Coulrophilia

All the world loves a clown.  That’s the quote, right?  “All the world loves a clown.”  I think it’s actually a lyric from an old Cole Porter song. 

All the world loves a clown.  Hmm.  Well, I love a clown, anyway.  No, that’s not quite right.  I’d like to love a clown?  Oh, I’ve got it.  I’d like to make love to a clown!  That’s the one. 

Let’s talk about coulrophilia. 

Previously On Writer’s Blo(g/ck)…

In my last post, I discussed clowns.  I talked about how I wanted to grow up to be a clown, and why I didn’t.  I talked about a bunch of the clown characters that are parts of my stories (both written and yet-to-be).  And, me being me, I even talked about LEGO MOCs that I’d like to build that are clown-oriented. 

Most of the clownness that I discussed was centered on male clowns.  I didn’t talk much about female clowns.  And while I did inform you that I didn’t have coulrophobia (the fear of clowns), I neglected to mention that I do have coulrophilia.  But then, if I had discussed that in the last post, whatever would I be talking about today? 

Clown Fetishism

Coulrophilia, also known as clown fetish, is usually defined as being attracted to clowns, or becoming sexually aroused by dressing as a clown.  (Dressing in this case including facepaint.)  Some people with coulrophilia also are turned on by interacting with traditional clown props (balloons, cream pies, etc.) and/or acting like a clown.  For some people the alure is being with a person who could be literally anybody behind that makeup.  Coulrophilia has lots of interesting and diverse aspects. 

Me? I’m attracted to women in clown makeup. A clown costume to go with that is nice, but not required.  I don’t think that dressing myself like a clown would do it for me. I know that balloons and cream pies and whatnot are not my thing. I know there are women that make money online (some clowns, other not) by popping balloons with their body weight, or sitting naked on an entire decorated cake.  No thank you. Not for me.  (In fact, with a few very specific exceptions that I won’t be mentioning here, food does not intersect with sex.) 

And as with a lot of these things, coulrophilia sometimes mixes very well with other kinks and fetishes.  You can figure some of those out on your own, I’m sure.  Sometimes, people with a fear kink will have both coulrophobia and coulrophilia.  Becoming aroused by the clowns that they are afraid of.

It's an interesting set of behaviors to think about.  And in case you’re wondering how and/or why I got into it?  Well…

The Concept of a Naked Clown

When I was younger (probably about 7^th or 8^th grade), I had questions.  Specifically, a list of questions.  Some were rhetorical, others were intended as conversation starters, almost all of them were weird to some degree.  They were the kind of questions that a 7^th or 8^th grader would think came about as a result of a session of deep, deep thought. 

That list is long gone, and I remember hardly any of what was on it, but I know that the first one was, “If people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, and he who is without sin should cast the first stone, then what happens if he who is without sin lives in a glass house?”  I thought I was very clever at the time. 

One of those questions was, “What does a naked clown look like?”  That one wasn’t rhetorical.  That was one that I wanted people to answer.  Because I was honestly curious.  What does a naked clown look like? 

Why did I want to know?  Well, it wasn’t a sex thing.  (Not in the beginning, anyway.)  I wanted to know because it was a mystery that seemed like it needed solving. 

The classic outfit for clowns was that baggy one-piece thing that completely covered its wearer from neck to wrist to ankle.  In addition to which they normally wore gloves.  And of course the traditional oversized clown shoes.  This meant that the only part of the clown’s body that was exposed to our eyes was the head. 

Royalty Free Photo from Dreamstime.com    

Really, the only details of a clown's body we were aware of is the hair, the nose, and the colors of the rest of the face.  Everything else? Mystery!

I began trying to figure out what a clown looked like naked using half-assed correlation.  “If this particular aspect has this specific appearance, then that similar aspect might also have that specific appearance.”  By no means Vulcan-quality logic, but still logical enough that it worked for me at the time. 

