Fashion City

I was six or seven, up on a weekend night watching TV, everyone else was asleep. On TV was a low-grade Japanese movie about an invasion of Earth, well into the future. When alien ship landed, out poured humans in these bright red skin tight lycra zentai with full hoods, no skin or body, exposed, and only a flat patch of black shiny plastic where the eyes were. I was mesmerized, and felt all excited, overcome by a feeling I could not explain but remember well. Of course, I didn’t know why I felt that way until years later as an adult, but the tendency was clearly there and hard wired at a very young age.

Latex was the first thing I found that approached the encasement and excitement. Didn’t find friends to share this with until my 30′s, and Spandex zentai came later. A good speed skater — and I know a few (Eric Hayden, a long-track Olympic medalist, once told my sister that she had the best buns, which I also hope I inherited at least a bit of) — needs thighs the size of my waist. And boy is that a lot of hard work for only a few gold medal spots. Keeps the body in good shape, though.

Mine wasn’t visual but tactile, I wore a wetsuit. and it was all over for me. My body loved that suits squeeze and warmth so much. in fact, so much that showing my uncle and the salesman how it fit was almost very embarrassing. but I managed. Zentai came about from viewing online sources of cat suits. I’d discovered sleeping in Lycra and wanted more coverage than I’d had up till then.

When I was 12 or something I started to interest in pantyhose and everything that was tight*. Every time when I was alone (and it happened very often, not like today when it’s hard to have even 5 minutes in peace) I was putting tights on because it felt so nice but I had to watch out not to be caught by parents. Later, when we finally got internet in our apartment, I interested in latex and how amazing it looks. During next years my interest in latex and tight clothes melted. Two years ago I started to read comics and I wanted to make a superhero costume myself. I’ve looked through the internet to find good material for costume and found zentai. I haven’t concern about it and for a year I’ve forgotten about zentai.

Perhaps it started when I started looking at comics. Perhaps I was influenced Danger Man (I think) who had a zentai-like suit and a globe of the world divided into umpteen squares sectors, one of which lit up when there was a problem there. (No wonder I feel powerful in zentaish wear). But really, it had struck me as odd that our clothes covered the vital orifices for disposal of bodily wastes, but allowed free access to the rarely needed orifices for speaking and sneezing, so at about seven I invented zentai as the rational starting point for clothing. As soon as puberty hit, I was thinking about girls in zentai hoods and suits without really knowing where the idea came from.

I’m a bit different as it developed much later in life for me. In fact, until Halloween of 2005, I didn’t care for tight fitting clothes at all. That was the year that a friend talked me into being Arthur from The Tick for Halloween. I (at first) reluctantly agreed and bought myself a white unitary. I remember when it arrived in the mail and I went up to my bedroom to try it on. My first thought was, “Wow! This is really comfortable…” It was shortly thereafter that I bought my first zentai, and as is said, the rest is history.