Dear Sasha,
My husband has long harboured a fetish for a very particular type of stocking: taupe, seam running up the back, gartered – white garters, preferably. Honestly, nothing else will do.
I would understand if he were 85 years old and this were some throwback to his youth going out lindy hopping or whatever and seeing these things when women’s skirts whirled up, but he’s 37. By the time he was cognizant, everyone was wearing disco spandex.
This got me thinking about fetishes and where they come from. Is it possible that he inherited this one? I know it’s a strange question, but Jung talks about the collective unconscious. Surely, it can exist for the erotic mind as well.
Also, can you please help me find these things? I have no clue where to go to find vintage stockings.
BG
Dear BG,
I sought out the opinion of two women on this matter. One is a lifestyle and professional dominant named Maude.
“Some folks have fetishes that are more general, or can be applied generally, like golden showers, for example,” she says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s in their mouth or covering their body or who is giving it. But some fetishes are singular and have to be applied exactly, down to the most minute detail.”
Maude makes a good point about your Jungian reference.
“It’s cute that she’s talking about psychic inheritance – collective and historical rather than genetic, individual and scientific – but that’s impossible to prove. It totally makes sense to think about fetishes in the broad sense as an unconscious collective intelligence. Jung would probably think about fetishes via archetypes, and those aren’t time-bound. How we relate to archetypes impacts our psychic patterns and expressions. So if she’s trying to get to a root cause or wants to look at fetishes intelligently, discussing archetypes and how her partner relates to them could be a good start.”
When Jung talks about the collective unconscious, BG, he is already referencing the erotic mind. In fact, the first of his own dreams that he records is sexual in nature.
Here it is, as described by the Jungian psychotherapist Michael Cornwall: “In the childhood dream Jung, alone at night descends stone steps and enters an underground throne room in an open grassy field through a shimmering heavy curtain of green and gold.
“At the end of the darkened room he sees an awesome, unknown form on a throne, illumined by a light from within. In terror and awe he realizes the shape is a huge upright living, fleshy phallus with the opening on top like an eye.
“Suddenly his mother is there at Jung’s side and cries out to the boy in contempt and dire warning: ‘Yes – just look at him, the maneater!’ Jung woke up terrified.”
Your husband’s very specific interest in taupe seamed stockings may not be about just the stockings (though I’m with him on them, I think they’re so hot), but what they represent. In Jungian language, we might say they represent The Anima, the male way of relating to the feminine.
For most men, this is the most repressed side of themselves, because it is the most belittled. As Murray Stein writes, “Jung observed that the reality of the psyche is a symbolic reality, that is, one that shows itself in symbols.
“Symbols arise in the psyche as emergent patterns and structures, and they make their way from unconscious to conscious states first in dreams and fantasy and then by becoming assimilated to consciousness in a more deliberate way by interpretation and realization.
“The symbol is the best possible expression of a still unconscious content and is therefore a forerunner of new possibilities, new transformations. It is latent psychic structure coming into being.”
Because this anima is so repressed in men, it is very difficult for them to articulate their desires, which, by necessity, emerge in very specific ways because they have only ever existed in a solitary fantasy landscape. They have never been bound by the reality imposed by partnered, in-the-flesh exchanges.
Cristina McHenry is not a clinical psychologist and her area of expertise is memory, not sex. But she is the president of Brain Awareness Montreal, an organization that promotes neuroscience to the average citizen.
“Fetishes are typically learned during early adolescence, when most of us are first exposed to sexual content and when sexual interests begin,” she says.
“It’s highly likely that with some soul-searching and deep conversations, BG and her husband could figure out where the fetish originated – a crush on a teacher who wore those stockings, or a movie star [he certainly could have seen these stockings if he was a fan of old films, and the series Mad Men does lavish some attention on them].
“As far as I know, there’s no evidence that fetishes can be inherited they’re learned behaviours. Like all learned behaviours, in order for fetishes to be created and to last, they need to be reinforced. This specific fetish appears to have been reinforced very strongly, to the point where he can no longer become sexually excited without those stockings.
“If it’s a problem for his partner, sex therapy could be a very good option for them. The good news is that learned behaviours can be modified or even extinguished under the supervision of a qualified psychologist. The catch is that he needs to want to modify the fetish in order for therapy to be effective.”
As you ask about where to purchase these items, it seems you’re game to play. I would have a look at a place like Courage My Love in Kensington Market. Secret drawers there are filled with dead stock, and I’ve seen such stockings in them.
Also, check out Stocking Girl. These stockings are new, but they’re as authentic as they come. And Experience Project goes a long way toward explaining one man’s obsession with the same type of stockings, particularly in seeing a woman tugging at the welt (the more opaque fabric at the top) to adjust them.
The Welt. How’s that for a sexy, whispered-in-the-ear word?
