Reality TV: Best Dominant Competition!

by Mistress Matisse in The Stranger:

It's disappointing and baffling to me that as yet, no reality-TV-show producers have taken me up on my previously published concept for America's Next Top Dominatrix, a femme-domme competition show; too edgy for them, apparently. Jon & Kate Plus Hate—that's the kind of wholesome family entertainment the networks like.

Clearly, I must look to the community that always pushes the cultural envelope: porn. My new concept is for a webcast show, sponsored by some large, well-known BDSM porn producer (cough, Kink.com, cough). It's a competition for straight male dominants who want to work in porn. The winner gets the dream job: He gets his own website, where he'll direct and perform in elaborate BDSM scenes with hot fetish models.

But this is no Stand & Model party. There can be only one, so the masters have to prove themselves in a series of tough challenges. The judges? A panel of experienced female submissives. Don't be fooled by the term "submissive." These women like dominant men, but they've been around the dungeon. They won't stand—much less kneel—for any poseurs. Their weekly you-are-eliminated line to the losers? "Safe word!"

In the first episode, the ladies would test the creative thinking of the would-be kinky auteurs. Here's a Seattle BDSM-community classic: the Archie McPhee scene. Using only gear from this toy store, whoever creates the most escape-resistant bondage and the most squealing, bruise-inducing pain, wins. (Hint: Rubber snakes are useful for both restraint and impact, and the "Fairy Fly Swatter" stings mortals like hell.)

The next challenge tests pervy engineering skills: Come up with a design for a fucking machine that hasn't already been done. (That means anything incorporating a reciprocating saw will get you laughed off the set.) After that, take a budget of $300 and build a sexy set for a BDSM photo shoot—in a 10-by-10-foot storage unit.

The contestants who MacGyver their way through those tests will then receive a different sort of challenge. One doesn't necessarily have to have bottomed to make a good top, although it helps. But remember, anything Fred Astaire did, Ginger Rogers did backward and in heels. Thus, the masters will have to do an intense BDSM scene—while dressed in drag. Yep, get out of those leather pants, guys, and be a badass in a dress and a pair of spike heels.

But all previous challenges pale beside the big one: talent management! Take a prima-donna bondage model, famed for her beauty, her physical flexibility, her high pain threshold—and for her willingness to throw on-set temper tantrums if the scene isn't to her liking. Add a kink-celebrity rope rigger, whose feats of shibari are indeed amazing but who turns out to have terrible body odor and a mild case of Asperger's syndrome. Now, successfully direct these two people in a hot bondage scene that people would pay money to see. Good luck!