Wet T-shirt contest

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A contestant being hosed with water in a wet T-shirt contest at the Nudes-A-Poppin' pageant (2012) Sun Club Wet T-Shirt Contest 2012.jpg
A contestant being hosed with water in a wet T-shirt contest at the Nudes-A-Poppin' pageant (2012)

A wet T-shirt contest is a competition involving exhibitionism, typically featuring young female contestants at a nightclub, bar, or resort. Wet T-shirt contestants generally wear thin white or light-colored T-shirts without bras, bikini tops, or other garments beneath. Water (often ice water) is then sprayed or poured onto the participants' chests, causing their T-shirts to turn translucent and cling to their breasts. The comparatively rarer male equivalent is the wet boxer contest, sometimes held at gay bars. [1] [ full citation needed ] [2] [3]

Contents

Contestants may take turns dancing or posing before the audience, with the outcome decided either by crowd reaction or by judges' vote. In racier contests, participants may tear or crop their T-shirts to expose their midriffs, cleavage, or the undersides of their breasts. Depending on local laws, participants may be allowed to remove their T-shirts or strip completely naked during their performance.

History

Water is poured from a jug over a contestant's breasts at a wet T-shirt event in Panama City Beach, Florida in 2004. Pouring-water-for-wet-tshirt.jpg
Water is poured from a jug over a contestant's breasts at a wet T-shirt event in Panama City Beach, Florida in 2004.

In the United States, skiing filmmaker Dick Barrymore claims in his memoir Breaking Even to have held the first wet T-shirt contest at Sun Valley, Idaho's Boiler Room Bar in January 1971, as part of a promotion for K2 skis. [4] The contest was promoted as a simple "T-shirt contest" in which airline stewardesses would dance to music wearing K2 promotional T-shirts. However, the first contestant to appear was a professional stripper who danced topless and the amateur contestants responded by drenching their T-shirts before competing. Barrymore held a second "K2 Wet T-Shirt Contest" in the Rusty Nail at Stowe Mountain Resort, Vermont in order to film it, despite the fact that Stowe City Council had passed a resolution banning nudity at the event. [5] He held another promotional contest for K2 on 10 March 1971 at Aspen, Colorado's The Red Onion restaurant and bar, [4] [6] and the contests were featured in a pictorial in the March 1972 issue of Playboy . [7]

The first known mention of the term wet T-shirt contest in the press occurred in 1975 in The Palm Beach Post , describing the contest's appearance at New Orleans discotheques. The contest subsequently became established at spring break events in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with some bar owners being fined under public indecency laws for holding one. [8] [9] Despite a lack of clarity as to their legal status, contests began to take place elsewhere in the United States. A contest in a Milwaukee tavern in 1976 was subject to a police raid, despite contestants wearing Scotch Tape under their T-shirts as required by the police. [10]

Jacqueline Bisset's appearance in the 1977 film The Deep, where she swam underwater wearing only a T-shirt for a top, helped to bring the wet T-shirt contest to broader public awareness. [11] On Frank Zappa's 1979 album Joe's Garage the track "Fembot in a Wet T-Shirt" tells of Mary from Canoga Park who takes part in a wet T-shirt contest in order to raise money to return home after being abandoned by a rock group in Miami. [12]

The 2003 American reality film The Real Cancun included a wet T-shirt contest. [13]

The Spanish festival of La Tomatina, a large public tomato fight where participants become soaked with juice from tomatoes, has been suggested as another possible origin of the wet T-shirt contest, although La Tomatina began in 1945. [11] [9]

Examples of inappropriate contests

Law firm

In 1983, the King & Spalding law firm in Atlanta asked female summer interns attending that firm's annual picnic to participate in a wet T-shirt contest. The proposed contest was replaced with a swimsuit competition and the winner was promised a permanent job on graduation. [14] Some participants said they felt humiliated but did not protest because they were candidates for jobs with the firm. The Wall Street Journal included details of the event in a front-page article on sex discrimination in large law firms. [15] The fact that a wet T-shirt contest was proposed led to the case being used to demonstrate institutional sexism in law firms. [16]

In-flight contest

In 1998, teenagers from Portland, Oregon, celebrating the completion of high school held a wet T-shirt contest on a Boeing 727 en route to a Mexican resort, with a flight attendant encouraging the activity. An FAA investigation followed, as pilots supposedly judged the contest on the flight deck, disregarding rules that passengers are not allowed in the cockpit. A video showed contestants emerging from the cockpit wearing wet T-shirts. The FAA disciplined the pilots for sexual misconduct. [17]

Underage contestants

Lawsuits have been filed on behalf of underaged contestants who lied about their age to participate in wet T-shirt contests.