Now, when I tried picturing this hypothetical nude clown, she was female.  (I was a typical horny American male in his early teens. Even though this thought exercise wasn’t really sexual in nature, I still wasn’t going to be picturing a nude male clown.)  She was also a classic whiteface rather than an auguste or some other variant. 

I started with the hair.  At that time, most of the clowns I’d seen had the whole rainbow colored afro thing going on.  If her hair on her head is a mass of multicolored curls, then it would make sense that the rest of her hair was also multicolored curls.  Her armpit hair, for example, if she chooses not to shave.  But specifically her pubic hair. 

(Now this obviously wasn’t my thought at the time, but looking back at it now it occurs to me that if a clown’s pubic hair did match that of their rainbow wig, it would certainly go a long way in helping to solve comedian Patton Oswalt’s ‘Barn Full of Clown Pubes’ problem.) 

The only clown skin we ever saw was the face. And that was white. So the question was: Underneath the outfit, did the rest of their skin match?  Was a naked clown uniformly white from head to toe? 

If they weren’t fully white, but primarily a more normal skin-tone, then the follow-up question had to be: Was their face the only part that was white, or were there other patches of white across their body? 

My preferred theory was that white was simply their skin color, so they were white all over.  I could picture a clown that was large patches of white (that included the face), but it just didn’t seem esthetically ‘right’ to me. 

Moving back up to the face, specifically the big red smile of a clown’s mouth.  That is one of the major orifices of the body, and is outlined in red.  Are the other major orifices outlined in red as well?  It’s entirely possible that clown anatomy was simply astounding.

Red wasn’t usually the only color to be found on a clown’s face.  The eyes were usually a different color, and there were sometimes other patterns on the face as well.  But where else on a clown’s body did these other colors occur? 

My imaginary investigations into the naked clown body tended to ignore boring parts like arms and legs, and focus instead on the more fun parts, which made me wonder if the breasts were colored and/or patterned.  My brain tended to land on a multicolored series of concentric circles on each breast, like a bullseye.  And at the center of that bullseye?  Well the existence of the red rubber clown nose had me speculating about a red rubber clown nipple. 

Turn her around so that she’s facing away from you, and what else do you see of this naked clown?  I’ll tell you what I see.  I see more colorful patterns, this time decorating her butt cheeks. 

The one other discovery/decision made about the naked clown is that despite what the shoe would have you believe, the foot is normal.  Bright colorful toenails, to be sure.  But not a long distorted foot by any means.  The thought that clowns would actually have feet that would conform to the inside of a clown shoe… creeps me out a little.  Okay, more than just a little.  Especially on a female clown.  It’s just wrong.  So it’s a line that I’ve drawn in the sand there.  No weird feet. 

This is the point at which I really wish that I had an art budget for the blog.  Because in the years that followed these mental explorations, I have seen naked clowns.  Not one of them looked like what I pictured in the description above.  So what I’d really like to include here is a full color illustration of my version of the naked clown by some talented artist.  Possibly Clau, possibly someone new.  But… no money, no art. 

Rubber Chicken or Painted Egg?

All those thoughts that I had describing the naked clown weren’t just a simple afternoon’s worth of musings.  No, the problem of the naked clown was something that had me pondering for months. 

By the end of that time period, I found myself paying more attention on the rare times that I actually saw a female clown (the proper name for which, I discovered, was actually clownette).  These clownette sightings were rare, as you couldn’t just go to Pinterest and search for ‘clownette’…there was no such thing as internet yet. 

But eventually I began to realize that I was actually kind of attracted to clownettes.  And before long, that led me to another question that I could endlessly ponder in my spare time. 

Was I attracted to clownettes because I had spent so much time trying to visualize them naked?  Or did I spend so much time trying to visualize a naked clownette because I was (subconsciously at that point) attracted to them? 

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Or, given that this is clown culture we’re in right now, which came first, the rubber chicken or the egg-with-clown-face-painted-on-it? 

To this day, I don’t have an answer to that question. 

Why This One, But Not That One?

