I remember as it was yesterday, this scene from the movie “Freaky Friday”, that’s where it all began I didn’t know why, but there was something exciting about it, something that aroused feelings in me, feelings which most people would consider out of context: sexual feelings.
Although there was nothing slightly remotely sexual – in the traditional sense and way – about such scenes… I was so fucking horny!
The idea of a mother and her daughter being forced to act as each other, and to wear the clothes of each other, without anyone having the slightest suspicion. It was exciting. The idea of you being forced to be, to become, what you are not.
To be someone completely different. That’s when it started for me… that’s when I discovered the “body swap fetish”. And my life changed from that moment on.
I’ve never had a normal/vanilla sexuality, the things that my friends got excited by, the VHS “Emmanuelle” porn movies that the 90’s kids watched hidden, they never excited me. I began to look for all the existing films of body swap, from the most common and well-known Hollywood movies, to obscure Polish films from the early 2000’s that did not even had subtitles. Japanese Animes, British series, Russian, German, Australian and Spanish movies, etc, etc…
Searching from the movies that portrayed this idea, such as “Turnabout” from 1940, to the earliest written stories that addressed the theme, such as “An Exchange of Souls”, written by Barry Pain in 1911, a story in which a scientist ends up being trapped in the body of his fiancée. It was a journey.
Then I started to read many, many, many stories written by fans of such theme. It was here that I discovered sites like Fictionmania, a place where people publish erotic fiction exploring gender issues and transformation – which includes body swap stories, among others – I also found sites like Metamorphose, a forum in which people with this interest talk and exchange ideas, and I even discovered obscure Chinese sites on the subject.
The theme is also widely explored in Japanese porn movies, known as JAVs – but they are porn and often times generally have a shallow exploration of it, portraying it as just… sex between people who swapped bodies. Not focusing on deeper aspects of the idea of the body swap in itself, such as gender and identity, completely the opposite of what happens in films like “Prelude to a Kiss”.
The “body swap fetish” is one of the fetishes that make up a fetish category called “Transformation Fetish”. That includes people being turned into animals, animals being turned into people, men being turned into women, as in the movie “Sam”.
People being possessed, people being hypnotized or brainwashed to act in a certain way, people being age regressed, among other types of transformation, as in the 2017 French film “If I Were a Boy” and in the 80’s movie, “Willy/Milly”, both works in which the female protagonist, by magic, ends up gaining a penis.
Stories in which the reality is altered and now men have female gender roles and vice-versa, and nobody realizes that. Or in which the protagonist is transformed into a little girl and now has to go to child beauty pageants. There are many possible variants here, but the idea is basically that. You got the point.
It’s a fetish that, in general, it only happens in the imagination world, since you would need something like virtual immersive reality to make such fantasies come to life… and would need to have some crazy technology that allows you to hypnotize people.
As I see it, there are two main reasons why this fetish arouses so much fascination in so many, especially in the stories depicting a man and a woman switching their bodies (known as M2T – Male to Female), as well as a woman switching bodies with another woman (known as FTF – Female to Female).
1) Humiliation
In the West, because the way gender roles work, we as a society, in general, grow accustomed to the idea that it is “humiliating” for a man to show any sign of femininity, however small. It is seen as a reason to be ashamed. For most men, the idea of being forced to suddenly have to wear girl’s clothes, and having to talk like her, to wear a dress, to go to her ballet classes, to wear tights – which is a scene that, in my opinion all the good body swap movies need to have, men in female bodies struggling to put tights – all this would be humiliating.
This all ends up making femininity a kind of “forbidden fruit” for men. What, in my view, is the major reason why fetishes such as transvestic fetishism, forced feminization, “Autogynephilia” (“a fetish which consists in man’s paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman”) and, of course, male-to-female body swaps stories are so popular among men.
That’s the reason for why they exist in the first place, I think. After all, for social reasons, “masculinity” is not considered a forbidden fruit for women, at least not anymore. Women can wear pants or skirts. Men cannot. It is a silent humiliation.
That’s the thing: You are feeling humiliated on the inside by having to dress up as a girl, but nobody knows that, because as far as they know… you are just a girl dressed in girl’s clothes, “completely normal”, which makes the whole thing even more exciting.
In the case of stories involving body swap between women, as in the Disney movie “Wish Upon a Star”, and why they are so popular too, I believe that one reason why this occurs is the fact that there’s a biggest social pressure in women about their appearances. For a man the idea of switching his body with some other man, uglier or fatter, it’s not so humiliating. Because there’s no such pressure to the same level and because men can’t have a look so different.
Hence the reason for why male-to-male stories have less appeal. However, for a woman it is different, the idea of waking up in a body of a fatter or uglier woman, or simply a woman who has no “style” – especially considering how women can vary their appearance and way of dressing, unlike men who are “obliged” to wear suit and tie – can be very humiliating. What ends up making the swap of bodies between women, at least visually, more variable. Thus increasing the chance of you “being forced to be someone totally different”.
2) Authority/Submission
In addition to the idea of speaking in body swap in a context of “switching gender” there are also stories of children switching bodies with adults (usually their parents), as in films such as “Lyubov 2 Morkov” and “Vice-Versa”.
The reason some people find this exciting is similar to the previous one; in our society the idea of an adult being “treated as a child” or “acting like a child”, or “liking things that children like” is seen as something “humiliating” (especially for men, which society demands to be powerful and strong).
Children are also “submissive” to the will of their parents. They are forced to go to school, their opinions are disregarded, they are treated condescendingly, their parents choose what they will wear, etc, etc…
What, incidentally, is one of the reasons, in my opinion, that explains why some people who enjoy Ageplay and ABDL also like body swap stories involving adults switching bodies with kids or babies and vice-versa, because the dynamics are the same.
Not to mention stories that include age swap as well as gender swap, as in the Japanese series, “Seven Days of a Daddy and a Daughter” (AKA, “Papa to Musume no Nanokakan”), in which a father switch bodies with his teenage daughter and suddenly finds himself forced to take her place.
He has to go to school in those cute and adorable school uniforms, he has to wear skirts, he cannot drink beer, he has to wear a bra, he has to sleep in his daughter’s room while his daughter is now a strong man who sleep in the same bed as her mother. At least for me, and I’m not saying that this applies to everybody else who is into the body swap and transformation fetishes, this is the basis of the whole thing.
The idea of someone being forced to be what they are not and the idea of this being humiliating for them in some way. That’s the way I see.
Estranhosidade 