The Wet T-shirt Look Started When?

For years bars, Spring Breakers, promotional events and others have engaged in wet t-shirt contests to determine the best looking entrant. There are even some stars that have entered the fray. Jennifer Aniston did a desktop calendar for 2009 and one of the images is of her in a wet t-shirt. Personally, I don’t find the wet look all the enticing, male [do guys have these contests?] or female, but many do. So, where did this event get its start?

To answer that, I think we need to look back in the art history books for the answer.

In the Stone Age, there was the Venus of Willendorf [24,000 to 22,000 BCE]

and while she has fabulous hair, she has no clothes to speak of, so the wet t-shirt trend used to excite the libido didn’t start here.

In the Cycladic Period, there was the Standing Woman [2600-2400 BCE]

and while she still has no features or clothes, she does have one breast higher than the other. Being unique in appearance is often a lure in its own right, but there is no seduction through wet clothes happening during this period.

In Archaic Greece, there was the Kore of Samos [570-560 BCE]

woohoo, clothes. They are lovely, but they completely swamp her female silhouette, so not here either.

In Classical Greece, there was Hestia, Dione and Aphrodite from the Parthenon’s East Pediment [438-432 BCE]

and they are really close! The goddesses are wearing clothes that show off their figures, is seductive on Aphrodite – her almost lying down pose helps – but matronly on Hestia, making this period almost but not quite there on the wet t-shirt look yet.

However, a couple hundred years later, in the Hellenistic Period, there was the Nike of Samothrace [220-190 BCE]

and this is the time period where sculptors learned to reveal the body of the woman beneath fabric that acts like wet silk.

See how the material clings to her curves, denoting every detail, even the indentation of her belly button and hardened nipples are visible. In other words, she may be dressed, but she might as well be nude.

The interesting thing about this evolution is that the women are shown with curves, some more than others. The Venus of Willendorf is rounder than her Cycladic sister, but there’s a line on the latter’s stomach to demarcate she does have a belly. The exception to the appearance of curves is the Kore of Samos who has none. Fine, the Archaic period weren’t that much into depicting real women, there statues were generally used as grave stones so they can be forgiven.

In reality, these statues were mainly used for worship or to denote a special event, to put base sexual goals on them would be wrong. However, I find it is interesting that we can trace a wet t-shirt look so far back on the chronological art history line.

Today, as I flip through a magazine and see someone posing in a wet t-shirt and a pout, and I immediately think of Nike of Samothrace.

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Tilly Greene
WARNING! Red hot romances ahead!
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