Exploring the Indulgent World of Sploshing and Food Play

Splosh (noun) (verb) informal for “splash.”

If you didn’t know any better the Oxford Concise Dictionary’s definition of “splosh” would paint an extremely vanilla picture of the term. And perhaps that’s why a washing up liquid manufacturer oddly named their brand “Splosh” based on that fact alone, and not because they wanted to be associated with the fetish act of sex play involving various food items. I’m going to assume someone didn’t do their homework and now that someone has been mysteriously let go. 

Similarly looking up hashtag “sploshing” would lead you to what can only be described as the PG 13 cut; girls sit grinning in front of birthday cakes, and a cascade of baked beans flows artfully down the thigh of some beautiful young creature. But, I can’t help but feel I’m being censored. Thankfully a quick Amazon book search reveals a somewhat more risqué side of this fetish and insight into its popularity - note: it’s popular! But among the expected indubitable sploshing guides there’s additionally a number of eyebrow-raising erotica books dedicated entirely to this particular past time. And while the grammar in this array of self-published Kindle books may make your eyes bleed - or maybe just mine - they are nothing if not educational. How about “Romance Can be Messy” - (amen, sis), the pseudo-innocent-sounding “Gunge Girl” and a title I personally can’t wait to explore “The Big Bumper Book of Equestrian Sploshing” - because yay horses!

Sploshing is also known as WAM (wet and messy play) - which is not to be confused with WHAM! The iconic 80’s boy band featuring Sir George Micheal. Nonetheless, even though we have now assigned snazzy new names to it, food fetish itself is nothing new. Assumably it has been this way since we started being able to produce enough food that we didn’t need to eat it all? Or perhaps Adam and Eve sought a devilish session of WAM amongst the squishy fallen apples of the garden of Eden? Alas, we may never know - but we do know that sploshing is here and it isn’t going anywhere any time soon. But what makes food play so alluring in the first place? Not necessarily the food itself even, but more the sensation of the food touching the body. Temperatures and textures make for creative play that gives a whole new level of stimulation. And as much as I don’t identify as a splosher, it does kind of make me want to know what it would feel like to submerged in Nutella, or maybe dunk a toe in at least. 

Perhaps sploshing in the modern age is not surprising at all. I, myself, grew up watching wacky Saturday morning TV in which someone pretty much always got gunged or sprayed in some kind of slime. So, you have to wonder, what is it inherently about having goo/custard/lasagne thrown on us that acts as a punishment of sorts? Punishment being the pivotal word here, as much pleasure from sploshing (and also probably from gunging your high school teacher) is that it’s within the realms of humiliation, right? To make them look and feel stupid. And perhaps in some cases, this is precisely what sploshing is. But, not all WAM seems to stick to this model - there isn’t necessarily always a dominant or submissive partner in fact. We throw terms around like “egg on your face” to describe a situation of embarrassment, but do we ever really consider why? It’s clear that aside from degradation, sploshers genuinely just want to get busy while sliding around in bechamel sauce - and this raises the obvious questions of - why? And how high are their dry cleaning bills?

It's a lot more than just a funny word. Join Lacey & Tracey on their deep dive into the eroticism of food play.

Origins of Food Play

Sploshing is exceptionally versatile as fetishes go. No need for expensive BDSM equipment, ball gags or even handcuffs, if you don’t want. Just grab yourself and something to get messy with (partner optional). Entry-level fetish at its finest! Food and sex have always been firm friends; take the relatively innocent ideals of “aphyrodesics” - foods said to enhance sexual desire such as champers and oysters (I can personally vouch for Champagne) - and the use of sexual language to describe food - for reference: basically anything celebrity chef Nigella Lawson has ever said.

“The sound of a sizzle just makes me salivate.” 

“ALL THAT glorious juice!”

“The lamb has left luscious juices behind… I’m going to add a knob of butter!”  Nigella Lawson

Like her or not, you have to give her credit, that woman knows how to alliterate the heck out of her sexy cooking talk.

Of course, food and sex both rank highly on our list of fundamental needs as humans. Much as our hunger must be quelled with food, so must our lust with sex. And commonly used terms like “sexual appetite” only stand to highlight this. So, then perhaps it's no wonder that the two might become entangled. We need food, we need sex; so why not together? Overconsumption of food is deep within human tradition, even been granted a place in the Seven Deadly Sins.

Gluttony (Latin: gula) is the overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste. The word derives from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow.

The term gluttony didn’t seem synonymous with food play, largely as part of the definition revolves around the act of consuming the food - assumably by mouth. But consumption by mouth is not a prerequisite of sploshing; neither is sex; neither is any kind of sexual contact, so perhaps I shouldn’t make any presumptions at all. Consumption is a somewhat context-driven term. Still, I think bathing in a bathtub of blancmange would definitely count towards overconsumption to the point of waste. So, if you want to get down to the nitty origins of sploshing - it could primarily have manifested just from straight-up sin. Yikes.

