International Ms. Leather: A Title Contest Built on Leadership

International Ms. Leather, usually shortened to IMsL, is the annual gathering and title contest of the leather subculture. It began centered on women and later opened to all genders. Local Ms. Leather events were already running in San Francisco in 1981. The first formal International Ms. Leather convention was in 1987, and the first titleholder was Judy Tallwing McCarthey. Since 1999 the same weekend has also crowned International Ms. Bootblack, IMsBB. For leather and kink communities this is not a beauty pageant with a leather jacket on it. It is a pipeline for people who can represent the title under pressure: speak, organize, and teach what the scene knows. Those skills come out of the bar and club years, and the wider BDSM and leather world still uses them.

Awards, the move to San Jose, and the archive

The awards are part of the record. In 1988 IMsL won Large Club of the Year at the Pantheon of Leather Awards. In 2009 the Leather Archives & Museum gave it the Chuck Renslow President’s Award. Pantheon also named it Large Event of the Year in 2009, 2013, and 2017. In 2018 the International Ms. Leather Bootblack program received that same large-event award. The contest grew from a San Francisco gathering into a fixed date on the international leather calendar. In 2014 it left SOMA in San Francisco for San Jose. The Leather Archives & Museum holds a large store of photos, video, and oral histories of IMsL and of International Mr. Leather. That material went into Christina Court’s 2015 documentary High Shine: 15 Years of International Ms Bootblack. The International Ms Leather (IMsL) Foundation, started that same year, works through education, programming, and money so women have a workable environment in leather and kink spaces. In 2016 Pantheon of Leather Awards named it Nonprofit Organization of the Year.

How the contest scores speech, fantasy, and bootblacking

Community leadership is the spine of the weekend. Contestants have to hit goals and deadlines before they arrive. On site they are scored on costume, speech, a fantasy performance, leather-scene knowledge in a quiz and an interview, and organizing skill. One concrete piece of that last score is getting two other people to set up an auction table for them at the convention. Producers have included Audrey Joseph and Amy Marie Meek, the 1993 International Ms. Leather, later Amy Meek-DeJarlais. Meek received the International Deaf Leather Recognition Award in 2001. Judges have included the writer and leather-community figure Kitty Tsui. Beside the main title, International Ms. Bootblack winners are a separate line of craft and service. Bootblacking is public labor and a community skill, and it is also erotic care. IMsL and IMsBB record how women’s and inclusive leather leadership gets trained: who can run the room, hold a microphone, answer hard questions, and spend a year of representation holding the scene’s ethics. A sash on good-looking gear is not the score.