Early exposure: The Ice Storm

I've written a few posts about how my early exposure to Femdom didn't happen through the "front door," which would be basically being turned on by BDSM, D/s, Femdom, etc.  My route began with a fetish for women in fur, which led to a few fur fetish sites in the earlier days of the internet.  For some reason a few of those same sites were heavily tied to Femdom and that made up much of my earliest exposure to the lifestyle.  NTCWeb, Sardax, and to some extent, Melody O'Hair led me down this path to having a sexual tie between fur and Femdom. 

 I used to be a huge movie fanatic.  I've since cut back significantly but I still have an enjoyment of good cinema and I have a dedicated following to a handful of writers/directors that I have grown to trust will consistently put out good movies.  Ang Lee is one of those directors.  In 1997 I rented the Ice Storm with a female friend of mine and we watched it together.  If you aren't familiar with the movie, it takes place in the early 70's in white upper middle class suburbia and centers around a couple of dysfunctional families.

In the movie, Sigourney Weaver plays the wife in one family that is having an affair with the husband of the other family (although you get the impression that this isn't her first affair and she "upgrades" to a more exciting guy as soon as her current one bores her).  During one of the scenes she returns home to find her ~12 year old son blowing up his toys with M-80 firecrackers.  After sort of chewing him out she looks for something else to hold his attention.  What first drew my attention to this scene is her coat.  I absolutely love its style (although I'm a bit iffy on the print).  The cut/shape and the fur, mixed with the fact that her character is pretty much the most sexual character in the story really got my blood pumping.

After my friend left I rewound the tape to this scene and played through it over and over again... full speed, slow motion, frame by frame, etc.  I know I jerked off several times to it. 

As she searches for something to distract him with she finds a whip out on the deck with them and you can see her response. 
It can basically be summarized in:
SW picks up whip and gazes it up and down.
SW to son:  Where did you get this?
son to SW: Uncle got it for me on his trip to .
SW starts to fiddle with the whip, tossing her hair and then playing with it in her hands.  She seems to be getting ideas and possibly a bit aroused.

SW to son:  Play with the whip.
SW hands the whip back to her son and as she tells him to play with it she's sort of pointing it at him like a command.

I returned the movie the next day and immediately went out and bought a copy of it.  It's a very good movie in its own right but at that point I rarely if ever bought movies (I owned maybe 10 or so at that time).  I pretty much kept it cued up to that scene so I could just pop it back into the player and go through that one when I wanted to masturbate. 

In hindsight I can see how this affected me as it portrayed a situation mixing fur, sex, and power.  I've always been attracted to women that were self-assured and went out and took what they wanted and this pretty much captured all of it.  I give this scene about 20% of the credit towards my developing into a submissive. 

I sort of wish I knew what Ang Lee told Sigourney Weaver about acting in that scene.  I may have to buy the Criterion Collection release and listen to the commentary to see if it can shed any insight.  I can picture it as being something like "Okay, you find the whip, you're intrigued, ask him, now imagine yourself with your lover and you want to whip him with it and this gets you off."  The other interpretation I've had of it is like "Oh shit, is this my whip from my closet?  I better ask him.  Ok good... mmm... I love whips..."

I can only imagine how different my life would have been if I didn't have a fetish for women in fur.  I kind of have a feeling I wouldn't have turned out as a submissive and even if I did turn out as a submissive I probably wouldn't have turned out as a sissy.