It's pretty obvious that part of my MO with bondage sessions is to unbutton a sub's shirt if he's wearing a button down. It has always been something that turned me on and is part of what I like about men wearing button downs in general. I love for there to be exposed skin and chest hair and when attention is paid to that. When I dated and hooked up in my 20s, one of my favorite things was when I'd wear a button down to dinner or drinks, we'd go to one of our apartments, get to kissing and caressing, and they'd take the initiative to start undressing me by unbuttoning my shirt. It never failed. Only one guy tried pulling my shirt over my head and I was like "these are snap buttons, you can just rip it open!"
After going home with a guy and taking off my jacket, he pushed me onto my bed, got on top of me, opened my shirt, and proceeded to go for my belt and jeans as well. I quickly wound up in my underwear while he was still fully dressed, which I found pretty hot because it created an uneven power dynamic. This was before I started meeting up for bondage. Since my sex life was fairly vanilla, I feel like these small aspects really made normative sex more appealing to me. Being stripped by someone else made me feel attractive and ravaged, plus it was like a submissive-lite experience. It was a thing I still like to this day, but it wouldn't really fill my tank as much as it did when I was much less experienced with bondage.
Beyond feeling desirable when other guys stripped me, which can be done with any type of clothing, having my shirt unbuttoned just had a specific appeal. Like, a t-shirt can be taken off by someone else, but it's kind of awkward when it has to go over your shoulders. It can be torn off, but that requires something sharp or very strong fingers, then you're down a shirt. In general, I find dress shirts and button downs more attractive than something like a t-shirt. But with button down shirts, they can essentially be ripped open, granting full access to a man's chest and stomach, without the shirt being damaged. Or buttons can even be ripped off if you're into that.
I find it arousing that men walk around in shirts that are being held closed with buttons that anyone could access. So, even though it isn't likely to happen because of social standards and people's boundaries, anyone could quickly and easily undo at least one button of a man's shirt if he's within an arm's reach.
I also think that when a guy would unbutton my shirt, it meant that he liked having that access to me, which probably meant that he liked that I wore a button down. As a clothing fetishist, I feel attractive when I wear the type of clothing that I'm into and sort of hope that others will find me attractive when I wear those clothes, whether or not they're clothing fetishists. I think I wanted to feel a sense of validation that even if they weren't on my level of clothing fetishism, wearing what I was into nonetheless appealed to them. Therefore, both the physical ease of undoing a button and the effort to look more appealing are fairly vulnerable because they kind of put you out there, and I tend to like people's responses to that.
A guy's initiative to do that to me not only shows his interest in me and getting me naked, but it also shows a comfort with me. Like, it's obviously not acceptable to touch an unsuspecting stranger or remove his clothes without his consent. And with vanilla sex, there isn't as much premeditation or discussion about weird things you're into before meeting with someone and I didn't tell anyone to do that to me, so none of the guys I hooked up with explicitly knew that I was inviting that, yet something about the vibe usually seemed to lead to it. Similar to when a sub gives his body to a dom, not just allowing him to render him helpless, but also allowing the dom to touch him without necessarily having to ask, general physical intimacy with another person grants similar permissions once it reaches a certain level. Individuals reach a certain comfort and understanding after kissing and caressing each other, which almost creates a social contract that allows the other person to act on their desires. One of these allowances includes permission to remove the other individual's clothing, which I find more fun than each person taking off their own clothing. Of course, with respect to consent, this contract can always back-pedal if one individual decides to pull back.
When you add bondage to the mix, all of this heightens. A restrained person obviously has no control over what happens to his body or clothing. Aside from unbuttoned shirts looking sexy and the act of unbuttoning signifying sexual desire, they also look disheveled. So, aside from the sexiness of showing more skin or an exposed chest, there's also more visible vulnerability. It always turned me on to see suited men in movies or TV shows get tied up and have their ties removed and shirts opened at some point. This part isn't always on camera, but I generally like the switch from untied and composed to tied up and undone. Whether or not a scene with a tied up and partially exposed man is meant to have sex appeal, the fetishist in me recognizes the sex appeal in the vulnerability. For example, a captive or hostage in something can be stripped to be beaten or tortured. Sometimes this is made visually explicit with blood, bruising, or showing the violence in action. Sometimes it's just implied when the hostage looks dirty and exposed when we see him after time passes since his abduction. This can be arousing when you consider the captive's endurance for pain, plus just the visual of a disheveled and bare good looking guy.
Something that always turned me on about the bondage scene in Fear (1996) is when the handcuffed protagonist is thrown onto a couch, his tie gets removed, and a few buttons of his shirt are undone. Aside from the things I fetishize in this scene, there's nothing sexual happening in it. The shirt being ripped open seemed like one of the many ways that the villain wanted to emphasize his power over the protagonist. The protagonist was even wearing a t-shirt under his dress shirt, so the shirt opening didn't reveal any skin or body hair. But the seemingly sexless power dynamic was definitely erotic to me. I say 'seemingly' because I think whether or not power hungry people are what we'd consider gay or kinky, they might be aroused by having and exerting power over other people. Since men in patriarchal systems are considered to be the most powerful actors in the system, overpowering other men is probably the highest form of control and power one can have. So, men can enjoy the idea of a bound and gagged man, especially one with different kinds of privileges and esteem, without having to be gay kinksters.
One of the only fights I witnessed in high school between two boys involved both of them ripping each other's t-shirts, which was probably also one of the gayest things I've witnessed in high school. For the most part, I think the shirts just happened to be casualties from the scuffle with no real intention of stripping their adversary. However, my theory behind this is that these kids didn’t know how to actually fight, so they resorted to tearing at each other to gain control. Maybe there was even a humiliation component to all of this, like "haha. Now, you have to be in school with your body exposed." I didn't find anything arousing about this fight or stripping. It was more funny than anything. This obviosly also didn't involve bondage or a shirt unbuttoning, but there were exchanges of power and a possible element of humiliation. It's humiliating to be vulnerable and exposed, and it feels powerful to humiliate others. And, again, having or witnessing that power can be arousing to different people, for different reasons.
A tied up man's shirt can obviously be ripped off or unbuttoned for sexual reasons as well. A man's shirt can be ripped open because his captor or dom wants that access to his body. The humiliation from being exposed, as well as feeling objectified, is also pretty arousing. Maybe the amount of skin that a guy chooses to reveal by how he buttons his shirt can be interpreted as sexual suggestiveness, which can be taken advantage of when he's restrained. One of my favorite things is seeing a sub's reaction to having his shirt opened, then looking down at his exposed torso, kind of realizing that he's being sexualized and unable to do anything about it. Then, in scenes with peril and rescue, there's the idea of a captive being found still tied up and exposed, possibly showing whoever found him evidence that he has been sexualized.
I think what I like most about unbuttoning shirts is the simplicity and harmlessness of it. It's easy to do and button down shirts are fairly ordinary and innocuous to wear. Even though there's a lot of implications and types of symbolism that could be attached to opening someone else's shirt, there's nothing violent or painful about it, and it doesn't even have to hurt the shirt. Even though I probably like it more than most people, it's probably one of the most normal things I'm into because even vanillas like some form of stripping and playing with the grey area between clothed and naked. Also, after editing so many screencaps of someone being gagged in movie scenes and videos of bondage sessions I've participated in, I'm learning that I have a thing for seeing step-by-step action sequences, either of gaggings or shirts being unbuttoned. There's just something to be said about visible transformations and action shots. Something that lead to this post was somebody on here telling me that what I say about unbuttoning shirts makes them sound sexier than they already are.
Comments