In 2002, the parents of teenager Monica Pippin brought a federal lawsuit against Playboy Entertainment, Anheuser-Busch, Deslin Hotels, Best Buy, and other companies relating to her appearance the previous year in a Daytona Beach wet T-shirt contest, at which time she had been a 16-year-old high school student. Pippin had danced topless during the contest and had allowed men to pour jugs of water over her bare breasts. After footage of her performance began to appear in videos and on cable television, a neighbor alerted Pippin's parents, who retained a lawyer. Although Pippin admitted in court that she had lied to contest organizers about her age, her attorney claimed that, as a minor, she was unable to give informed consent to perform or be filmed topless. Pippin settled with Anheuser-Busch and Playboy in April 2006. [18] [19]

In a similar suit in 2007, two women sued Deslin Hotels, Girls Gone Wild, and various websites that published footage of their appearance in another 2001 Daytona Beach contest. The two girls, who were both sixteen at the time, had been filmed exposing their breasts, buttocks, and pubic areas. Like Pippin, they had lied about their age to gain admission to the contest. [20]

See also

Related Research Articles

La Tomatina is a Spanish festival in Buñol, Spain where participants throw tomatoes at each other. It is said to be the biggest food fight in the world. From the festival's origin as a food fight between friends in the 1940s, it has become a famous tourist attraction. Previous to 2013, the festival did not operate with an upper cap on the number of attendees which would cause a strain on Buñol's population of about 9,000 inhabitants. Since 2013, however, the festival has a ticketed event with a capacity of 20,000 participants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indecent exposure</span> Public indecency involving nudity

Indecent exposure is the deliberate public exposure by a person of a portion of their body in a manner contrary to local standards of appropriate behavior. Laws and social attitudes regarding indecent exposure vary significantly in different countries. It ranges from outright prohibition of the exposure of any body parts other than the hands or face to prohibition of exposure of certain body parts, such as the genital area, buttocks or breasts.

Page 3, or Page Three, was a British newspaper convention of publishing a large image of a topless female glamour model on the third page of mainstream red top tabloids. The Sun introduced the feature in November 1970, which boosted its readership and prompted competing tabloids—including The Daily Mirror, TheSunday People, and TheDaily Star—to begin featuring topless models on their own third pages. Well-known Page 3 models included Linda Lusardi, Samantha Fox, Debee Ashby, Maria Whittaker, Katie Price, Keeley Hazell, and Jakki Degg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swimsuit</span> Clothing worn for swimming

A swimsuit is an item of clothing designed to be worn by people engaging in a water-based activity or water sports, such as swimming, diving and surfing, or sun-orientated activities, such as sun bathing. Different types may be worn by men, women, and children. A swimsuit can be described by various names, some of which are used only in particular locations or for particular types of suit, including swimwear, bathing suit, bathing attire, swimming costume, bathing costume, swimming suit, swimmers, swimming togs, bathers, cossie, or swimming trunks, besides others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monokini</span> Topless swimsuit designed by Rudi Gernreich

The monokini was designed by Rudi Gernreich in 1964, consisting of only a brief, close-fitting bottom and two thin straps; it was the first women's topless swimsuit. His revolutionary and controversial design included a bottom that "extended from the midriff to the upper thigh" and was "held up by shoestring laces that make a halter around the neck." Some credit Gernreich's design with initiating, or describe it as a symbol of, the sexual revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toplessness</span> Having a womans torso exposed above the waist

Toplessness refers to the state in which a woman's breasts, including her areolas and nipples, are exposed, especially in a public place or in a visual medium. The male equivalent is known as barechestedness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pasties</span> Adhesive patches worn to cover the nipples and areolae

Pasties are patches that cover a person's nipples and areolae, typically self-adhesive or affixed with adhesive. They are usually worn in pairs. They originated as part of burlesque shows, allowing dancers to perform fully topless without exposing the nipples in order to provide a commercial form of bare-breasted entertainment. Pasties are also, at times, used while sunbathing, worn by strippers and showgirls, or as a form of protest during women's rights events such as Go Topless Day. In some cases this is to avoid potential prosecution under indecency laws.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bada Bing!</span> Fictional strip club

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Handbra</span> Covering nipples and areolas with ones hands or arms

A handbra is the practice of covering female nipples and areolae with hands or arms. It often is done in compliance with censors' guidelines, public authorities and community standards when female breasts are required to be covered in film or other media. If the arms are used instead of the hands the expression is arm bra. The use of long hair for this purpose is called a hair bra.

