But, as perhaps the ultimate outsider subculture, the symbolism inherent to the gimp is always ripe for subversion. Nobody loves the gimp more, though, than red top journalists, whose guttural reactions are projected onto headlines like “ BIZARRE fashion show sees models dressed like BANK ROBBERS with GIMP-LIKE masks ” or “ It’s kinky Kim Kardashian! Reality star SHOCKS in fetish mask with ZIPS ”.
While artists like Catherine Opie and Robert Mapplethorpe went some way to humanise the gimp, its associations with suffering, torture, deprivation, and debasement have proved to have an enduring potency. But even before the word ‘gimp’ was first coined in Pulp Fiction, anonymous sex-slaves were being appropriated on the runways for their shock-image factor, marched out in black leather, buckles, zips, and full-body latex by the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier, Walter Van Beirendonck, Gareth Pugh, and Riccardo Tisci, to name but a few. Body bound and barely breathing, pop culture has long positioned the gimp as the stuff of nightmares, holed up in the attic of some sexually-transgressive serial killer.
