I have two basic kinks that have driven me to session. The first is a smoking fetish and the 2nd is strapon play. I know exactly when the switch went off.
Back in the 70s 12 year old Jiminhales was sitting in a family room waiting for his friend Andy to get dressed to play. Andy’s older sister was sitting on the coach smoking a cigarette. She turned to me and said, watch this. She looks straight at me a takes a drag then does a great French Inhale. All I could say was, that’s cool. She jumped up and ran to a mirror to watch herself do another one then turns to me and says I like it to. My 12 year old brain was a vegetable. That was the beginning.
#2 was when I was 17 and a buddy and I went to the DC Playhouse to see a porn movie called Misty Beethoven. During one scene with 2 girls and a guy one girl puts on a strapon and starts using it. I hear my buddy whisper, Are you kidding me, like he was grossed out. I didn’t say a word. That started my interest in that type of play.
Bottom line, if you are a smoking Domme I become one big slut. Lol
What started you?

Interesting question and it's one I sometimes ask subs over dinner or drinks. Like you, if they can trace it back at all, it's usually from something in their adolescent years that became sexualized - like you with the older sister smoking. If it had been a guy smoking I am sure it would not have had the same effect.

I can't remember anything from my youth that triggered it. I know my Barbies always drove fast cars and ordered Ken around but I don't know why.

My first real exposure to FemDom style kink was in my 20s when a man I had been with for over a year finally admitted to being into FemDom. I actually found his kink magazines so it as a forced confession but I was intrigued so we looked through all the mags together and discussed his fantasies and it just took off from there.

I wrote a lengthy article about this and our first encounter with chastity on my blog years ago but alas, the blog crashed and with it went the article. That experience brought home full force the power I held over him and probably many other men if I chose to use it.

It was a complete epiphany. I have never been a beautiful woman like the women in fashion magazines, movies or Barbie, but this experience taught me that I didn't have to be. I found power in my sexuality and I started to learn to use it. The rest is history!

Just to clarify it was my buddies older sister smoking. Not mine.
That would be a whole other issue. Lol

Haha. Yes, I caught that part.

I get this question a lot from mistresses i've talked with, and honestly, I can't trace my interest in femdom back to a single point.

I know when I watched cartoons as a kid I always loved it when the villainesses would win (Even if that victory rarely lasted) and when I played videogames I remember purposefully losing to female enemies.
Specifically as a kid I would play my older brother's copy of Soul Caliber 2 on Dreamcast (Despite my parents telling him to never let me play it because of the violence) and in that game there's literally a dominatrix themed character wielding a whip, if she knocked you on the ground I vividly remember one of her moves was to step on you with her heels and when she won she would always say something insulting, even as a little kid with next to no sexual desires I always liked losing to her on purpose.
So that's probably one of the origins of my masochism and kink for corporal punishment!

Thinking about it a little harder, I remember the origin for my facesitting fetish now!
When I was in middle school I remember watching the WWE divas and every once in awhile they would do this move call the "stinkface" where they would have their opponent sitting down in the corner of the ring, both arms on the ropes, and then they would get some distance before running back and slamming their ass on the opponent's face and rubbing it in!
Watching videos of that I always felt like I was watching something I shouldn't be, I hadn't watched porn before then, but I think that kind of acted as my safe-for-work gateway drug into porn and more specifically femdom porn. It definitely activated my kink of forced facesitting and ass smothering for sure.

I remember watch reruns of Wonder Woman with Lynda Carter and getting excited about her capturing the bad guys. At the time I didn’t know anything about S&M or anything or why I liked seeing women over power men. It wasn’t until years later I saw Exit to Eden that I realized what I actually was liking. I know as bad as ETE movie is for the BDSM community it did get me started with help of the internet into S&M.

I was a rugrat in the 50s and my earliest memories are of crawling around on the floor at my mothers legs while she was wearing high heels and beige nylons. I figure I was around 3 or 4 that I remember this from and it’s probably embedded pre memory from when I was a baby just starting to crawl. I also remember being in kindergarten and first grade just excited at the sight of the girls feet and legs in their tights. This foot and leg fetish was the start and driver of all my kink and is still most powerful within me. Truthfully growing up I never felt I was normal sexually and this is the root of it all.

What the fuck is normal? One thing I have seen on this board and The Hang are guys that feel burdened by their fetish or kink. Just embrace it.
My fetishes have had me do things I never thought I would do. I won’t be doing some stuff again but it doesn’t bother me that I did.
99% of the people walking down the street have something that turns them on that doesn’t the person next to them.
Laura Petrie must have driven you up a wall. Lol

“What the fuck is normal “ could be a whole separate discussion topic. It all depends on how one defines normal.

My foot and high heel fetish was just the start of my journey into bdsm which has blossomed into a whole cornucopia of activities too many to list. I’m wired the way I am and it is what it is. I’m not ashamed of it internally anymore and just accept it but the truth is if I could magically go back and erase it I would. I’ve done pretty well but my bdsm desires have definitely complicated my life in ways I could do without. I’ve had a lot of fun crazy experiences and met some very cool people but there have been off setting negatives. The subject of “ if you could get rid of your kink would you” has been the topic of a few discussions on Max.

Fair enough. Although I am pretty level headed my fetish has lead to some interesting experiences. Yea, take away my main fetish and I might be a little wealthier but I wonder if I would have had nearly the experiences and fun I have had.
The good ones are etched in my mind. I am pretty good at forgetting the forgettable ones.