A bondage suit—also commonly called a gimp suit or gimpsuit—is a form-fitting garment built to cover the body completely, usually including the hands and feet, for sexual role-play. Usual materials include leather, PVC, rubber, spandex, and darlexx. The acronym GIMP is sometimes explained as guy in mask permanently, though everyday use treats the word as gender-neutral rather than male-only. The purpose of the entire suit is to temporarily alter how everyone in the room reads the sealed body: it stops reading as an ordinary partner.
The suit may carry an attached hood. If it does not, players often add a separate bondage hood or gimp mask. The hood or mask limits facial perception so the wearer can assume the consensually agreed role. Hands and feet inside the suit are part of that complete cover, not optional extras. Some wearers want no openings at all: full enclosure for the tactile hit of skin-tight material and the visual hit of a body turned into a single fetish object. Other suits include openings so breasts, genitals, mouth, anus, or sex toys stay reachable while the rest of the body stays sealed.
In BDSM foreplay a bondage suit is sometimes used to objectify the wearer, or to fetishize the look as a form of anima and animus fetishism. The person in the gimp role consents to become a masturbatory sexual toy, doll, dummy, or automaton for the length of the scene, rather than a human sexual partner with ordinary desire and agency. The amusement is mutually agreed. In other cases the suit is simply for aesthetic or tactile reasons—shine, squeeze, and silhouette without the doll protocol. Related territory includes agalmatophilia, ASFR, doll fetish, and total enclosure fetishism. Catsuits may be worn together with corsets, bondage harnesses, or other restraints as part of a bondage-suit setup. Popular culture often calls the garment a gimp suit, a term popularized by its use in Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction. Whether locked as a toy or worn as second skin, the bondage suit is full-body gear for consensual depersonalization.
