A common female masochistic fantasy is submission based on having one's body displayed to others. One of Baumeister's favorite--perhaps apocryphal--stories is that of a woman whose husband threw her a birthday party, inviting lots of people. She was posed nude and spread-eagle on the hors d'oeuvre table. Every party-goer who reached for a cracker or the vegetable dip had to reach across her bare self.
The audience factor, observes Baumeister, drives home the point of the entire enterprise: There's nothing like other people's attention to dramatize the transformation of self. Not only is this form of attention contrary to the standard adult role, but "it crosses some sexual boundary, as in doing something you object to."
Maybe you have masochistic fantasies that contain some new kind of sex act. Or a first homosexual experience. Or something highly degrading. And that is exactly the point -- the shocking degree to which you can, with a little imagination, shed your normal self.
