that his fervid sexual fantasies constituted a down and dirty sexual fetish?

Sexual fetishism is more complicated than television or videos have time to depict, and is far different from sexual fantasy (although many fetishists fantasize about their particular fetishes.) For starters, a fetishist doesn't necessarily need another person to get off. More often, what he needs is an inanimate object. Women's shoes are the most common, but there are others--latex gloves, women's lingerie, medical equipment, various leather items, to name just a few.

However, if the guy is wearing women's shoes or lingerie, he's not a necessarily a fetishist--he's a transvestite. Transvestites can have fetishes, but simply wanting to dress in women's clothes is not a fetish in and of itself.

Fetishists are predominantly male, and their most common mode of sexual gratification is often auto-eroticism. So, when a woman says she has a shoe fetish, unless she's doing something funky with her Manolos all by herself behind closed doors, she's just an obsessed shoe collector. She's certainly not a shoe fetishist in the proper sense.

Unless she can have sex only when she's wearing her Manolos. Stranger things have happened.

From time to time, sexual fetishes involve other people, but usually only for a particular body part--the individual person who embodies the fetish is objectified. Now, if a guy says he has an ass fetish, it could mean that he loves women's asses more than any other part of women's bodies. Most of the time though the self-professed ass fetishist is really just an ass admirer. He can, if he wants, fall in love with the woman with the perfect ass.


However, if he never develops an attachment to the individual who poseses the desired ass, and never thinks of penetration, but of only rubbing his member over the desired ass, then he crosses the line from ass admirer to ass fetishist.

Once, when I was at the mall, I overheard a high-school aged chickie talk about buying a cheerleader costume to satisfy her high-school boyfriend's cheerleader fetish, I almost fell over laughing. I'll concede that maybe he wanted her to dress up like a cheerleader because he feared rejection from the cheerleaders he knew at school, but I don't think he was looking to have her stand there while he jacked off.

Then again, I'm not in their bedroom.

There are fine lines between collectors, admirers, fantisizers, and fetishists. The fetishist differ from the others in that the fetishist carries doubts about his masculinity in relation to women. He deeply fears rejection and humiliation. So, rather than risk developing sexual relationships with women, where he may be rejected for a perceived inadequacy, he chooses inanimate objects. His mastery over the inanimate object alleviates his sexual frustration as well as his feelings of inadequacy, and protects him from rejection and humiliation. The thinking goes: if he can master and control objects that represent women, he can shore up his perception of himself as a man.

Sometimes a fetishist just can't get enough. He might do volunteer work or take on a job where he is in constant contact with the object of his fetish--the same way an obsessed non-fetishist might stalk a lover. Although a guy's more likely to get arrested for repeatedly showing up at a lover's job than he is for putting in overtime at his job down at the shoe store.

Which brings me back to the Catwoman-guy. I got it out of him that he really didnÂ’t need a woman in a Catwoman costume to get off--or, necessarily, to do him with strap on. And he wasn't working in a comic book store, practicing frotteurism with a standee either. So, he wasn't a fetishist, but trying to convince him of that would be impossible. When someone wholeheartedly believe his sexuality is a bit outre, it's hard to convince him otherwise.

With Catwoman-guy, rather than try to change his mind, I simply told him I'm not as tall as Julie Newmar and, therefore, I wasn't the girl for him. That, he could accept.


tag: Sex

(note: if this piece looks familiar, it's because it's been transferred from another recently terminated blog.)