GLAMOUR AND TRANS-FORMATION

    'Look-don't look is the nexus of eroticism'

                    - Conner Habib 'Against Everyone with Conner Habib' 

Hollywood is a long way from the careful and intentional parsing of the written word, which is what glamour used to mean. It was related to the word grammar. It was how you spoke, and how you spelled. Yes, spell-ing. How you used words in powerful ways, at a time when reading was for the elite and writing even more so. Hollywood style glamour has its own magic, the magic of revealing and concealing, the conjuring of image in order to tell stories or simply to deceive. 

Glamour is thus the perfect example of what Anton LaVey would call lesser black magic. It is everyday magic with practical application. Glamour by itself won't make you enlightened but it might make you rich. It will also give you some versatile magical tools. 

I take a booking by phone and there is a knock on the door. I greet my client as usual, and then my heart sinks. I know this man. He is a taxi driver and he has driven me several times when I worked in a previous vanilla occupation. Fuck fuck fuck, what do I do? He is bound to recognize me. Except he doesn't. He greets me as if he has no idea. He becomes a regular client and he never twigs. That's because of glamour. 

I worked with a sex worker who did a lot of touring, and stayed in motels. I found motel touring kinda stressful because of the need to keep a professional look. Clients do not need to see the dishes in the sink and open suitcases. When I worked, I was mortified if a client saw something that was outside of the scene. Once a client came back to get his wallet and I was changing the sheets and I was truly shocked. Lots of sex workers are more relaxed. When I said I was worried about the motel rooms she laughed and said that once the clients saw her in her flash clothes they didn't notice the mess. That's because of glamour. 

Glamour enhances some things and makes other things almost invisible. When you understand a bit about glamour, you naturally work to your best look. More, you control what is revealed and what is concealed. Look-not look is an important part of eroticism. Frank nudity is often less arousing than partial nudity. A slow reveal tells a story, perhaps about desire and fulfillment, perhaps about a special part of the body that is fetishized. You are the magician. You see, but you control how you are seen, and even how the scene is seen. 

Lust leans into glamour - I have mentioned before about how it changes consciousness and makes clients highly focused and motivated in one direction, and therefore less focused on other things. 

Glamour also changes the consciousness of the magician. Dressing up in my whore's drawers changed me each time. I put on my magical persona. A persona is a little more than a role; it is more like method acting. Glamour means I could greet a man, walk towards him and wrap my leg around him and whisper in his ear, being perfectly genuine, without fancying him at all. You can be ritualistic about this. You can put sigils or spells in your makeup bag. You can say an incantation or a prayer to your Red Goddess. Each item can be meaningful, such as lipstick for sexy speech, and eye liner for a clear and steady glance. Invest your clothes with meaning. My high heels did a heap of work for me, as I have done ball kicking and trample play with them, and they made me walk differently and gave me height of course. After months of wearing them, simply putting them on altered my state of consciousness. If you Speak about these things as you prepare for your sexual encounter, you are doing magic already. You are lining yourself up with what you want to be. You are soaking your actions in your intention. 

I have known several cross dressers, and they understand glamour intuitively. Dressing was an event in itself. Hiring a motel, dressing in a group together, and going out in that group, was such a buzz. The act of transformation is a piece of magic. You walk into the motel as one thing, and come out another. What happens in between is a rite of passage. It is fun because only you know what you were to start with. So, are you a different person when you are dressed? When you have gone from Paul to the Lady Paulina? This is the same question the shaman might ask when he puts the leopard mask on and does the leopard dance, and the people drumming and singing around him see the leopard, not the man. Glamour is the first piece of the work of transformation. It is perhaps at that point that the lesser magic described by LaVey becomes something greater. 

 

We are creatures of artifice, I discovered, when a client asked to see me first thing in the morning, au naturel, as if I had just got out of bed. It took me a while to prepare to be so unprepared. My natural look was as unnatural as the heels and makeup I usually employed. So, I greeted him, tousled and sweet, and he was delighted as my silk dressing gown fell from me, a victim of gravity, as I glided away from the open door. 

 

Here is an exercise to develop your sense of glamour. It is from Anton LaVey's appalling book 'The Complete Witch'. This book does not reflect well on Anton I am afraid. It is a sexist mess and I took one for you all simply by reading it. However, this is a fun exercise for those who identify as women particularly.

 

Wear only stockings and shoes, and a long coat. Go out walking. Go into shops. Go into buildings, elevators, cafes. Interact with people as you usually would. If you have a moment of privacy, in an alley way or elevator, you can open your coat and admire yourSelf. Only you know the secret of your nakedness. Only you know how cute you feel right now. After a while, go home. Take the coat off, slowly, in front of the mirror. See how beautiful you are. Masturbate gloriously. 

 

And as always, blessings on you, gentle reader.