A summer plaza in front of the station, a woman on a bench looking at her phone. The hem of her denim shorts is cut at half the height of the thigh. As she recrosses her legs, the pale inner surface and the tanned outer surface come alternately into view. Where long trousers cover and hide the legs, short pants show the legs while leaving only “short fabric” on the lower body. Shorts fetish (also hot-pants fetish) is the umbrella term for strong sexual and romantic attraction to women wearing short-hemmed pants that expose the thigh.

Etymology and definition

“Short pants” is an English-derived term for short trousers generally, used in Japan from the Showa era as a name for children’s wear and sportswear. “Hot pants” was coined in 1970 by the U.S. magazine Women’s Wear Daily for women’s pants cut short near the top of the thigh. In Japan the abbreviations shopan and hoppan are used.

As a clothing-fetish type, the taste for shorts has many variants by hem length (above the knee, mid-thigh, top of thigh), material (denim, cotton, nylon, satin), and silhouette (tight, loose). Adjacent fields include the miniskirt, yoga pants, and spats pant-style fetishes.

History

Short pants originally belonged to the domains of children’s wear and sportswear. Their full spread as women’s fashion linked to the mini-length boom of the late 1960s, and in the early 1970s “hot pants” spread as an international vogue word. In Japan they were taken up around 1971 in the Ginza and Harajuku districts and settled as women’s nightlife, disco, and stage wear.

In the late 1990s, denim shorts revived within street and kogal culture and became a standard item of the Harajuku fashion that appeared in the magazine FRUiTS. From the 2000s they circulated in parallel across several contexts: K-pop idol stage wear, casual wear for summer festivals and sports-watching, and surf and skate sportswear. In adult expression, from the 2000s “shopan,” “hot pants,” and “short-shorts girl” have been used as independent tags in AV, gravure, and adult manga. The visual effect of short fabric accentuating leg length, and the way fabric tension concentrates on the thigh when sitting or crouching, made shorts a standard prop of clothing-fetish works.

Structure of the taste

The core can be sorted into three layers. The first is leg exposure: the continuous visibility of the thigh from above the knee to the top creates a visual effect different from both long trousers and the miniskirt. Where a skirt is a structure that sways and lets the inside be glimpsed, shorts are designed to expose the legs themselves, so the centre of the taste is direct exposure rather than the anticipation of a peek. The second is fabric tension: short fabric clings to the top of the thigh, so it pulls taut with each sitting, crouching, or crossing of the legs, revealing inner seams and biting forms. The third is contrast: a long-sleeved top with shorts, or a knit with shorts, makes a silhouette that emphasises only the leg.

Derived forms

Denim shorts (denim cut-offs); sweat shorts (loungewear, sporty); satin shorts (glossy material, stage wear); hot pants (cut short near the top of the thigh); culottes (shorts with a skirt-like silhouette); sports shorts (track, tennis, basketball); running shorts (the still-shorter runner’s type); pyjama shorts (sleepwear); and gardener’s shorts (gardening and outdoor work wear).

Reception and culture

Shorts are a standard item of summer fashion and a garment women readily wear themselves. Tied to scenes of life such as the sea, the pool, summer festivals, club practice, running, and gardening, they combine in erotic expression at high frequency with contexts of “summer youth,” “outdoors,” “sports,” and “relaxing at home.” In a clothed-play context, shorts are quick to remove but, when tightly fitting, hard to take off, easily making the “half-undressed” state with them pushed to the ankles. The composition of the act proceeding while fabric tangles around one leg has been adopted repeatedly in adult works.

See also

• Denim: the representative material of shorts
• Yoga Pants: the opposite-pole long pant style
• Panchira: the adjacent area of the miniskirt peek
• Bikyaku (Beautiful Legs): connection to the love of legs themselves
• Clothed Play: the representative of half-undressed staging