Wetlook

"Wetlook" describes the appearance of fabric which is shiny and thus appears to be wet. It may also describe the act of getting wet while wearing clothes, and enjoyment of doing so or of watching others do so,[1] as a form of sexual excitement.

A pool party

As sexual stimuli

Alex Comfort suggested that wetlook clothing functions as a kind of superskin, enhancing the visual and tactile qualities of shininess and tightness.[2] He offered the 1970s-style advice that if your lover “likes you to look like a cross between a snake and a seal, wear what he gives you.[3]

For Desmond Morris, water on the skin is seen as mimicking the sweat of sexual arousal.[4]

Fashion and pop

The 1960s success of the Merseybeat saw wetlook pvc coats coming down from Liverpool to enter the London fashion scene.[5] A few decades later, a pop Ladette might feel ambivalent to find herself posing in a pvc catsuit.[6]

Classical prototypes
  • New Kingdom of Egypt poetry has a girl telling her lover: “It is pleasant to go to the pool...That I may let you see my beauty in my tunic of finest royal linen When it is wet”.[7]
  • Foam-born Aphrodite rising from the waves - Aphrodite Anadyomene – initiated a long sequence of similar wetlook images.[8]

See also

References
  1. Börstling, Robert (2000-07-01). "Wetlook paraphilia - aspects of a sexual variation". Humboldt University of Berlin Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology. Retrieved 2008-12-11.
  2. A Comfort, The Joy of Sex (London 1972) p. 21-2
  3. A Comfort, The Joy of Sex (London 1972) p. 23
  4. D Morris, The Naked Ape Trilogy (London 1988) p. p. 377
  5. P Norman, Shout (2011) p. 203
  6. L Wener, Different for Girls (2010) p. 267
  7. Quoted in L Cottrell, Queens of the Pharaohs (London 1966) p. 75
  8. F Guirand ed., New Larouse Encyclopedia of Mythology (London 1068) p. 130

Further reading
  • Alex Comfort and Susan Quilliam (2008). The New Joy of Sex. Mitchell Beazley. ISBN 9781845334291. See the "Clothes" and "Wet look" entries.
  • Media related to Wetlook at Wikimedia Commons


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