photos by Edmund X White

“Sparks” and his girlfriend, Ava, are doing a walk-about. It’s Halloween morning in Chicago and the neighborhood is littered with hungover hipsters and families wading toward the farmers market. The two look alien, their entire body: face, hands, feet covered in spandex.

Maybe you’ve seen these face-less people on a certain TV show, at Lady Gaga concerts… or even at football games. But as the mainstream appropriates zentai, the sexuality of it gets a little lost in translation.

Zentai was invented in Japan in the 1980’s. It entered the fetish world and slowly made it’s way west. Many fetishists talk up the suit’s feeling. “For me, the sexual arousal comes from the smooth anonymity the suit provides. It distills your body into this ‘other’ it is a trans-formative effect that lets you be someone or something else, not necessarily human”. This is Ben, a moderator on ayus-zentai forum.

Sparks found zentai seven years ago, but it took him awhile to come out to his girlfriend. At first Ava was against the idea. “It totally creeped me out. It’s the whole face-less thing.” But, the couple worked together to get her into it. For her, the sexuality didn’t stick, but she’s latched on for different reasons– “I like the costume side of it, I like the attention”.

She’s not alone. Websites keep popping up, selling zentai re-named “root suits” or “morph suits”–with two-tone colors to match every sports team. The problem Sparks sees is that people are being introduced to zentai without knowing what it is. The community is getting erased, and so is the meaning.

“A guy leading a girl around by a dog chain would not be socially acceptable…yet for some strange reason, this is” Daniel, a, zentai fetishist told me.

But rather than pushing for the fetish aspect of zentai to be visible and understood, the zentai community has tried to water itself down a bit for mainstream visitors, arguably, helping further erase the sexuality of zentai.

“We tend to tone our language away from the adult on the forum” Ben explains. “ I would say we diminish the fetish side of zentai as a way to make it seem more acceptable. I certainly don’t want my “normal” friends to find out I wear these suits as a fetish and I assume a person who regularly goes out in a zentai would diminish it’s role as a fetish in public.”

But on the forum, there are members who don’t shy away from their fetish–one explains: “yes it has gotten more mainstream, but that is good because I get to see people in zentai more often.” Agreeing, Daniel notes: “I mean, there’s always gonna be a fetish aspect.  If anything, who’s to say that the couple that goes online and buys a couple of suits for a sporting event might not come home and then y’know, get into it in that way.”

There is a little cross-over between zentai and other fetishes: some BDSM enthusiasts like the restricting feeling of the suit (there are even mummy suits which restrict hands and legs.) There is also a slight intersection with fans of PVC and rubber. But for many, zentai is the one and only, a fetish all of it’s own.

“Zentai is a portable safety blanket. You feel covered and protected yet you’re fully able to go and interact with the world around you” explains Ben.

It is a unique fetish in that these two halves, one sexual and one not, of it can each exist so strongly. “ They just don’t overlap. But, there’s a sense of loss on my part. I’m afraid people will see the zentai fetish as some freaky perversion of something fun and normal, not the other way around.” But if those people look hard enough, there is plenty of Japanese zentai porn that pre-dates any “Green-man” references. “Oh, we have sex….there’s anatomically placed zippers” Sparks says. He rubs a spandex hand to Ava’s, and electricity shoots between them. “See, sparks.”

This is a clipped version of a story I wrote for Sexis. If you are intrigued by zentai or liked this story, read the full version.