The beauty of suffering. Suffering for beauty? Being vain?

In almost all of my prior journal entries here I have cut into the subject of some woman being restricted or suffering one way or the other by some item of attire, such as corsets, high heels, hobble skirts, gloves, etc.

As it seems, this subject is of quite some significance to me. It is the message that I receive by a woman wearing such attire: "I will take whatever amount of suffering in order to look good [to you], in order to attract, to please [you]. I will be rewarded by the reaction, the approval, the arousal of those people looking at me. I _am_ like they only dare to dream."

This basically means she is submitting herself. In case it's a submissive play partner, than submission to the dress/style preferences of the partner is only consequential. But in the case of a complete stranger, it is submission to the perceived (perverted?) wishes/desires of a certain subculture, or in some cases even mainstream.

In mainstream fashion, we already see quite some level of submission to fashion, albeit in a very different way. Women who voluntarily or involuntarily, consciously or subconsciously, submit themselves to whatever the fashion industry pushes down their throat. To most women I think it is some kind of external pressure, to which they obey. Not something associated with a conscious act of submission, and not particularly sexualized / eroticized, if at all.

Many women, especially those subject to a good degree of vanity, will claim that they are doing this for themselves, not particularly to attract men (although that might be a by-product). I think they'll actually do it because they're slaves to the fashion and beauty industry and their gigantic advertisement and PR campaigns. Nothing erotic about that :(

In the goth, fetish and BDSM subculture there are a lot of people who exploit this strain of vanity in their own way: The conscious submission to a particular ideal of beauty. One that is perverted, one that intends to please the sexuality of the beholder. Going to more extreme fashion, dare to arouse other people by how you style yourself. Consciously turning yourself into a sex goddess (or slut, or love toy, object, depending on your personal phantasy and which role you like to play). But it's a role in a game, something that you can start and stop voluntarily. Something that both you and the people who appreciate such behavior will enjoy.

I think this kind of conscious kinky game is much more healthy (in both mainline society and subculture) than any kind of subconscious pressure and conditioning that we see a lot with people who never think about such issues, and just behave like society / the fashion + beauty industry expects them to behave.