The clip shows a balding middle-aged white man in the center of a circus ring. He looks nervously around, and the camera pans to show the aggressor: a black panther-woman in a gold bikini. She commands him to "dance... to the rhythm... strip!" while repeatedly calling him "baby." The cat-woman growls at him and cracks her whip while he strips down to his socks and awkwardly sways back and forth.

It's pretty clear that this man is not enjoying the experience. Melissa McEwan from Shakesville notes that the selling point is apparently that "Orangina Red will turn you into a sexually aggressive monster." She argues that there is no ambiguity to this scene of assault:

And before anyone gets it in their head to argue that this isn't a sexual assault, but instead a scene of a dominatrix and a consenting customer, I'll just note that the setting of the ad is a circus ring. She's literally treating him like a performing animal, and he appears to be utterly terrified. I am acquainted with someone who worked as a professional dominatrix for many years; men went to her to be punished, not petrified-and if someone had become visibly frightened of her, she would have stopped. Images of dominatrices thrilling in hurting scared, vulnerable men are images of sexual assault, not of anything a consent-insistent sex worker does.

However, many people will probably see this ad and think it funny, not offensive or strange. Yet try imagining it with the genders reversed: A terrified woman strips uncomfortably while a large, muscular man-animal growls at her and commands her to dance. My guess is that far fewer people would find that humorous. Once again, sexual assault committed against men is viewed as hilarious - as are violent and aggressive women.

Even without the violence, this ad is full of problems. There is the woman-reduced-to-a-cat theme, which by this point is just getting kind of tired. Call me when we start seeing some sexy rhinos (although there is a hot M&M, so I suppose even this is possible). Copyranter, posting on Animal New York, also suggests that there is an element of racial tension underlying the exchange:

It's the latest spot in Orangina's animated anthropomorphized nympho animal campaign, where we previously witnessed a giraffe-girl sniffing a rollerblading guy's ass. Now, a buff busty melanistic big cat (I'm envisioning Naomi Campbell) dominates a stereotypical White Man in a big tent setting. Is that a penis peek I spy? The spot sizzles with sexual and racial tension, RAWWRR!

That panther-thing reminds him of Naomi Campbell? This may say more about the author's views than the agency's. Either way, we can probably all agree Orangina has unleashed something that is all-around disturbing, and not at all appetizing.

Today In Rape Culture [Shakesville]
Orangina's Black Panther Dominatrix [Animal New York]

These kind of jobs don't usually involve actual sex, writes Tracy Quan (a former call girl) for The Daily Beast. "The sector is poised for expansion as more unemployed and underemployed women begin looking for extra cash." And it doesn't matter if you're not really "into" the scene. Writes Quan:

Because many of these freelance pro-dommes are just supplementing their incomes and don’t plan on staying in sex work forever, they may not be as erotically hardcore in their outside lives. “I wasn't really that interested” in S&M, says Chloe. “I got involved because it was easy money. The strap-on? I'm OK with it, but it's not really a personal interest of mine.”

Maybe you're thinking, why spank a businessman or let some dude suck your toes if you're not even into it? But the same could be said of answering phones, making a latte or cleaning someone's house. (In Mumbai, profesional men are finding that sex work on the side helps them earn a decent living.)

On the other hand, unlike being a receptionist or a barista, working in the sex industry is an occupation some women might be reluctant to talk to friends and family about. Chloe, the art student Quan interviewed for her piece, says her mother "would probably cry" and be "very upset" about her fetish gigs, although Quan speculates: "some parents would be secretly proud of a daughter resourceful enough to hack the increasingly rigid class system that permeates New York life."

Still: Do you believe a job is a job? Do you believe extra money is extra money? If there's no kissing, no sex, just spanking or foot worship, is there any harm in freelance fetish work? Quan puts it this way: "Even if you’re bossing your client around in a pair of thigh-high boots, you’re still working in a service industry. And after an hour, your feet hurt."

Kinkonomics [The Daily Beast]
Male Professionals Double As Sex Workers For Extra Income [Hindustan Times]

We always thought that if we ever in the unfortunate position of having to be a prostitute, that we would be a dominatrix, because at least that way, we'd get to humiliate men for a living (yay!) and we wouldn't have to have sex.

How utterly horrid to find out, from a real live former dominatrix, that we might have to give hand-jobs!

Also, our parents might not be too happy to find out that not only did we once ram pins into men's willies for a living, but now we've written a book about it:

"Besides, being a dominatrix was never going to be what I did for ever. My family will be pleased to hear that, particularly my mother, who has only just found out about my career. I'm from a nice, conservative Jewish area of Toronto; she's a teaching assistant and my dad's an accountant. She just can't understand why her daughter would want to do what I've done — then write about it so explicitly. They think it somehow reflects on them; that people will think there was something wrong with them as parents.

.....I suppose there aren't many mothers who want to read about their child's sexual experiences in such detail."

Really? You think?

[we'll keep up the day job for now