I mentioned my newly realized desire for the female clown to a couple of close friends.  Their reactions were remarkably similar.  After first confirming that I wasn’t simply joking, they then informed me that having a thing for clowns was incredibly weird.  And they would now have to take a little time to reassess their understanding of my weirdness level. 

Okay. Fair enough.  I realized that I was going to need to have an argument in favor of the clownette as an object of desire. 

My initial argument began with the pale people.  Women with near-white skin (and I’m talking about the actual color white, not the typical Caucasian skin tone) are generally considered more appealing among the Caucasians than those with darker skin.  Those women who are described as having alabaster skin, or skin like porcelain. 

The skilled application of makeup is typically considered to accentuate a woman’s natural beauty.  And what is makeup at its most basic?  Color.  So if you take the pale skinned woman and add touches of color here and there, what is the difference – visually – between her and a clownette? 

Nobody was convinced by that. 

That’s when I hit on the idea of comparing clownettes to geisha.  Nobody I conversed with had to be steered very hard to admit that the geisha were sexy.  I would then point out the fact that they were almost universally sexy to the entire Japanese culture.  (Yeah, ‘attractive’ would probably have been more accurate, but I was trying to make a point here.) 

Then I’d break down the basic visual aspects of the geisha.  Traditional form of costume with a certain look.  Traditional hairstyle with a certain look.  White face with a few color features. 

And after that, I pointed out that I had also just described a clownette.  Traditional form of costume with a certain look.  Traditional hairstyle with a certain look.  White face with a few color features. 

Then I’d ask the question:  Why is the geisha considered sexy, but the clownette not? 

While this argument wouldn’t completely convince many people, it almost always made them admit that I did indeed have a point. 

Why is the geisha considered sexy and the clownette not?

Lack of Material

Right now, here in 2022, is not a bad time to be into clownettes.  In fact, the past five, maybe even ten years have been all right as far as the average person’s ability to find images of clownified women online. 

Prior to that, however… prior to that there was almost nothing. 

Back in the mid-to-late 90s when I first started using the internet, I hadn’t been looking for full-fledged porn or anything (not that I would have turned it down if I had found it), but even images of fully dressed or just the faces of clownettes were nowhere to be found. 

I was beginning to feel like this interest of mine was something that I would never be able to fully explore.

Sexy Juggalette

I’ve got friends who will periodically tell me that I need to start listening to Insane Clown Posse (ICP).  I’ve heard some of their songs (usually played for me by those aforementioned friends) and while I didn’t find anything to dislike about it, it also didn’t grab ahold of me in such a way that would make me seek out their music out on my own. 

The die-hard fans of ICP – the male Juggalos but especially the female Juggalettes – are of far more interest to me.  There are a number of ways that the Juggalo family acknowledges their ICP fandom, but the one most pertinent to this post is the face paint. 

The first time I ever saw a picture of a Juggalette her face looked like that of a monochrome clownette.  White face paint upon which was overlaid black makeup in familiar patterns around the eyes, around the mouth, and on the nose. 

You couldn’t exactly place the Juggalettes in the same category as Clownettes… but in my head there really wasn’t another place to put them.  (Yes, I realize that Juggalos and Juggalettes are a category unto themselves.  But I didn’t realize the extent to which they were ‘their own thing’ when I saw my first Juggalette.) 

Technicolorheroinn’s social media links can be found at https://linktr.ee/wasthatqueeblo

The Juggalette face paint hit most of the same targets in my brain that Clownette face paint did.  So I started paying attention to Juggalettes whenever they were within my field of vision. 

More recently, I’ve seen Juggalettes that went beyond the black and white color scheme for their face paint.  So much so that it’s sometimes hard to tell at a glance who is a Juggalette and who is a Clownette.  I find members of both groups fun to look at, so really, what do I care? 

Clown Porn

In 2005, the adult film industry released a film titled Clown Porn.  My discovery of this filled me with hope.  But then I saw it.  The majority of it was male clowns interacting with non-clown females, which was the opposite of what I was looking for. 

