43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining and insightful, December 22, 2000
This review is from: I Was A Teenage Dominatrix (Paperback)
I had the pleasure of meeting Shawna Kenney at a publishing convention earlier this year. (I'm also an author.) She is a very bright, engaging woman who has seen some fascinating aspects of both men in particular and of life in general.
Shawna is one of many attractive women who discovered that, if you approach it intelligently, doing various types of what is known by the general term of "sex work" can result in being paid (a lot) better and in being treated considerably better than is true of many mainstream jobs.
She started out working as a private erotic dancer and then switched over to working as a professional dominatrix. After learning her craft and working in two professional domination studios, she established her own independent practice. Her work as a professional dominatrix allowed her to put herself through college and become the first person in her family to graduate. (The discipline she learned from her father, who was in the navy, also helped her.)
She always treated her clients ethically and respected their privacy scrupulously -- including in the writing of this book. She also discovered that men have more varied reasons than the average person might imagine for hiring sex workers. While many had a unique aspect of their sexuality that they want to explore or further experience, particularly as it related to their erotic submissiveness, others merely wanted some female companionship.
The descriptions of these latter encounters were among the most poignant passages in Shawna's book. Her description of the pain and loneliness these men endure is very moving. I don't see how anyone could doubt how sex workers often make a deep and positive contribution to the well-being of their clients after reading these passages.
Shawna also discovered that doing sex work, of any kind, has its emotional stresses, including its taboo aspect. It cost her at least one personal friendship. Other friends of hers wanted to hear all about it.
Shawna's book shows both the professional dominatrix and her clients for the human beings that they are. It also shows how irrationally and inconsistently society treats and values its sex workers.
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32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
She's no ordinary school girl!, August 2, 2000
This review is from: I Was A Teenage Dominatrix (Paperback)
Don't be fooled by the title of this entertaining, offbeat memoir. The author, Shawna Kenney, may, indeed, have been nineteen when she began working as a dominatrix, but she was in her twenties for most of her career in domination. Of course, you can't blame the publishers of this book for choosing the title. After all, "I Was a Twenty-Something Dominatrix" isn't nearly as titillating.
Also, don't be fooled by the jacket-copy on the back of the book. Gushes the enthusiastic marketer: "Kenney transforms herself from young, broke, and miserable in crappy jobs ("The worst thing was my boss who stared at my chest while he yelled at me") to successful and empowered as a self-made professional-dominatrix-slash-college-student." To read this, you'd think Kenney was something of a feminist heroine. In fact, before she took the restaurant job, where she resented the way her lascivious employer ogled her breasts, Kenney was an exotic dancer who regularly disrobed for paying customers to ogle her breasts - among other things. That's hardly the behavior of a feminist in search of empowerment!
One can understand the excesses of a publisher anxious to market a book, but even Kenney herself gets into the spin-doctoring game. She spends an inordinate amount of space at the beginning of the book trying to convince the reader that she's ordinary, "the girl next door." To prove this, she drags us through excruciatingly boring details of her childhood - including what TV programs she watched and what treats she had for dessert. But in her attempts to prove her "normalcy," Kenney only manages to underline why she's so well-equipped for the job of a dom. She begins the book by relating how she nearly drowned at a YMCA pool while teaching herself to swim at the tender age of six. Far from illustrating her "normalcy," the story demonstrates her arrogance, defiance, and recklessness - all good traits for the aspiring dominatrix.
Kenney is at her amusing best when she relates tales of her various submissive clients. Not a life-style dominatrix, Kenney is in the BSDM scene only for the money, but she shows an amazing amount of empathy for her patrons. Contrary to what other reviewers may have found, I found Kenney surprisingly sympathetic with her paying subs, including one heart-broken man devastated by the loss of his wife. Kenney actually turned this man from customer to friend. She is also amazingly understanding with her transvestite clientele, showing considerably more compassion for them than most "good" women do. In some ways, Kenney is too sympathetic to her subs. For example, she cannot bring herself to service one black submissive client because he insists on Kenney, a white woman, hurling racial slurs at him. Kenney is too offended by his request to comply.
Like many "true-life" stories, "I Was a Teenage Dominatrix" fails to build to a convincing or satisfying conclusion or climax. Instead, at about page 110 of this 122-page book, the story begins to fade as Kenney approaches graduation from college. This isn't Kenney's fault. After all, real life rarely hands us the satisfying but inherently artificial structure of a dramatic narrative. Our last picture of Kenney is as an aspiring young writer transplanted to Southern California from D.C., having abandoned her life as a dominatrix - partly because of the competition. (She informs us "doms are a dime a dozen" on the West Coast.) Still, in the back of her closet, Kenney does have "a shiny red patent leather outfit with matching shoes and paddle" - "just in case."
If you're looking for a reflective account one young woman's coming of age, a feministic critique, or insight into the BSDM scene, this book isn't for you. If, however, you want a fun, intriguing account of one struggling student's very unusual way of putting herself through school, you'll really enjoy "I Was a Teenage Dominatrix."
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
College Coed takes up a paddle!!, October 19, 2003
This review is from: I Was A Teenage Dominatrix (Paperback)
Shawna Kenney is no ordinary teenager or coed. She had a goal to get through college her way and the tenacity to do it. As amusing and even shocking as this memoir was at times you always new this was a means to an end, paying for college.
She really just stumbled on to being a dominatrix and just happend to be good at it. Shawna takes you from her childhood poverty and mindset to an adventure on her own and the discovery of her true womanly power, self respect and fearless confidence.
She writes this memoir in a very relaxed personal way. You know what she enjoys and what she does not and never does she hide behind political correctness or self importance. She just tells it like it was the good, bad, ugly, and gross.
She talks about her clients, acts of her job, the scene of professional dominatrix, and the learning lessons she acquired. The book really is a self-discovery and has some real moments of poignancy were she discovers the emotional consequences of her college job. Albeit an unusall memoir it was definitly filled with funny stories and insight. Definitly worth the read.
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