ARIEL ANDERSSEN: book describes her journey from Jehovah’s Witness to famous BDSM model (photo: Drago B)
Ariel Anderssen: Playing to Lose
Review + interview: Faith Roswell
OCTOBER COVER STORY: Legendary British fetish/BDSM model Ariel Anderssen, famed for her work at Restrained Elegance and much more besides, was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness and worked as an actress before discovering that her dark desires had a name – and that name was kink. A chance meeting with a BDSM photographer led her to embark on a fetish modelling career aged 25, and the rest is history. What’s more, it’s history that can now be found in her newly published memoir Playing To Lose. Faith Roswell reviews the book and poses Five Big Questions to its author. Banner: Ariel by Hywel Phillips, 2016
INTRODUCTION: WHO IS ARIEL ANDERSSEN?
Ariel Anderssen (above, photo: Drago B) is a veteran, multiple-award-winning British BDSM model with a lifetime’s fascination for submission and masochism.
Brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness, Ariel spent her childhood unaware that her favourite games involving punishment, retribution and capture would eventually form the foundations of her sexuality.
Trained in classical ballet as a child, she graduated from London’s Academy of Live and Recorded Arts and was cast in a series of fringe Shakespeare productions in London, followed by several national tours.
Her TV credits from this period included The Real Casanova (Channel 4) and Real Crime – Jeremy Bamber (ITV). She played a leading role in award-winning indie film Kelling Brae, won Best Actress at the Independent Film Awards for her role in
The Dossier, and appeared in numerous music videos and short films.
Visiting an exhibition of BDSM artwork at age 25, she accepted a photo shoot offer from a well-known BDSM photographer, which launched her career as a model.
She became one of the best-known fetish models in the UK, acting in a wide range of BDSM film roles. By 2010 she was one of the world’s most recognised BDSM models, working extensively in Europe and beyond.
Ariel formed a creative partnership with award-winning fetish photographer Hywel Phillips, creating multiple series and feature-length films for Hywel’s online bondage magazine, Restrained Elegance.
Alongside her fetish career, Ariel’s work in the mainstream has included modelling for many British designers, walking at London Fashion Week, appearing in works shown at the National Portrait Gallery, featuring in a campaign for Coco de Mer and posing for various well-known painters.
Today, Ariel focuses on creating BDSM-themed work that shows other people they are not alone. She has a YouTube channel under the name Joceline titled How to be a Really, Really, Really Old Model (subtitled Ariel’s TwilightYears) and posts regularly about her life as a submissive masochist.
PLAYING TO LOSE: BOOK REVIEWED BY FAITH ROSWELL
JOYFUL MANIFESTO, left: Ariel’s memoir Playing to Lose; and right: the book’s reviewer Faith Roswell
Title: PLAYING TO LOSE
Ariel Anderssen
(Pub: Unbound, Aug 24 2023, £14.99 )
ISBN: 9781800182608
The world is full of people with stories to tell, and when it comes to the kink and performance communities, you can find yourself in a room with many of them!
I feel this may be related to the fact that crafting and performing a scene involves keeping your partner and audience fascinated. Therefore it may not be such a surprise that kinky people tend to be adept at telling the most compelling stories.
Playing to Lose is the title of the memoir that marks the literary debut of award-winning British BDSM model Ariel Anderssen — and she has a hell of a story to tell.
Ariel paints a vivid picture immediately, beginning her book with a scene which would not feel out of place in a crime novel. But not all is as it seems: the ‘victim’ soon signals that she is ready to be untied and to have some cake!
Quickly taking us from bondage to a cosy kitchen, Ariel first makes us comfortable before taking us through the world growing up in the very insular community of Jehovah’s Witnesses, banishing many of the tired misconceptions about what some call ‘sexual deviance’.
At times her memories make the reader very, very uncomfortable (but necessarily so), and at other times she shares the joy and enthusiasm she experiences introducing us to a world in which celebrating kink is ‘such, such fun’!
Games of punishment and kidnapping
Growing up within the confines (pun intended) of the Jehovah’s Witness community, with a devoutly religious mother and a nuclear physicist father who was becoming ever more concerned about the teachings in the Kingdom Hall, Ariel was not worried about how she would make a living in the future — because the world was going to end.
With no need to study especially hard or consider future life as an adult, the Jehovah’s Witness children were — when not trying to recruit strangers by knocking on their doors and preaching to them on their own doorsteps — relatively free to play.
And from a very, very young age, the games that Ariel liked best involved punishment and kidnapping. By the time she was 16, Ariel realised that not only was the apocalypse looking increasingly unlikely — so she might grow up after all — but she was a perverted danger to society, and possibly even evil.
The world of kink is often portrayed as dark, seductively dangerous, sombre, and in the case of mainstream media, disturbing. While Ariel’s literary voice reflects her real-life
personality — she is jovial, warm, welcoming and passionate about her kinks in a very joyful way — there are parts of her book that are very disconcerting indeed.
But these are not the kinky bits. The horrors here are not consensual spanking or roleplay, but children growing up believing that they are soon to die — and a woman feeling so alone in her sexual tastes that the possibility of suicide arises.
Ariel grew up completely unaware that there was such a thing as kink, and at one point describes herself as ‘thoroughly predatory’, exploring her interests through writing and acting out scenes alongside unsuspecting fellow theatre students.
Her actions did not come from the desire to deceive anyone for her sexual pleasure — the expression “thoroughly predatory” was used as hyperbole. But there is a point to be made here: the religious teachings that promote abstinence or sexual ignorance do nothing but harm to all.
A joyful manifesto for kinksters
The Ariel I know well is an excitable person and her enthusiasm will feel very familiar to anyone who has discovered a passion and found a kinship among fellow enthusiasts!
The experiences she recounts of travelling to her first photoshoots — discovering new toys to play with and scenarios to explore — will make kinksters smile. But even the more vanilla among us might just be inspired to examine their own interests and hobbies more thoroughly. Playing to Lose is, at its core, about living life to its fullest and having a lot of fun!
The path that led Ariel to her calling as a BDSM model took her through adventures in classical acting and stage combat training; a chance encounter at a kinky exhibition leading to a shoot with a fetish photography legend; an eye-opening lesson learned about rape; watching an intense spanking photoshoot on an overseas trip; discovering her limits and new sensations with a play partner she was convinced didn’t like her; coming out to her family; and falling in love.
Playing to Lose feels like it’s part life story, part catharsis for Ariel and part love letter to love, life and BDSM. This is the story of somebody who has been able to do a lot of introspection and it is absolutely worth reading.
For the kinksters, it is a joyful manifesto, told as if by and to a friend. For the curious, it is an encouragement to live in a way that will fulfil you (and your consenting partners) no matter what the outside world or Kingdom Hall thinks.
For the open-minded vanilla it is an education. For everyone, it will make you think. And all of these are jolly wonderful things. FR
READ MORE – GO TO PAGE 2 OF 2ON PAGE 2: Faith Roswell asks Ariel Anderssen Five Big Questions, PLUS Photo Galleries!
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