Anastasiia Fedorova – Second Skin6 Images
For writer and curator Anastasiia Fedorova, the sweat-soaked world of kink and fetish is a romantic one. Her debut book, Second Skin, with its peach-and-leather accented cover, looks titillating and inviting, a promise to excite the reader in more ways than one. But those willing to pick it up and read it on TfL will discover a tender, romantic paean to a subculture that has radically elevated the life of its author. The term ‘love letter’ is overused, but it’s absolutely true here.
Fedorova is a candid, meticulous tour guide through a variety of kinks and fetishes, making pit stops at communities that get their kicks from – deep breath – leather, latex, feet, medical gloves, cars, pup play, dominatrixes and gimps. She lays bare her personal experiences in the worlds of kink and fetish and the discoveries she’s made. Second Skin is not about groundless provocation or simple rubbernecking; it’s about popping the hood and revealing the relationships and care that make up these communities. It’s a difficult needle to thread and far from the easiest sell in the world but Fedorova makes it look effortless, crafting a memoir-cum-cultural history that feels bracingly intimate.
Speaking a few weeks before Granta publishes Second Skin, Fedorova is looking forward to the book making its way into the latex-gloved hands of the people it’s about. “There’s lots of interviews in the book, which connected me to the community, but writing is such a solitary process, it was quite lonely,” she says over Zoom. “It’s a paradox because the topic is all about human connection and doing things together.”
Below, Fedorova discussed the process of writing Second Skin, what happens when kink and fetish enter the mainstream, and her transition into writing fiction.
You’ve spent a few years immersed in this world while writing Second Skin – can you tell me what that experience has been like?
Anastasiia Fedorova: I think the experience of writing something long-form is quite transformative for any writer. Because it’s my first book, I did have the feeling that it literally remade my body in some way. I’m interested in writing about embodied experiences, so one of the things I tried with this book was to step away from the visual stereotypes that are usually written about kink and fetish, and instead tune into my experiences and write from within myself. I wanted to think less about how things look and more about how they feel.
I spent a long time trying to put things to paper that are ultimately really difficult to describe. Any sexual experience resists language naturally. Writing the book made me think about the power of words and texts, and where they fall short and words are not enough. It was an interesting combination when I was doing a lot of archival research and going to libraries.
You touch on the process of writing and researching the book in the final chapter: “Brought up among friends who share a similar sexual culture, [experiences in kink and fetish] seem completely mundane, tame even, but when I am asked about my book at work, they become strange, fringe, shocking again.” It’s a strange position to exist in, to write about something that’s so personal and real to you but illicit to others – how did you navigate it?
Anastasiia Fedorova: I think it’s an interesting paradox. When you have a community, there are people inside and out of that. I feel like as our society and how we talk about things become more and more militantly conservative – like with gender and sexuality – a lot of people in the queer community have this experience of having to exist in two worlds at the same time. Sexuality is interesting because there’s that tension between being sincere and authentic and also oversharing – you worry, ‘do people need to know this about me?’ But also, if [kink and fetish] are the most authentic and joyful part of themselves and the source of so many meaningful experiences that shape them, then being rejected for that hurts a lot.
It was important for me to write a book which shows that these topics don’t always have to be hidden in their own little box, separate from other parts of our lives. Because it’s so interconnected with consumer culture and pop culture, and there are cultural contributions from the leather community and the sex worker community, for example, that trickle down and become part of mainstream culture and become celebrated as part of the mainstream aesthetic. I wanted to connect this to the inner truth and emotional truth of [kink and fetish], and include voices of people who are in the community. I’m really interested to see how this book is received by people from these communities and also the people who have a faint curiosity in it.
One of the big examples of kink and fetish overlapping with mainstream culture is in fashion and your background as a writer is partly in fashion. Do you see it as a safe and acceptable way for people to appreciate fetish?
Anastasiia Fedorova: The mainstreaming of an aesthetic is a complicated question. Ultimately, I think it’s a good thing if it ‘normalises’ and removes some of the stigma. The only problem I have is that a lot of fetish and kink brands, which are normally small businesses that are for the community and understand why these things are made, do it better than most of the fashion brands that come in and borrow the aesthetic but not the knowledge. Some brands pay specialised designers to work for them, which is a great way to do it because you get to uplift the craftsmanship that already exists.
I feel like it’s a double-edged sword with any subculture – part of it almost has to stay underground and out of the mainstream to retain authenticity. What happens when a subculture gets too mainstream?
Anastasiia Fedorova: I have a feeling that some parts of kink and fetish will ultimately not be for everyone because they are niche preferences and interests that are uncommodifiable. I haven’t written about everything in the book; I’ve picked things that are more visible and relatively palatable. There are kinks and fetishes that are still very taboo that aren’t in the mainstream, though we can see things like watersports becoming a meme recently; I feel like people talk about piss on TikTok much more than they used to.
But in these communities, there is a culture of mutual care because it’s the space where they belong. As fetish and kink become more mainstream, it’s important to be aware of that and how there’s still so much institutional stigma and oppression against these people. We have to be aware that these are communities that have always been made up of these people and this is where they’re welcome. We need to make sure this doesn’t change and that we don’t just take the most palatable parts and forget about the rest, which is what often happens when something becomes mainstream.
Did you ever have a desire to explore fetish subcultures that aren’t, as you say, visible and palatable?
Anastasiia Fedorova: I have a desire to write about them but that would be a different kind of project, probably a smaller, more personal book. I’m not interested in these things for the shock value, because everyone’s idea of acceptable and unacceptable is different. I was more interested in how fetish and kink are already integrated into culture, and to cause people to question what and how they fetishise, even if they’re not in the community – be it their car, a particular brand, or a person. I was seeking to connect with people and introduce them to something rather than get really deep into more complex [kinks and fetishes]. I definitely have an interest in darker things but maybe I’ll save them for fiction.
Is writing fiction next for you?
Anastasiia Fedorova: I’m working on a fiction book, which is quite different. It deals with sexuality in a contemporary, futuristic capitalist landscape. It stays true to the idea of embodied experience and writing about that, and how we engage with sex in a world that is very sanitised. Like, how in London there’s now a Pret on every corner and the world feels increasingly impersonal and sterile. What happens to our bodies then?
Second Skin: Inside the Worlds of Fetish, Kink and Deviant Desire is out now.
