Meeting a kawaii dominatrix in her ‘perverted playground’

Kawaii is Japanese for ‘ultra-cute’ – synonymous with the Lolita culture and the OTT girly-girl image popularized in 90s Japan. London-based Pro-Domme Princess Almighty takes that idea and, in her own words, ‘fucks with it.’ Pitched as the ‘super kawaii dominatrix’ she’s a regular on the London, Berlin and Amsterdam BDSM scenes and a fetish model for Kink Canary, Catronia Stewart Latex and The English Mansion. Most recently she appeared on Channel 4’s web series The Bizarre Fetish Handbook to speak about medical play.

I meet Princess Almighty in her ‘perverted playground,’ a rented room that moonlights as a church to Hello Kitty. The famous fictional bobtail cat is everywhere, in every shape and form; stuffed toys, posters, ‘decora’, there’s even a huge ‘HK’ mask Almighty threatens to wear while she jumps up and down on my back.

It’s not all pink and cuddly though: medical leg braces dangle from the back of the door (Almighty’s own personal fetish) and biographies of serial killers and the works of JG Ballard, HP Lovecraft and sexploitation filmmaker Russ Meyer jut out from well-stocked bookshelves.

Hi Princess Almighty. How did you get into kawaii culture?

Princess Almighty: Growing up I was a bit of a tomboy. I wasn’t really a typical girl. I wasn’t into clothes or make-up. I was into dinosaurs. Then, when I was 11, I went to a car boot sale with my Mum and Dad and I bought my first Hello Kitty. That started me off. I grew up in a small village, this little rocker with a spiked collar and pink hair, and one day I was in the Leicester and then I saw these two Japanese kids – I was about 14 at the time – and I just remember looking at their fashion. It was so outrageous, I became obsessed with it.

After that I found Harajuku culture and a magazine called Fruits, which I would spend ages poring over, deconstructing outfits. My Grandma was a seamstress so I bought a sewing machine, learned to cut patterns and started to make my own Lolita clothes. I still do now. I can’t afford the labels. An Angel Pretty dress will set you back £400.

So how did you go from the teenage girl that liked Harajuku fashion to becoming the ‘super kawaii’ dominatrix you are today?

Princess Almighty: Well, I was still a tomboy and I didn’t take any shit so although I looked cute, if someone pushed in front of me in a queue I’d be like, “I will fucking spit on you.” Then a series of bad boyfriends and bad break ups. I was working on chat lines and it was really empowering to tell a guy he was dick-sack. It was like a therapy session for me.

I went off and did real life jobs for a bit and then in one month I split with my partner, lost my house and my job. I was already in the fetish scene and I was like, ‘Right, fuck all of this, you’re all dead.’ And that’s when Princess Almighty really took off and I became a Pro-Domme.

When I first saw you on Twitter I thought you’d chosen kawaii because it was so niche but now it seems like it’s your sexual identity and you’ve just turned into a profession.

Princess Almighty: Yes. Exactly. I always had it in me. I was always doing it–and if someone is going to pay me to do something I was going to do any way, why would I say no? When I started doing webcam domming a decade a go I was young and naive and I thought you had to dress in black and had to be a certain way. So I did it and I found myself feeling very fake, very meh. So when I came back to it years later I thought, ‘Fuck it.’ I had to be true to myself and there was actually a gap in the market that hadn’t been fulfilled. I went with it and people really starting picking up on it.

“There are guys that want me to pretend to catch them wanking and then make them wank in front of me as I say stuff like, “Look how disgusting you are, I’m going to tell my mum and dad about you unless you do my homework for me’” – Princess Almighty

Why do you think people like it? Does the irony of turning something cute and small into something dominant appeal to a lot of people?

Princess Almighty: Yeah. I think so. It can be very niche though. But I then again I don’t care. I’m hoping I can open it up. Kink is not so cardboard cut out. I love juxtaposition. I love the extremities of that. And there are a lot of guys out there that love to be beaten up by a schoolgirl.

