I suspect that I’ve mentioned this before, but I think I can sum up what I’d love to see in one sentence:

Amy Allen, barefoot in a medieval dress, restrained by just one ankle.

Or, variations on the above theme!

Seriously, whilst that’s what I’d love to see, I realise that I’m in the massive minority and will bow to Hywel’s experience and artistic know-how. 🙂

Either way, more barefoot Amy! 😆

Hi Ariel,

The Japanese certainly agree with the idea that bondage can be art. There is quite a lot of work that, despite having as its core a naked girl tied up, that is absolutely stunning. Whilst the rigging can be long-winded and highly reliant on supreme skill, there is no denying that the end product is a thing of beauty.

I’ve been wondering similar things to you over the last couple of years. I grew up on saturday morning cartoons, in particular the superb Inspector Gadget. Why do I like to see girls tied up? I present Penny Gadget as the sole evidence for the prosecution.

Penny got tied up and into peril a lot, but there’s no way we could call her predicaments porn. I’m a huge fan of classic damsel-in-distress imagery (as I mentioned in my introduction post ages back) and certainly when a girl gets into that sort of trouble in mainstream TV and film productions it’s not what would generally be considered porn.

It’s difficult to know where to ‘draw the line’ so to speak, especially as I’m not altogether convinced that there IS a hard line between ‘porn’ and ‘not porn’. At some level I suspect it depends on how much of the girl’s body is shown – especially her intimate areas – as well as the method or style of tie.

I used to be a member of a community dedicated to animated damsels in distress, the sort you found in the aforementioned saturday morning cartoons as well as from Japanese anime series and films. Artists at the forum would regularly produce works of bound girls from various sources, as well as posting screencaps and stories. The question of porn/not porn came up more than once, and one of the ‘policies’ enacted by the higher-ups was ‘no crotchropes’.

The ‘no crotchropes’ rule was an interesting one, as the use of one pushed an image or story over the line from ‘innocent but erotic fun with girls and ropes’ into ‘outright porn’ as far as the community at large was concerned. The addition of a crotchrope didn’t serve to immobilise the girl, and was only there to cause discomfort in the genital region. Needless to say, you didn’t see that in Inspector Gadget.

I think it heavily depnds on context and style as well. If we have a girl in a skirt and small top, bound hand and foot with just a couple of pieces of rope, and gagged with a handkerchief – AKA ‘Nancy Drew wannabe got caught snooping where she shouldn’t by the bad guys’ – we have a classic ‘damsel’ image. If she’s tied to a chair, or slumped against a wall, in some dingy basement-like setting, it’s a dramatic image of a girl in trouble, awaiting her rescuer if she can’t free herself. Makes for a good story, which is why it’s still used so often.

On the other hand, plonk her in a brightly-lit studio, having her pose suggestively in her ropes, thrusting out her breasts or posterior whilst looking at the camera with a sultry expression on her face, and we’ve got something far more erotic and closer to what we could consider ‘porn’. The girl hasn’t changed, the outfit is the same, she’s still tied the same way, but the context and style is different.

Ultimately, it’ll also come down to personal viewpoint. To some, a girl being photographed naked is art. To others, it’s nothing short of vile, horrific, pornographic filth.

RE nicely blurs the line between ‘art’ and ‘porn’, veering more to the latter in most cases. I’d love to do a site involving classic damsel scenarios, not just tie-ups, but traps and other perils or hazards. Things you’d find in a 1930s pulp adventure or a kid’s cartoon. Even then, in order to avoid any problems, it would still need to be classified as ‘adult material’ even though the subject matter isn’t ‘deliberately erotic’ so to speak.

I’ve waffled enough, but I think the bottom line is that it’s largely down to people’s interpretations and expectations. A girl in ropes or chains isn’t necessarily porn, but in presentation and style it can easily be viewed that way. Ultimately, one man – or woman’s – porn is another’s ‘meh, what of it?’

So, in other words, not only is it massage oil, it’s a powerful aphrodisiac? Oh, that could lead to fun. 🙂