Why Do You Keep Competing in Leather Contests?

This isn’t an uncommon question for people to ask me.  Anyone who knows me in the leather community knows that I have competed in a few contests in the past (and won a couple).  Even then, they probably don’t realize how many I have actually been in.

Is there a world record for competing in the most leather contests?  If there is, I’m probably the record holder.  (Paging Dave Rhodes.)  Let me see, I think it’s 16 contests now…

• San Francisco Leatherboy (in 1998, I think)
• Mr. International Rubber 2000 (2nd runner-up, of 7)
• Mr. International Rubber 2001 (2nd runner-up, of 9)
• Seattle Leather Daddy 2002
• Seattle Leather Daddy 2004 (winner)
• American Leatherman 2005 (2nd runner-up, of 7)
• International Mr. Saliva 2006 (winner, of 5)
• Washington State Mr. Leather 2006
• Mr. West Coast Rubber 2007
• Washington State Mr. Leather 2008
• Washington State Mr. Leather 2009
• Mr. OutGames Leather 2009 (1st runner-up, of 5; in Copenhagen!)
• International Mr. Piss 2010
• Mr. Northwest Bear 2011 (runner-up, became Mr. Northwest Cub)
• Northwest LeatherSIR 2012 (winner)
• International LeatherSIR 2012 (coming up)

(You’ll forgive me if the years are off for some of the above.  Between “Just when did I run for that?” and contests run in year X being labelled as year X+1 [when they end], it can be hard to pin down the right number for a given contest.)

Yeah, that’s a lot of contests.  And in a community where few people ever run for a title and those who do and don’t win rarely try again, it’s a huge number of contests.

So why do it, and why do it again?

Each title contest is different, of course.  Some like the Saliva and Piss contests are purely for fun.  Rubber contests are somewhat different from leather contests, and likewise with the bear contests (“cub” doesn’t quite map to “boy”, to start with).  Some contests I’ve entered because I wanted the title.  Some because I wanted the prizes!  Some because I hate contests with only one contestant.  For Northwest LeatherSIR, it was because the outgoing titleholder asked me to run.

So there’s part of it.

But there’s another big piece that a lot of people don’t get (or don’t think about, anyway): beyond becoming a big name leather titleholder, adored by millions (well, dozens?), what else is the competition about?

I’ll give you a hint: I have also competed in country-western line dancing for about 8 years, and country couples for just over a year.  I’ve won a couple competitions there.  But no one in that world asks me “Why do you keep competing?”

Look at any Olympian athlete or beauty queen.  They don’t compete just one time.  They compete at various competitions at various levels.  It’s about honing your skills, learning what works, and about becoming the best you can be.  That doesn’t happen in one shot, it happens over months and years, over multiple contests.

So that’s the real reason I do it: to hone my skills and be the best I can be.

Of course, then the question arises: hone which skills and be the best you can be at what?  This is the core reason that a lot of people don’t understand leather contests.  They don’t see value.  They see people strutting across a stage in fancy or sleazy outfits, giving “speeches” which often don’t say much of anything, and maybe presenting fun (or boring) skits with fake BDSM in them.  Then they think of hot sex dressed in almost nothing, or a pup on a leash, or thrashing someone with a flogger, or the deep connection that happens with a fist embedded in someone’s ass, and they don’t see how the two worlds mesh.

What they miss is the “community”, the public face and shared ritual of leatherfolk.  All the hot sex in the world doesn’t make a community.  A community needs people beyond the one or two you are having sex with.  It needs shared experiences and public faces.  It needs group rituals.  And that, then, is the titleholder and the contest — the most public of faces and the most group of rituals.

The value in competing in multiple contests: honing my “be a public face” skills, being the best “public face” I can be.  That’s ultimately why I do it: because I see the value to the leather community in having quality men (and women) as our public face.