Unlike some fetishes that could well turn your stomach, the most extreme examples of food play seem to be - quite surprisingly - set in the Middle Ages. A particular past time of women making and serving their lovers goodies made with their vaginas. Yes, that’s right. This is noted several times in texts both religious and otherwise from the fifteenth century onwards. Perhaps the most commonly known being “cockle bread” - a bread kneaded with one’s buttocks and/or vulva which features in several poems.

“My granny is sick, and now is dead,

And we’ll go mould some cockle bread.

Up with my heels and down with my head,

And this is the way to mould cockle bread.”

And even a 1500’s play...

“Fair maiden, white and red.

Stroke me smooth and comb my head.

And thou shalt have some cockell-bread.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve even heard the term before, but clearly not in the right context. It’s argued that it was merely a point of satire to explain the lengths that women would go to keep a man, but unfortunately, I guess we will never know. Alongside this, religious texts detailed of women slipping fish into their lady parts and letting it “marinade” (i.e. die and soak up their juices) before serving to their husband to assure their undying lust. If you’ve seen the cult horror Midsommar, you’ll remember the pube in the pie that supposedly makes a man fall in love. Yum! Although I think in that case it was more likely the psychedelics in his tea, but still.

Food Play meets Pop Culture

Whether we realise it or not, we have all been exposed to aspects of sploshing in popular culture. American Pie, anyone? Young lad mounts baked goods for sexual pleasure while America laughs and reaches for more popcorn. Or how about the notorious “cake farts” video that did the rounds once upon a time? Sex and The City saw us watch Samantha adorn herself in sushi for her man while Christina Aguilera mounted a cake on the front page of Out Magazine, no less.

Meanwhile, in England, Diary of a Call Girl saw Billie Piper with beans in places where one should probably never get beans. The scene, may, in fact, be the most obvious example of sploshing as a kink that’s made it onto mainstream television thus far. And don’t pretend you never owned a pair of those edible candy underpants - because we all did. 

These mentions within pop culture, however, tend to underpin food play as taboo but comedic mostly - so only really good for cheap laughs and not taken with much thought otherwise. However, in the real world, it seems food play falls more into acts of submission, humiliation, a child-like sense of “being naughty” in regard of getting messy - much like school kids jumping in muddy puddles. At the centre of it, the aim is to make someone else messy for personal gratification, to enjoy the textures and sensation of being covered and the thrill of being dominated. Like other types of BDSM, it’s not even certain that any kind of sexual activity will occur during or afterwards. This quietened my initial concerns about sploshing, as from the moment I first started reading about it, I couldn’t help but think it sounded like a fast track ticket to a yeast infection.

Of course, masturbating with food is hardly uncommon. I mean, we’ve all looked at a courgette on a lonely night and wondered what if? But the reality of that is it’s not actually healthy to put random objects into your vagina, no matter what porn might tell us! But perhaps the idea of sploshing as food-play is stemmed from the fact that food products can be consumed and so are not as dangerous as, say, dousing one’s partner in fabric softener or the remnants of a pot of Dulux you painted the hallway with three summers ago.

“Don’t forget that your vagina is not a Ziploc bag.” 

Wise words to live by from staff writer Sara Coughlin over at Refinery 29 - which I’m reasonably certain roughly translates to “don’t put food inside yourself, even if you’re just saving it as a tasty snack for later.”

Cake Sitting and Other Niches

I never thought I’d need to Google the words “yogurt fetish”, but I stand corrected and interestingly it even has a proper name “Yiaourtiphilia” - to be precise. Yiaourtiphilia is amongst some of the incredibly niche offshoots of sploshing, alongside jello fetish which doesn’t appear to have a long scary name yet thankfully. But it’s impossible to speak of sploshing niches without referencing the rising trend of cake sitting.

Perhaps an act that needs no prior explanation “cake sitting” is just that. People, primarily women, pressing their naked or semi-naked buttocks into fresh cream cakes, often of a fancy looking manor. Perhaps it’s not surprising that cake-sitting has become the more socially accepted form of sploshing as it just all sounds so innocent. No whips and chains, no humiliation; just a willing ass and a delicious traybake. It has become so accepted, in fact, that there have even been publicised events held featuring it - the most reported on being the “Cake Sit” held in Brooklyn, NYC by artist Martha Burgess. While this erred largely on the side of artistic expression rather than genuine fetish, cake sitting’s inclusion in art and popular culture shows that we are well on our way to becoming exponentially more open-minded when it comes to sex. But with Burgess’ vision, it was the final result of the cake which she considered to be the art - not the process itself.

