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Whether you have fallen in love with a pair of stilettos wrapped around slim ankles or crave a little bondage, fetishes are more common than you think, and can take on as many different shapes as there are individuals.
A fetish can be as simple as enjoying sex with your socks on through to wearing nappies covered in talcum powder, which is a turn-on for some.
Sexual wellness coach Lindiwe Rasekoala said: “A fetish exists because people have different fantasies and ways of stimulating themselves. There are both fetishes and kinks. There is not much of a difference, except that with a fetish it is based on something else that you are attracted to, whereas a kink is an action that you might take to find pleasure.”
There is also a fetish for inanimate objects, which could be anything from statues through to toys. A 23-year-old German woman recently proclaimed her love for a Boeing 737 aircraft and intends to marry a model aircraft.
Rasekoala said one of the most common fetishes is a love of feet. Enjoying having feet in your face or touching feet, massaging feet, even enjoying seeing feet sipping on bananas or covered in cream.
The coach said: “A lot of people do not believe that what they fantasize about is normal. But if you do more research, you will find there are plenty of communities where people have fetishes even beyond what you might believe is normal. And it is very normal. It is okay provided again; it is not harming anybody else. I think that evolving a fetish is just people explaining what it is that they like and realising that there are others who enjoy it too.”
Light bondage and sadomasochism, or being tied up and spanked in many incarnations, is becoming more popular, Rasekoala said: “Being tied up, whether you like to be a brat, whether you like to be the dominant party in play, or if you like to be a submissive. Golden showers, where partners are somewhat demeaned by being peed on, for example, is a more extreme version of sadomasochism.” Yet, Rasekoala says, a growing number of people are into it.
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She said with the advent of the internet it has become easier for people to express their fetishes and find others with common interests. There are communities across the web for all kinds of fetishes and kinks.
She reminds of the importance of safe sex, no matter what the kink or fetish. Condom manufacturers like Skyn make a lot of data available online, resources about how to always enjoy better sex, she said. “It is worth looking it up an arming yourself with knowledge.”
Rasekoala said: “There’s a psychological play into what your fantasies might be, and your upbringing might also be a contributing factor. You might have seen that there is some type of sex that you have watched through porn or something that you have been told you should not watch. And then you watch it, and you are like, but why am I feeling so good about this?”
This could include, gangbanging. This fetish may be a lot more common than anyone would care to admit. “Gangbanging is where someone would want multiple men or women satisfying various parts of a person’s body. It is more common with one woman and lots of men, but I have seen where it is lesbians all engaging with again, one woman, using various toys,”explains Rasekoala.
Rasekoala added: “Another fetish which is quite interesting, is a sleep fetish. People get turned on by those who are asleep. There is a movie called Le Petit Mal, which means the dead, the small dead, which is an orgasm in French. And that talks about different fetishes and how there was a woman who was too loud and always talking and annoyed with her husband.”
But when she was asleep, that was when her husband was in love with her and turned on. Because she was quiet.
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“There are different things that turn you on that you might not necessarily understand. But again, there is a lot of resources that will give you the answers that you need. Some people are turned on by crying when either a man or a woman is filled with emotion. It means they are in a vulnerable state. So, you are turned on by the fact that they are vulnerable,” says Rasekoala.
There are many kinds of fetishes, but, said Rasekoala, when it involves other people and bringing them to life, the golden rule is consent.
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