Woman with objects fetish marries Eiffel Tower
A woman who has a bizarre fetish for inanimate objects has married the Eiffel Tower.
Erika La Tour Eiffel, 37, a former soldier who lives in San Francisco, has been in love with objects before. Her first infatuation was with Lance, a bow that helped her to become a world-class archer, she is fond of the Berlin Wall and she claims to have a physical relationship with a piece of fence she keeps in her bedroom.
But it is the Eiffel Tower she has pledged to love, honour and obey in an intimate ceremony attended by a handful of friends.
She has changed her name legally to reflect the bond.
She revisits the massive structure as part of a documentary on Five on Objectum-Sexual women. There are around 40 people in the world who have declared themselves OS, all of them women and many of them also Asperger's Syndrome sufferers.
The OS term was first coined by Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer, a 54-year-old woman who has been "married" to the Berlin Wall for 29 years.
Before returning to Paris for her first wedding anniversary, Mrs La Tour Eiffel visits the Berlin Wall, where her affection for what many Germans see as a symbol of repression leads to an uncomfortable encounter with a member of the staff at the Checkpoint Charlie museum.
"I just don't understand how some people can bring someone into the world like a child - an object - and then not love them," she said.
She explained that she feels an affinity with the wall: "I am the Berlin Wall. Hate me, try to break me apart, but I will still be here, standing."
She blames her upbringing for her condition. She claims to have been molested by her half-brother and abandoned by her parents to various foster homes.
"If I am the way I am today because of everything that happened to me, then I'm alright with it," she said. "I wouldn't change who I am now."
Jerry Brooker, from New York State, one of the psychotherapists interviewed for the documentary, said that OS women were motivated by a need for control.
"Someone who falls in love with objects can control that relationship on their own terms," he said. "Their objects will not let them down. That is extremely attractive for a person who is otherwise often desperately lonely."
The Woman Who Married the Eiffel Tower is on Five at 10pm on June 4.