Erika Eiffel ( LaBrie; born 1972), also known as Aya, is an American competitive

archer Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a bow to shoot arrows.Paterson ''Encyclopaedia of Archery'' p. 17 The word comes from the Latin ''arcus'', meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting and combat. In mo ...

and advocate for

object sexuality Object sexuality or objectophilia is a group of paraphilias characterized by sexual or romantic attraction focused on particular inanimate objects. Individuals with this attraction may have strong feelings of love and commitment to certain items ...

. She "married" the

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed "'' ...

in a commitment ceremony in 2007.

Military career

After serving enlisted in the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

, Eiffel entered the

U.S. Air Force Academy The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) is a United States service academy in El Paso County, Colorado, immediately north of Colorado Springs. It educates cadets for service in the officer corps of the United States Air Force and Unit ...

in 1993. In her first year, she was sexually assaulted by another cadet but thwarted the attack with a training sword. She was subsequently dismissed from the Academy with a personality disorder: "I really felt that the only way for me to sleep is if I was holding onto something, like my sword, because that was the one thing that protected me. And it just got worse," she said.

Archery career

Eiffel started

recurve archery In archery, a recurve bow is one of the main Bow shape, shapes a bow (weapon), bow can take, with limbs that curve away from the archer when unstrung. A recurve bow stores more energy and delivers energy more efficiently than the equivalent strai ...

in 1999 in Japan, and started shooting

compound bow In modern archery, a compound bow is a bow that uses a levering system, usually of cables and pulleys, to bend the limbs. In general, compound bows are widely used in target practice and hunting. The pulley/cam system grants the user a mechan ...

a year later. In 2003, she won first place shooting compound bow in both the FITA and Olympic rounds at all three National Cup tournaments: Arizona Cup, Texas Shootout, and Gold Cup. Following her sweep she went on to win gold and break the FITA team record with Team USA at the 42nd World Target Championships in New York City. Eiffel, known as "Aya" in the archery world, has represented the US at the

FITA Fita (Ѳ ѳ; italics: ) is a letter of the Early Cyrillic alphabet. The shape and the name of the letter are derived from the Greek letter theta (Θ θ). In the ISO 9 system, Ѳ is romanized using F grave accent (F̀ f̀). In the C ...

World Field Championships with Olympic recurve and also the FITA Target Championships and FITA World Cup with compound bow. She also competed in the IFAA Indoor Championships, where she won gold in 2007 and set the single-round world record in Mannheim, Germany, in Freestyle Limited Recurve. Eiffel was on the 2004 and 2006 US National Archery Team for compound bow and also the 2009 senior National Team for Olympic recurve.

Eiffel and Objectum Sexuality

Eiffel is founder of OS Internationale, an organization for those who develop significant relationships with inanimate objects. She claims that her object relationship with Lance, her competition bow, helped her to become a world-class archer. She first encountered the Eiffel Tower in 2004, and said that she felt an immediate attraction. She told

ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...

that she and others " ..feel an innate connection to objects. It comes perfectly normal to us to connect on various levels, emotional, spiritual and also physical for some." In April 2009, on the second anniversary of her marriage to the

, she appeared on ''

Good Morning America ''Good Morning America'' (often abbreviated as ''GMA'') is an American morning television program that is broadcast on ABC. It debuted on November 3, 1975, and first expanded to weekends with the debut of a Sunday edition on January 3, 1993. Th ...

'' and explained how her object love empowered her. Her 20 year relationship with the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...

inspired the musical theater production ''Erika's Wall''. In 2011 a Finnish journalist moved to Berlin for a year to write a book about Eiffel's object relationships and everyday life. ''Rautaiset rakastajat – matkani Erika Eiffelin maailmaan'' ("''Iron Lovers - My trip into Erika Eiffel's World''") was published in Finland in October 2012.

References

External links

Objectùm-Sexuality Internationale
the organization which she founded
Ylioppilaslehti
Finnish interview {{DEFAULTSORT:Eiffel, Erika 1972 births United States Air Force airmen Living people American female archers Berlin Wall Eiffel Tower 21st-century American women