What's the deal with the leather?

[tooimpurenangel.livejournal.com]

Can somebody please explain the proliferation of leather pants in the AB books?
Is it supposed to be kinky? It seems to me leather is abundant in the dark urban fantasy books and I'm curious why?
Seems to me liquid latex would be a hell of a lot kinkier and much more practical.
So, when you become a vampire or lycanthrope does some mysterious benefactor set you up with a subscription to the Leather Pants of the Month Club?

Comments

[gwynethfar.livejournal.com]

Leather pants creak when you move. They sound like a chorus of unintentional farts one is trying to hold back.

[tooimpurenangel.livejournal.com]

That's what I always thought!!
It seems about the most unerotic thing ever, but in three of the series I'm reading somebody's rocking the leather.
It seems silly to me.
Well, I should say in The Hollows Rachel explains that she wears them in case she falls, which makes sense.
I don't think anybody in the Anitaverse needs that excuse.
Well, maybe if Anita actually started worki9ng again!

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

You sweat madly and become unbelievably hot, so your skin is all slick and shiny.
I once let a couple of friends fit me in a leather catsuit that one of them got from the sex shop he manages (it was a very small suit and I was the only person petite enough for it to fit). I was in there for half an hour and I started hyperventilating. Getting out of that suit was insane. My husband helped me take a cold shower because I was lightheaded.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

The Benny Hill Show had a memorable skit where Benny, dressed in a leather jumpsuit (and Benny was a rather potato-shaped man, it was not appealing), played a rock star being interviewed while sitting on a leather chair. He moved around the entire time and the whole interview was just a series of fart noises. Good times.

[drho.livejournal.com]

I don't know. As I recall, Anita dresses like she's stuck in the 1980s, so LKH's limited fashion sense isn't surprising.

That's what I was thinking, BUT...

[tooimpurenangel.livejournal.com]

It's in other series, too!

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

Leather is still better than the disturbing itty-bitty Japanese schoolboy shorts that most of Anita's men seem to prefer.

[longtail.livejournal.com]

Honestly, why doesn't she just say "boxers?" Boxers can be ass hugging and sexy. Why would a guy wear jogging shorts to bed or to be comfy?

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

OT, but I <3 your icon so hard. Final Sacrifice (and Harry Potter) FTW!

[batswing.livejournal.com]

Leather's more hard-wearing than latex, but yeah the sweatiness - ick. My leather trousers may be hot as you like but I'm glad to shower after wearing them.

[jeza-red.livejournal.com]

I guess that some ppl thinks that leather pants/other makes you instantly sexy-__- Well, besides my few biker friends I've never seen anyone looking "soooo sexey" in it-_- It fits their style, so yeah, they look good, but nothing panty-melting here.


I would understand lycanthropes wearing leather, because it's made of "natural" stuff, and for them it would seem better than any "not-natural" fabric. I guess they would prefer to wear cotton, silk, leather, linen... but common, transforming while wearing leather, tight-hugging pants? Unless they want their "bits" squeezed to death...XD

[thesaneminority.livejournal.com]

I always figured that, if it was getting close to a full moon, lycanthropes would be wearing incredibly stretchy spandex or lots of Velcro.

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

I'm the same way, about writing stories with people in leather. In my first novel the main bad guy showed up in this red leather outfit, and even when she was scared out of her mind the character he was terrorizing still mentally mocked him, as did a few others when they saw him. Later one of the primary protagonists changes from jeans and a shirt into this synthetic hide that mimics leather but has been engineered for greater durability, mainly for protection but also because it sheds liquids (blood) easily and he intended to do a lot of killing very shortly. Although I didn't tl;dr by mentioning it in the story itself, the hide is designed to slip on much more easily than leather.

...and the other primary protagonist still made fun of him for wearing it.

Leather's just so overdone. What amuses me is that you'll see people in commercials or TV shows in something tight, black, and slick that makes them look sexy, and someone will immediately start going on about leather without even realizing that's actually latex, vinyl, or PVC. Leather's not the only shiny black thing people make clothes out of.

[easol.livejournal.com]

Group efforts... can't help but imagine a sort of reversed version of those corset-string scenes you see in period movies and prints, where the woman hangs onto a bedpost and people yank on her strings.

JC: I AM inhaling, mon ami! And I am holding on tight enough!
Asher: Well, they aren't going on. What are we going to do? Anita expects everything you wear to be transparent or skin-tight. Or both.
JC: Merde, I cannot do this. Whose idea was it to only wear skin-tight leather? If I were not dead, I would stink badly enough to fell a buffalo.
Asher: Well, it's your own fault for portraying leather as being such a sexy kink. I wear jeans and nobody cares!

[this-here-girl.livejournal.com]

I've only heard of one time where a women wear leather pants for a logical reason. The character explained that she wears the pants even when it's hot because the thikness of leather does offer some type of protection if she's thrown across the cement floor or something.

[atypia.livejournal.com]

Was that one of the Kim Harrison books?

[easol.livejournal.com]

Not just pants, but everything -- suits, long coats, hats, shit...

[atypia.livejournal.com]

I know in the Kim Harrison books (I think that's her name) her characters wear leather pants when they're doing something that will likely involve them rolling on the ground or fighting or something. She mentions in the books it's like wearing leathers when riding a motorcycle - stops your legs from being torn up.

In the AB books, it just seems to be fetish wear.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

That is actually true. A lot of my motorcyclist friends wear leathers when they ride.

One guy found a pair of pants that was leather in the front and denim in the back. Then my husband bought a pair. Then when we went to visit my parents, my mother (a former fashion designer) made him pack them away for the visit. They were ugly, ugly pants -- and I bet Anita's men would love them.

[tooimpurenangel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in the Hollows books it's a practical thing that poor Rachel catches hell for. I love those books.

[quill-shadow.livejournal.com]

I am probably wrong, but I seem to recall that way back before she went totally crazy there was something mentioned about clothing that was made from the skins of dead shifters (i.e. leather or fur) being able to shift with the werewolf, -rat, -leopard, -whatever instead of being destroyed so that when they returned to human form, they wouldn't be naked.

Perfectly ready to believe that this was actually from somewhere else, and it doesn't explain why the vampires would wear the stuff at all, but it would make leather pants more practical for werebeasts than you might think.

[thesaneminority.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that's from Werewolf: the Apocalypse.

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

Don't you guys know that leather is Gawth? All vampires and werewolves and necromancers and zombies and everybody that's anybody wear leather. Or latex. And it's got to be black. And far too tight to be functional. It must be part of their magical vampire/were powers, because the rest of us can't even breathe in the stuff. Vampires can make their leather pants poof whenever they're about to get it on. I vaguely remember something about the were/leather thing in some of the previous books, but it's kind of icky and LKH tells us over and over that none of the weres care about being naked anyway.

Most leather is uncomfortable, it makes sounds, and it looks good on about 2% of the population. Everybody else looks like a pile of sausage in a garbage bag. I have some friends who look so hot it hurts in their leather, but they can barely sit down, let alone do all the crap the boys do in AB. One of them wears a thong with his pants because they are *that* tight. It's so obvious that LKH has never actually worn any of the stuff that she puts her characters in. Not that I want her to, but still....The stuff that people wear to ride in isn't as tight and is really necessary. My mom rode and said that she wouldn't have any skin left after her wipe outs if she didn't wear leather. She said it sucked during the summer, but it was worth it. Rachel and Ivy from Kim Harrison's books wear theirs for the same reason. Rachel also gets teased for looking a bit slutty alot, too.

[tooimpurenangel.livejournal.com]

Everybody else looks like a pile of sausage in a garbage bag.
So very true.