This week, I received a package containing eight Christmas cards, their envelopes and a mini-calendar, all painted by people using their feet and mouths. Attached was a bill for £6.95 and a lingering sense of guilt. I’ve no idea how they got my address. I never asked for cards – or anything else – from anyone. I don’t even like Christmas. It will cost me money to send back the unwanted products. It will cost the foot-and-mouth strangers money if I don’t, and then I’ll feel like a heartless bitch.

I have nothing against nice people. Niceness is a wonderful quality, when genuine. It is, of course, very nice for everyone.

However, what I can’t stand is the chaps who continually whine about not being able to find a Domme, girlfriend or casual blowjob because of their niceness. These aren’t nice guys. They’re NICE GUYS. And they’re everywhere. You’ll have met plenty. You may even be one. You will often see a NICE GUY lurking in the corner of the pub, bitching his way across an internet message board, or crouching in the bushes outside your bedroom window.

“Why do you think you’re unsuccessful with women,” somebody asks, when prompted by his incessant moaning.

The NICE GUY shakes his head, bottom lip stuck out like a wet, pink shelf and says: “I’m too nice.”

He will then, inevitably, go on to lament how every member of the female population has rejected him in favour of someone less devoted. The NICE GUY will snarl to you about an internet Domme who, inexplicably, ignored his emailed pledges of allegiance and heartfelt pleas to live out the rest of his life under her bed, and is therefore an insensitive whore; about some other selfish cow who told him she only wanted to be friends, but wasn’t enough of a friend to answer the text messages he sent her, every hour of every day, about how bored he was at work and how nice it is to have such good friends; about an ungrateful bitch he would bump into every evening on the bus who, when he finally got up the courage to speak to her, rejected his tearful proposal of marriage.

“They only go for bastards,” he sighs. “None of them like NICE GUYS.”

The NICE GUY perceives women as a collective being, not as several billion separate individuals. The NICE GUY believes that this collective being owes him something in return for all his unsolicited attention, then resents her accordingly if she doesn’t give it, dismissing her own choices as misguided or malicious. The NICE GUY is emotionally exhausting. He is the human equivalent of unwanted foot-and-mouth Christmas cards.

Anyway, it is heartening to learn that I’m not the only one who has met demanding, passive-aggressive, self-proclaimed NICE GUYS who aren’t actually very nice at all. The Heartless Bitches International website has compiled a list of articles by contributors, male and female, who have fallen foul of a NICE GUY. As well as this, there are several hundred comments from readers, some which are hilariously angry.

If anyone who sees me on a regular basis wants free Christmas cards from a non-charitable business that deals in emotional blackmail, do let me know. I’ve got loads to spare.

In the past, I’ve rattled on about how fashion and BDSM have a lot in common. Clothes and the way they are marketed tap into our most basic notions of dominance and submission.

A recent study by New Mexico University examined the correlation between facial expression and perceived status, and why models for designer fashion houses are taught not to smile. Science journalist John Tierney set up a picture quiz on The New York Times website. Taking only the faces of models from advertisements, he invited readers to guess whether the smiling or frowning face in each pair represented the most expensive brand. As expected, the majority guessed that the high-end models were the ones who looked thoroughly pissed off, while the others were cheap and cheerful.

Professor Timothy Ketelaar of New Mexico University gave his own explanation for the results: “While we typically think of a smile as displaying our emotional state (happiness), it also appears that smiles convey information about the signaller status. Specifically, lower status individuals appear to smile more than higher status individuals. I suspect that this is due, in part, to the fact that there are several different types of smiles, including a true happiness smile and a true embarrassment smile. The latter smile, the embarrassment display, is often seen as an appeasement display in primates… I believe that the smiling faces of the models for the lower priced brands are simply conveying information regarding the social status of the brand image, rather than attempting to make customers feel better. Sometimes the advertiser must make a trade-off between advertising high status and presenting an emotionally positive image. Thus, the non-smiling faces of the higher status brands are not trying to make the consumer feel bad; they are simply attempting to display the signals that are associated with higher status. We liked Elvis even when he sneered at us from the stage because the contemptuous sneer is typically produced by individuals with higher status. Although we don’t generally like contemptuous individuals, most folks admire higher status individuals and want to be around them. Thus, the irony is that higher status brands are creating a positive image -– high status—by using a negative signal (lack of a smile).”

Dominatrices are not supposed to smile, for this very reason. It’s an unwritten rule. To appear superior to our minions, we must apparently appear to despise whatever it is we are doing, and whoever we are doing it to. It would be difficult to find a photo or video out there in cyberspace where the woman in power doesn’t look utterly miserable…

…Except, unfortunately, my own. I have never mastered the affected scowl. I smile. I laugh. I love what I do. If I give the impression of a crazed Cheshire Cat rather than a lofty depressive, then so be it. It’s not something I can control. I can’t live up to the stereotype. I’m a smiling sadist.

Anyway, to explore exactly why I fail at dominant facial expressions, click here for the article and quiz at the New York Times’ TierneyLab.

The veil is controversial, of course. In July, I wrote a blog post about the tensions in France over its recent burqa ban, and of Belphegor, the mysterious anti-hero of literature, film and television whose impenetrable disguise allowed her to stalk the corridors of the Louvre at night and evade capture by the authorities.

Paris now has its own 21st Century Belphagor. Princess Hijab is the anonymous graffiti artist who has painted veils onto fashion posters around the Paris Metro.

“The veil has many hidden meanings,” she tells Angelique Chrisafis in today’s Guardian. “It can be as profane as it is sacred, consumerist and sanctimonious. From Arabic Gothicism to the condition of man. The interpretations are numerous and of course it carries great symbolism on race, sexuality and real and imagined geography.”

Click here to see some of Princess Hijab’s work and click here for the interview.