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Meghan Allen is an American softcore model and reality show contestant. She was Playboy Cyber Girl of the Month for January 2008. Meghan first appeared on the NBC reality show Fear Factor in 2004. Together with James Wise, her boyfriend at the time, she competed in the Couples edition, doing eight episodes of the show altogether. In 2008, Allen was a participant in the reality show Momma's Boys on NBC. In 2013, Allen married NBA player, Devin Harris. They have 2 children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bikini in popular culture</span>

The modern bikini first appeared in 1946, and since then it has become a part of popular culture. It is one of the most widely worn women's swimsuits, used for swimming and in a variety of other contexts. Today, bikinis appear in competitions, films, magazines, music, literature, and video games. Despite the availability of more revealing glamour wear, bikini modeling remains popular and can still create controversy. Portrayals of the bikini in popular culture led, to a large extent, to its acceptance by Western society at large. In 1960, Brian Hyland's pop song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini" inspired a bikini-buying spree. The white bikini worn by Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder in the 1962 James Bond film Dr. No has been cited as one of the most famous bikinis of all time. By 1963, the movie Beach Party, starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, led a wave of films that made the bikini a pop-culture symbol. Playboy first featured a bikini on its cover in 1962. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue debuted two years later. This increasing popularity was reinforced by its appearance in such contemporary films as How to Stuff a Wild Bikini featuring Annette Funicello and One Million Years B.C. (1966) featuring Raquel Welch. Raquel Welch's fur bikini in One Million Years B.C. became a famous moment in cinema history. Hollywood stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Gina Lollobrigida and Jane Russell further helped the growing popularity of bikinis. Pin up posters of Monroe and Mansfield, as well as Hayworth, Bardot and Raquel Welch distributed around the world contributed significantly to the popularity of the bikini.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Go Topless Day</span> Gender equality protest

Go Topless Day is an annual event held in the United States and Canada to support the right of women to go topless in public on gender-equality grounds. In states where women have that right, topfreedom laws are celebrated, and protests are held in states where topless women are prohibited.

<i>Playboy Special Edition</i> Unique, infrequent, or semi-regular spin-offs of the magazine

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In Canada, topfreedom has primarily been an attempt to combat the interpretation of indecency laws that considered a woman's breasts to be indecent, and therefore their exhibition in public an offence. In British Columbia, it is a historical issue dating back to the 1930s and the public protests against the materialistic lifestyle held by the radical religious sect of the Freedomites, whose pacifist beliefs led to their exodus from Russia to Canada at the end of the 19th century. The Svobodniki became famous for their public nudity: primarily for their nude marches in public and the acts of arson committed also in the nude.

Dick Barrymore was an American ski film maker of the 1960s and 1970s and an advocate of "hot dogging".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free the nipple</span> Topfreedom campaign since 2012

Free the Nipple is a topfreedom campaign created in 2012 during pre-production of a 2014 film of the same name. The campaign highlights the general convention of allowing men to appear topless in public while considering it sexual or indecent for women to do the same and asserts that this difference is an unjust treatment of women. The campaign argues that it should be legally and culturally acceptable for women to bare their nipples in public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bralessness</span> Movement consisting of not wearing a bra

In Western society, since the 1960s, there has been a slow but steady trend towards bralessness among a number of women, especially millennials, who have expressed opposition to and are giving up wearing bras. In 2016, Allure magazine fashion director Rachael Wang wrote, "Going braless is as old as feminism, but it seems to be bubbling to the surface more recently as a direct response to Third Wave moments like #freethenipple hashtag campaign, increased trans-visibility like Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair cover ... and Lena Dunham's show Girls."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Female toplessness in the United States</span>

In the United States, individual states have primary jurisdiction in matters of public morality. The topfreedom movement has claimed success in a few instances in persuading some state and federal courts to overturn some state laws on the basis of sex discrimination or equal protection, arguing that a woman should be free to expose her chest in any context in which a man can expose his. Other successful cases have been on the basis of freedom of expression in protest, or simply that exposure of breasts is not indecent.

References

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