Beaten up?

Princess Almighty: Kicked in the shins, fingers put in their ears, wedgies. I get a lot of guys asking me to flush their head down the toilet. There are guys that want me to pretend to catch them wanking and then make them wank in front of me as I say stuff like, “Look how disgusting you are, I’m going to tell my mum and dad about you unless you do my homework for me.” A lot of guys want me to take their lunch money and give them a dead leg.

I was going to ask that, but clearly there’s a lot of age play with your clients.

Princess Almighty: There is. Obviously when I cam on AdultWork.com I’m not going to get kicked off so everything is age of consent which is in the UK is 16 so I always play a 16-year-old. But I do get guys that want to be spat on by a ten or eleven-year-old girl. For me, it’s funny. I go home and tell my Mum and Dad about it. But, yeah, there is a very strong element of age play. I had one guy who said he was a P.E teacher and he wanted me to pretend to be one of his 8-year-old students. I terminated that call.

I noticed in one of your pictures on your Whiplr profile that you’re wearing a large black strap on, which to me subverts the (perceived) masculine power of the BBC (Big Black Cock). Is that something that kawaii really allows you to do – to take gender stereotypes and distort them?

Princess Almighty: For me a strap on is a power thing. I’m quite filthy, very crude and I love wearing a strap on. The bigger the better. I love having a penis. It fucks with your idea of cuteness, of masculinity; it’s breaking apart every barrier. Here’s someone dressed as a little girl with a massive cock and it breaks down people’s perception of norms.

When you actually look at where it the whole Lolita thing comes from, it’s not sexual. It’s about innocence and purity and I love fucking that up. In the Japanese fetish scene, a lot of the girls wear standard black latex. There’s a lot more fin dom [financial domination] than fem dom and there’s more of a gothic and punk element to the costumes. They have Lolita forced in their lives every day, it’s everywhere so it’s very common. For us, it’s something unusual that you don’t see outside of conventions. It would be like us going to a fetish club in an Ann Summer’s outfit, something really cheesy like ‘Sexy Cop.’

And we’ve taken that idea and sexualized it?

Princess Almighty: We definitely have. When I was in the Hello Kitty theme park in Tokyo earlier this year there were hundreds of girls dressed as I dress but then they do actually live at home with their mum and dad and they probably haven’t had a boyfriend. It’s so different. They take Lolita fashion very seriously; it’s like their Armani. It’s not there to be dragged around a club floor.

But it’s more than just fashion for you, right?

Princess Almighty: Yeah. The Princess Almighty kawaii is like a ramped up version of myself that gives me amazing peace. I put on the wig and I fall into character. The real world fades into the background. It’s a bit like Steve Coogan and Alan Partridge. I even quote him during sessions. I’ll have jacket potatoes in someone’s bum and all I can think is, ‘Lynn, these are sex people. But dominatrixing isn’t always about spanking someone or fucking them in the ass with a strap on, there is a lot of sitting, listening, talking to people about their lives and their problems. And I guess the kawaii image can help with that too.

Because the little girl image can be disarming?

Princess Almighty: Yeah.

Do people on the BDSM scene ever mistake you for a sub then?

Princess Almighty: It’s one of the things I really get off on. When I’m out at a club and someone sees the Hello Kitty schoolgirl and they try to chat me up thinking I’m a little sub and then I’ll have this guy’s head on the floor, with my foot on him and I’ll spit in his mouth and tell him to go get me a fucking drink. It’s that look in their eyes when they click, that’s what I really get off on personally.

The mundanity of life bores me so I’m always trying to make things more exciting. For me it’s fucking with perception. It’s the same with fashion, I like to surprise people, going into the market and finding different tabletop material, differing vinyl to use, I don’t like looking the same as any one else. Going from A to B to C is boring. I want to go from A to Z to D. I love screwing with people’s heads.