Similarly London dessert brand Bompas & Parr, after initially declining the invite of catering a sploshing event soon changed their tune and agreed to be part of an artistic shoot shot by Australian photographer Jo Duck. The event featured a range of their unique cakes and jellies - yep, you’ve guessed it - being smooshed by arses. Admittedly, it’s a surprisingly tasteful series, and for a moment I did wonder if it might be nice to park myself down on a chilled, slimy designer jelly, but I digress.

Sploshing for Profit

Perhaps it’s the particular symbolism of cake that are what makes it more acceptable than say, sitting on a meatloaf. Cake is celebration; cake is happy; cake is the reward. So what could be unsightly about that? Well, nothing according to the 19.4K fans of 29-year-old NYC native and professional cake sitter Linsday Dye. Hailing from camgirl roots Dye suggests she found her way into the cake sitting business by no less than a request from a client to “crush her cat” (going to assume with her bottom) and so launched what would end up to be a very fitting Google search into crushing fetish, Dye subsequently wound up becoming arguably “THE cake sitter” (in her own words). In the game since 2015, Dye is no stranger to an iced bottom or a fluffy base, although far from thinking the world of cake sitting is progressive she feels there is still some work to be done

“I think people are ashamed of fetishes just because it has to do with the society we live in, the fact that we are not completely sex-positive yet,” Dye. 

It’s a fair point, although most definitely begs the question where will the line ever be drawn between a sex-positive society and those who want to experiment with niche fetishes because, well, they’re niche. Sploshing might not be so appealing if the taboo element was taken away. Dye currently makes a living from cam work and in-person performances which she charges $150 per 15 minutes - not bad. When asked by Huffington Post what the best part of her job is she noted

“Someone asked me, ‘What feeling do you get out of cake sitting?’ and it’s power. I feel powerful and in control. And the fact that I can turn on my computer and be like, ‘I am the boss right now’? Oh, my God, that feels really good.”

I mean, you can’t argue with that. Maybe you really can have your cake and eat it too.

So, Eat Me?

But what to splosh? Typical food types used involves mostly sweet foods which I guess makes for a less savoury affair (pun intended.) I once covered my hair in ketchup to try to remove chlorine hair-greening, and I can tell you, it wasn’t pretty. But custard - or maybe some globulous rice pudding? I can’t help but think that would have been a vast improvement. Surely sugary sweet smells are more sexually alluring than those of last nights spaghetti bolognese, no?

It kind of goes without saying that Sploshing is nothing if not an accessible kink. You may have already participated without necessarily meaning to by having licked whipped cream off your lover’s naked body, or (as was my teenage favourite) toffee sauce. Simply grab your nearest sploshable ingredient and work away! In The Bumper Book of Equestrian Sploshing (I will genuinely never get over that name) their preferred sploshables were reduced bakery items - great for the thrifty sploshers out there! No need to spend a fortune, just go to town with supermarket brand pastries. Firm favourites amongst the sploshing community consist of ready-mix custard (a British staple), gungey/slime type stuff, baked beans (again, another British cupboard essential), cakes, cake batter, sticky dessert sauces, cream, ice cream and of course, jelly. Weirdly doesn’t sound totally unalike the shopping list for a child’s birthday party.

But life’s not all pastel pink and sugary-sweet. While sploshing refers specifically to the act of getting messy with food, WEM (wet and messy) can also include all kinds of non-edibles that deliver their own texture and sensation. Favourites include slime/gunge, paint (this actually sounds like it might be kind of good), silly string, foam pies (a synthetic version of a cream pie) and artificial custard is even a thing. It’s worth noting a lot of substances used in WAM are brightly coloured which only stands to cement the fun, whimsical nature of this particular kink and maybe explains why sploshing favourites reads much like a kid’s birthday shopping list. For a tame starter, oil and candle wax are much more widely accepted in the conventional sex world - so perhaps a good place to start for any would-be WAM-ers alongside soy massage candles.

To Splosh or Not to Splosh

That is the question! Having ascertained that sploshing is mysteriously in fact just as light-hearted as it initially seemed, I’m slightly disappointed. But in a world where women bake vagina bread, and “bagpiping” exists, it is quite heartwarming to know that not all fetish acts lie on the devious end of the spectrum. Maybe you can regale your Grandma with a tale some time.
And because you’re secretly dying to know - The Big Bumper Book of Equestrian Sploshing was actually somewhat of a modern-day love story between two women who ride horses. This was of great relief to me as I think beastiality goes above my pay grade. While sploshing is the driving force of the story, many types of other BDSM fantasy are present among it. Tying up with horse reigns and riding horses naked - you know, all the usual stuff. Because who doesn’t love a good old roll in the hay? Yep, sploshing might just be the friendliest fetish by far!

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