What we spend on what we wear – part two; Doms, subs and switches

This is the seventh article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. I asked people to say which types of fetish clothing they had spent money on since their interest in BDSM began.

This article looks at what dominants and submissives and switches said about their spending on different types of fetish wear.

What we like to wear

The survey asked people to say which of the  following fetish wear items they had spent money on since their interest in BDSM began:

• Other – 70%
• Shoes and boots – 67%
• Symbols of ownership – 58%
• Corsets – 57%
• Leather – 49%
• Latex/rubber – 32%

It appears that, in most areas bottoms/submissives are more likely to have spent money on fetish clothing than either tops/dominants or switches – but only just: Across all items listed an average of 59% of bottoms/submissives had spent money on something, compared with 58% of tops/dominants (so near it makes no difference). Switches were a lot less likely to have purchased fetish wear of any kind – only 44% had.

As seen in the list above “other” fetish wear is the most likely purchase area reported by all respondents. HoweverTops/dominants were equally likely to have spent money on “symbols of ownership” (72% – just ahead of their likelihood of spending on “other” – 71%). The most likely spending area for switches was “shoes and boots” (55%) and bottoms/submissives were most likely to have invested in “other” – 78%.

Tops and Dominants

Female dominant respondents spent more widely on fetish clothing than did the men who answered the survey. An average of nearly three-quarters of women said they had spent on fetish wear, compared with just over half of men. Women tops/dominants were more likely to have spent on fetish wear than men in every area listed.

Women tops/dominants were more than twice as likely to have spent money on corsets than men and three times as likely to have bought latex/rubber wear.

Symbols of ownership were the most popular area of spending recorded by male tops/dominants (70%), whilst women tops/dominants who responded rated them third, after corsets and shoes & boots.

Switches

As with Tops/dominants, female switch respondents were more likely to have spent money on each area of fetish wear listed. On average 31% of male switches had spent money on fetishwear, compared with 55% of women of the same orientation.

 

The biggest difference was in “corsets” where 48% more women than men had made a buy. 34% more women had also purchased fetish shoes or boots and 27% more had bought latex or rubber wear.

However, only 8% of male switches reported buying rubber, compared to 35% of women – this means female switch respondents are more than f0ur times as likely to have rubber or latex in their wardrobe.

Bottoms/submissives

Bottoms/submissives who responded said they were slightly less likely to have spent on BDSM clothing than Tops/dominants and slightly more likely to have spent than had switches. an average 49% of male bottom/submissive respondents said they had spent on fetish wear since the beginning of their interest in BDSM, compared with 61% of women.

The most likely spending area for bottom/submissive respondents was corsetry (a third of men and three-quarters of women). Women were also much more likely to have spent money on shoes and boots.

Bottoms/submissives are the only BDSM orientation where male respondents were more likely to have purchased some items than women.

Men were slightly more likely than women to say they had bought leather clothing (men – 49%; women – 43%).

But men were much more likely than female respondents to say they had bought rubber or latex items at some point (men – 44%; women – 32%).

Level of spending on fetish clothing items

As with the previous post on spending on clothes (a USA/UK comparison) I tried to calculate an average amount spent on each clothing area by taking the midpoint of each range I’d asked people
to say their total spending on an item fell into (other than the top range “more than £/$10,000”, where I just used £/$10,000) and then dividing the total of reported spending by the number of people who’d said they’d spent money on that type of clothing to give some sort of average spend per person. I didn’t analyse this sample into US/UK respondents, so the figure used bears no relation to spends in either UK pounds or US dollars – all one can say is that it gives a relative measure of the amounts all respondents said they had spent on different types of fetish clothing.

Switches spent less than either tops/dominants or bottoms/submissives in every area except one – rubber/latex and in that area switches spent really big – more than three times as much as they did on the two areas they rate joint second (Leather and Other). For tops/dominants rubber/latex was the clothing type they had spent the second most on (shoes and boots cam first – 9% ahead). Bottoms/submissives spent most on “other”, 4o% more than their second biggest spending area – latex/rubber .

The dataset

Up to 384 people answered this question. The sample breaks down as follows:

People could choose not to answer the questions – so totals don’t always add up.

Other survey articles

• BDSM and Money – first results
• I’d rather have a pizza with my kids in Ibiza – priorities for spending
• BDSM as a spending priority – Female Tops or Dominants rate it as more important
• Tattoos and piercings – who has spent money on them
• What people said their income was
• Fetish clothing – a US/UK spending comparison
• Pro-Dom/mes – what they said about money

The BDSM surveys

• BDSM and Money Survey
• BDSM symbols of ownership survey
• Safewords survey
• BDSM and Education Survey
• Fetish Dressing – from styles and relationships survey
• Multiple Relationships – from styles and relationships survey