Some women ache to wear corsetry, lingerie and high heels in manner that goes beyond just wanting to dress-up and look pretty. Many a girl grows into her sexual awareness with more than just a passing fancy for the girdle she spied her older aunt wearing, or has more than just a passing thought for the leather of her handbag. These women, lesbians, straight or bi, might simply be fetishists.
Women, not just men, can have fetishes to. Some are medical-related fetishes, some are centered around clothes-though female fetishists don’t exactly mirror their male counterparts in getting wet for men in construction boots; while a guy might like to jerk-off to women in porn-ish high heels, some women simply grow aroused over objects that were linked to their budding sexuality. Even before she was fully aware of her libido, a woman might have tripped across some sort of sensual awareness linked to an object or activity, something not sexual at all, and, as is the case for all fetishes, one was created subconsciously. From that day onward, the women experienced sexual excitement over that object, stimulated in ways her waking mind was not even aware of. But the link colored her sexuality all the same.
Unlike male fetishists, women can easily take to complete dressing-up as a manifestation of their fetish. Both straight and gay ladies have been known to dress butch, as much as femmes enjoy the trappings of both modes of dress, to the point where it becomes their fetish, paralleling male transvestites fetishism for dressing in women’s clothing. Binding oneself in a corset and even inflicting self-cutting is seen as another form of female fetishism, with the latter being a most extreme case.
And when a fetish does get extreme, or a woman cannot function without it, then therapy might be needed. An indulgent lover is one thing, amassing a big shoe collection another, but once a fetish becomes impossible for a woman to handle, then it might be time to put all the dressing-up and leather stroking into some sort of workable perspective.