Fluorescent light reflecting off a gymnasium floor. It looks like bare skin, but in fact a single thin layer of cloth covers the whole body. It is to the body-line surfacing through that cloth that the viewer’s gaze is drawn.

Leotard names the body-hugging one-piece worn in gymnastics, ballet, dance, and aerobics, covering from torso to the top of the legs, and the taste that binds sexual arousal to it. The name derives from the nineteenth-century French trapeze artist Jules Léotard (1838–1870); the close-fitting performance garment he devised came to bear his name.

Overview

The leotard’s feature is that thin, highly elastic synthetic fabric bares the body’s contours almost as they are. The exposed area is close to that of a swimsuit, but because its original purpose is competition and performance, it carries a peculiar in-between quality: “not naked, but close to naked”. This structural twist, “worn for a wholesome purpose yet ending up emphasising the body-line”, became the soil for fetishism.

As objects of interest: the outline of breasts and buttocks surfacing through the cloth, the high-cut leg-line (high-leg), the way the fabric clings to skin with sweat, the movement of the body in motion. It is adjacent to the competitive-swimsuit fetish and the gym-clothes fetish, often discussed within the same taste-sphere.

History and development

The close-fitting garment Léotard used was first called the maillot; in the twentieth century the word “leotard” settled in English. In the later twentieth century, as the development of synthetic fibre made stretch material cheap and widespread, it standardised as competition wear for gymnastics, ballet, and rhythmic gymnastics.

It became clearly conscious as an object of fetishism in Japan in the 1980s. In this period, the worldwide aerobics boom overlapped with the high-leg swimsuit boom, and the high-leg leotard, cut sharply up at the top of the legs, circulated widely as a popular image. High-leg leotards appeared often in television variety shows, idol costumes, and gravure, becoming a sign symbolising the bodily expression of the time. In works of the overlapping AV bubble period, the leotard was built in as a standard costume prop.

In manga and anime, the leotard-type costume established itself as an independent visual sign, in works themed on rhythmic gymnastics or ballet, or as combat costumes for certain character types. These are not confined to sexual contexts, but share the common point of emphasising the body-line through a clinging garment.

The structure of the fetishism

Several elements support the taste for the leotard. First, the paradox of the body-line seen through thin cloth, “emphasising by hiding”: the psychology that a slightly covered state, more than a fully nude body, summons imagination. Second, the gap with the non-sexual context of competition and performance: the sense of transgression in a garment of wholesome purpose being consumed sexually intensifies the taste. Third, the link to physicality: sweat, motion, the flexibility of the body.

It also holds the side of a “uniform sign” common to costume fetishism in general. Because it is a garment that summons a particular scene (a club activity, a ballet studio, a competition), the whole situation becomes an object of taste. In this respect of taste for a clothing sign, it is continuous with the bloomer and bodikon fetishes.

Love of the material itself cannot be ignored. The sheen of synthetics like nylon and polyurethane, the texture that stretches and clings to skin, the see-through quality when wet with sweat act as elements that make the theme of the body-through-cloth still more sensual. The surface of light-reflecting fabric changing with the body’s movement carries visual information a nude body lacks, one cause supporting the taste.

Derived forms

The high-leg leotard, cut high at the top of the legs, reached its peak vogue in the 1980s. The competition leotard, the match wear of rhythmic gymnastics and gymnastics, has diversified in ornament and design. The ballet leotard is the simple practice garment.

See also

• Competitive Swimsuit
• Bloomer
• Bodikon
• AV Bubble