Fetish guide: Latex Fetish, Balloon Fetish

Balloon Fetish

Balloons aren’t exactly the type of thing most of us would expect to be a fetish.

Yet balloons have a tremendous following among the thousands of people who call themselves looners.

Balloons are a subset of the latex fetish, although most latex types don’t know about balloons and most balloon types don’t realize they’re part of this better-known group.

Latex has all of the elements required for a “classic” fetish: it’s “touchy-feely” in that it feels like human skin; and it’s “smelly” – the unique odour of a balloon, in fact, is one of the most powerful turn-ons for looners.

What balloons have, that plain old latex does not, is the narrative of growth, expansion, tension, pressure and explosion — perfect dramatic symbols for sexual arousal and release. The balloon itself is a perfectly opaque metaphor, flexible enough to suggest breast, cock, body, face without ever limiting itself to one single interpretation. It’s this flexibility and capacity to expand to contain many meanings that makes the balloon such a good fetish object.

For many looners, the primary jolt of sexual arousal comes from the fear/ anticipation / shock of a balloon popping. Looners divide themselves up into occasionally contentious camps around the issue of “to pop or not to pop.” Non-poppers sometimes say that they “just want to give the balloon a chance” whereas for poppers, if the balloon doesn’t pop, neither do they. In quite a few cases, balloon popping is imagined within the context of a dominance and submission scenario — the looner might imagine him- or herself tied down and subjected to popping by a powerful, fearless partner. Some looners report having a childhood phobia of loud noises which developed in the case of balloon into an erotic fascination.

Object Transformation

In a sense, most erotic fantasies have to do with transforming someone or something into an object of our desire. Pinup girls and pinup boys function best when they serve as perfectly blank screens on which we can project our own desires and sexual narratives. It’s not about who they really are inside so much as what they can be for us, what role they can fill in our personal drama.

In the fetish world, this focus on objects becomes quite literal. Balloons, shoes, dolls, and stuffed animals can take the place of lovers. They mutely fill their role as personalized props we mould and manipulate in our private erotic theatre. Unlike real people, they don’t talk back, don’t make demands, don’t require high salaries, and don’t have desires and needs that might interfere with our own.

Yet for many people, the ultimate fantasy is to be transformed into a literal sex object. While some robot fans imagine possessing a servile sex-toy, most derive pleasure from becoming one themselves. They enjoy being the object of attention, ceding their will over to their partners who can manipulate and control them at a whim. Being an object frees them from responsibility, from the structures of acceptable human behavior, and allows them to experience their bodies more fully without the interference of the mind.

Robot Fetish

Upon first hearing about the robot fetish, you might assume that this is about sex with mannequins or Real Dolls. For most robot and doll fans, however, it’s all about transforming oneself or one’s lover into a mechanized erotic automaton. They use costumes — preferably silver lycra spandex — as well as monotone voices and jerky motions to playact as literal sex objects. The idea that a person might be forced to perform as a robot and obey its master’s orders is perhaps the most exciting of all.

Robot Fetish is basically Dominance & Submission role-play in a sci-fi guise.