There was one scene with two clownettes and a non-clown guy, but it also wasn’t what I was looking for.  The clown makeup looked sloppily applied, and the wigs didn’t fully cover the actress’ hair, which was incredibly distracting. 

The release of Clown Porn apparently opened the door for other male clown on non-clown female efforts.  But that wasn’t of any use to me. 

The Clown Girl Boom

In the past five years, however, there has been a large upswing in the availability of clownette imagery.  Both chaste and erotic in intent, and both SFW and NSFW in execution. 

It’s 2022 now, so five years ago would have been 2017.  What happened to change the game in 2017?  For the increase in clownettes, I’m not entirely certain.  But for coulrophilia as a whole, there was one very important event, and that was Bill Skarsgard starring as Pennywise the Clown in the theatrical version of Stephen King’s It. 

Women went crazy for this.  You could see them posting online (sometimes in great detail) about how they wanted to have sex with Pennywise.  Not the actor Bill Skarsgard.  But the character Pennywise. 

That’s when I started seeing more women in clown makeup on the internet. Women specifically in Pennywise-style clown makeup.  But before long – whether due to the Pennywise-fandom or not, I can’t say – I started seeing more and more non-Pennywise based clownettes appearing online.  Only they didn’t call themselves clownettes.  No, these were clown girls. 

Miss Quin actually predates the current clown girl boom, and I consider her to be something of a pioneer in her field, giving us sexy clown content years earlier. 

She can be found on Instagram as Thatmissquin

So just where are these clown girls?  Nearly everywhere.  Instagram.  Facebook.  Twitter.  Reddit.  Pinterest.  Just all over the place.  Some of them have Patreons.  Many of them have OnlyFans pages. 

Not all of them are professional or even full time.  In fact, Kinspace apparently just did the clown thing one time.  (I’m told this is the only picture that exists from that experience.)  It remains my favorite picture of them, and is in fact the picture I was looking at when I thought to myself, “I should do a post on Coulrophilia”.

They can be found on Reddit as u/kinspace

Then there’s Ms. Size Doesn’t Matter the Clown.  She’s a real estate agent and financial advisor, and stresses that she’s not a professional clown.  Just a SFW clown that has attracted a lot of clown fetishists (and who can blame them?)

She can be found on Instagram as mssizedoesntmattertheclown

This clown is a Twitch streamer and Twitter user, and this picture of them just blew me away when I first saw it. 

They can be found on Twitter as @twitchtheclownn

Creamieclown was actually the first clown girl to grant me permission to use her photo in this blog post, which is something I was initially very worried about. I feared that nobody was going to allow their pictures in my blog.

She can be found on Instagram as creamieclown

Right now there are two photos of Tocophobia in my folder for this post, and as I write this I’m still not sure which one I’m using. Both are completely different looks, and I just can’t decide yet. Anyway, her pinned Tweet on Twitter is requesting a Hooters-style restaurant for clown girls called Honkers. How can you not love that?

She can be found on Twitter as @tocophobia

Scarlett has one of the most mesmerizing smiles that I’ve ever seen. She was also a little difficult to choose a photo for, simply because there were so few that were actually SFW enough to go into my blog.

Her social media info can be found at linktr.ee/Scarlettclown

Ketchup is one of the clown girls that I’ve interacted the most with on Twitter.  I’m not sure exactly where most of these clown girls live, but Ketchup is in Germany.  Wonderful accent. 

Her social media info can be found at beacons.ai/ketchupclown

Hot Moth is the other clown girl that I’ve had little Tweet conversations with.  Actually, I think that she was the first clown girl I started talking with on that platform. Very hot and very cool. All temperature clown girl.

Her social media info can be found at linktr.ee/hotmoth

Okay, that’s it for this post. It’s already over four hours later than I want it to be and I still have to proofread and format this thing.  I’d like to thank everyone who gave me permission to use their photo for this.  I’m very grateful to all of you! 

Next post: Something other than clowns. (I promise.)