Dressed All in Rubber



"Chrome dome, goggles on

Dressed all in rubber."

- Doctor Steel, Drop da Bomb

It stretches. It molds to the body. It's shiny. It's slick. It's cold. It's warm. It makes funny noises. It smells... well, rubbery. Rubber, and its man-made polymer cousins, latex and PVC, can be very interesting to the senses, and many people find that sexy.

And sometimes, people go a little overboard with it. This trope is when someone's attire is mostly rubber, latex or PVC. It can be a fashion statement (especially in Hollywood circles), it can be a power uniform, and it can subliminally say something different altogether. It is usually black in most cases, though white (especially among "naughty nurses") and red (among "horny devils") are also common. This is mostly a bondage/fetish/fashion trope, and needless to say, this is extreme Fetish Fuel.

See also Latex Space Suit and some Spy Catsuits. Not to be confused with People in Rubber Suits. Compare its sister trope, Hell Bent for Leather.

Anime and Manga

 * In Medabots, the Rubber Robo gang was named for their rubber suits. Played more for comedy than Fetish Fuel, however.
 * Team Rocket has donned rubber suits on occasion to protect themselves from Pikachu's electrical attacks.
 * Katsuya Shirogane in Speed Grapher used a fullbody rubber suit when he was killing people. Well, it's more like his body became a rubber gimp suit. Euphoric powers are weird (and not very scientific).
 * Cardcaptor Sakura: Tomoyo made Sakura a rubber catsuit -- ahem, a maid -uniform-like dress with a cat theme, made of rubber for electricity resistance, when facing The Thunder. It's become quite popular.

Film

 * Latex bodysuits were implemented by the killer in Se7en for Lust.
 * In Batman Returns, Catwoman's costume, as far as the story, is PVC, when in reality, it's latex.
 * And in Batman Forever the love interest of the film mentioned her attraction to black rubber while trying to grope Batman.
 * Trinity in The Matrix also wears a PVC outfit.

Literature

 * A common fashion in the Alternate Timeline England of the Slave World novels.

Live Action TV

 * Razor Ramon Hard Gay
 * "Say say say HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
 * He hilariously went over the line into squicksville the time he pulled a PVC facemask out of the front of his PVC hotpants for someone else to wear...
 * Astronema in Power Rangers in Space wore PVC/Rubber for the first half of the series.
 * CSI has a serial killer that dressed in a full body gimp suit (purchased from a local BDSM shop) to avoid leaving traces. That was probably the least strange thing about him.
 * In the Doctor Who serial The Krotons, Zoe's costume consists of a very short PVC skirt and matching jacket.

Music

 * Doctor Steel dresses in a PVC labcoat and gloves (and sings about it!), and also has a black PVC Steampunk top hat and cape. His nurses also often dress in PVC uniforms.
 * The video for "Just a Little" by Liberty X has the girls in PVC catsuits.
 * Britney Spears wore a red PVC catsuit for the video of "Oops I Did It Again"

Web Comics

 * Rubber suits are Mistress Sixx's most prominent kink in Collar 6.
 * While not a webcomic (yet!), DPRagan's Satyri (Links very NSFW) series of illustrations take this to the next logical step: The Satyri are half-human succubi who, as a natural result of being partial Anthropomorphic Personifications of perversion and lust, have rubber skin (and a predisposition towards rubber clothing).
 * Johnathan and Caley are wearing full rubber suits at the start of Chapter 13 of Demon Candy Parallel.

Real Life

 * As You Know, there are latex/rubber/PVC fetishes.
 * Gimps [male BDSM rubber/leather slaves] wear suits and masks of rubber or latex.
 * Also used in BDSM as part of the sensory deprivation fetish. Less common than blindfolds but more common than noise-canceling headphones.
 * Latex is also a popular garment choice among dominatrices.
 * Comedian Margaret Cho, who has claimed to be in the BDSM subculture, has been known to wear latex dresses to public occasions.
 * Latex dresses seem to be becoming rather "hip" among the Hollywood elite lately.