Wet T-shirt contest
a beauty contest for women based on the view of the body through a wet T-shirt
A wet T-shirt contest is a competition involving exhibitionism, typically in the form of a stage show featuring young female contestants at a nightclub, bar, or resort. The contestants generally wear thin white or light-colored T-shirts without bras, bikini tops, or other undergarments beneath them. Water (often ice water) is then sprayed or poured onto the participants' chests, causing their T-shirts to turn translucent and cling to their breasts. The comparatively rarer male equivalent is the wet boxer contest, sometimes held at gay bars. In straight venues, contests involving men competing in wet briefs act more as a form of comedic entertainment.
Contestants typically take turns dancing or posing before the audience, with the outcome decided either by crowd reaction or by judges' vote. In racier contests, participants may tear or crop their T-shirts to expose their midriffs, cleavage, or the undersides of their breasts. Depending on local laws, participants may be allowed to remove their T-shirts or strip completely naked during their performance.
History
Wet T-shirt contests first appeared in the 1970s in the United States. Filmmaker Dick Barrymore claims in his memoir Breaking Even to have held the first wet T-shirt contest at Sun Valley, Idaho's Boiler Room Bar in January 1971, as part of a promotion for K2 skis.
The public source identifies “Wet T-shirt contest” as a beauty contest for women based on the view of the body through a wet T-shirt. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around T-shirt, contest and beauty.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1161526. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1971.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wet T-shirt contest” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.