A bodysuit is a one-piece, form-fitting or skin-tight garment that covers the torso and the crotch. The basic cut sits next to a one-piece swimsuit and a leotard, though the fabrics can be entirely different. Thong or T-front thong bodysuits usually shift the crotch opening up toward the front, under the belly, to make the thing more comfortable to wear. Sleeves, straps, and collars vary. Cotton, lace, nylon, and similar textiles are all in play; most cloth bodysuits add an expandable fiber such as spandex so the suit actually follows the body. You normally wear one with trousers or a skirt. The torso can work as a top because it gives a smooth line, or simply because it cannot come untucked. Women also wear bodysuits as underwear, activewear, or foundation garments. Unlike a leotard, a bodysuit is not usually treated as athletic wear. For fetish and kink wardrobe readers, that same second-skin logic is why the cut shows up on pin-up models, bunny costumes, and adult onesies: one piece, no gap at the waist, crotch on a snap or a thong string.
Onesies, bodyshirts, and dance necks
Onesies—or snapsuits—are bodysuits with a buttoned opening at the crotch that helps keep a diaper in place. The same opening makes it easier to reach a diaper or get to a toilet. Those garments are almost exclusively worn by infants, but adult-sized versions have also become popular among certain kink subcultures. The snap crotch is the same engineering either way: keep a diaper where it belongs, or open the suit without peeling it off the shoulders. Bodyshirts are the looser cousin. They cover the whole torso, run short to long sleeves, and still close with crotch snaps. The top reads as a shirt; from the waist to the crotch a different stretch fabric is often used so the garment sits closer. Long-sleeved crew-neck and turtleneck bodysuits are a common piece of dancewear costume, which is one reason the silhouette keeps crossing from stage into club and bedroom wardrobes.
Claire McCardell, Bettie Page, Playboy bunnies, Wonder Woman
The bodysuit grew out of the leotard. Fashion designer Claire McCardell presented it in the United States after 1950, worn as a blouse or T-shirt. The first widely recognized bodysuit on a sex-icon body was worn by Bettie Page in the 1950s—already a fetish and bondage pin-up, already proving that a one-piece cling is camera language. From the 1960s it was trademark attire for Playboy Bunnies. Wonder Woman wore the same family of cut in the animated series Super Friends and in Lynda Carter’s live-action television series: heroic cheesecake and fetish-adjacent spectacle using one continuous torso-and-crotch piece. Azzedine Alaïa and Donna Karan helped push the bodysuit as fashion for men, women, and even tweens, teens, and young-adult or college-age wearers. From the 1980s into the mid-1990s you saw a lot of short cap-sleeved or turtleneck versions as everyday tops, especially with high-waisted jeans, and also with regular shorts, dress shorts, and skirts. After a slowdown it came back as shaping underwear and lingerie—the version kink and lingerie shoppers already understood—and in the 2010s it reappeared as a blouse bodysuit, a cap-sleeve, a classic turtleneck, and a piece of evening wear. For BDSM and fetish readers the through-line is simple: Bettie Page’s one-piece, the Playboy bunny suit, Wonder Woman’s comic-book second skin, and the adult onesie are the same garment idea pointed at different kinds of looking and control. The fashion cycle—McCardell blouse, 1980s turtleneck with high-waisted jeans, 2010s evening bodysuit—never dropped the snap-crotch and cling that make the cut useful in a kink wardrobe. A thong or T-front opening, a lace or nylon skin, a bunny-cut torso, or an adult snapsuit is still one piece that cannot come untucked and that keeps the crotch where the wearer or the person dressing them wants it.
