Cache-sexe

Look up cache-sexe in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A cache-sexe is an item, often a small garment, that covers its user's genitals.^[1] The most common style, seen in Western G-strings and Japanese Fundoshis, has a triangle of material (cloth, beaded strings, etc.) attached at the corners to straps or strings around the waist and between the legs, that fasten the triangle over the genitals.

Cache-sexes have various social intentions, including the wearer's practice of sincere or enforced modesty, legal and/or customary restrictions within the context of intentional eroticism, and adding fetishistic or playfully teasing aspects to intentional eroticism. In Western cultures, for example, G-strings appear as swimming attire; for many erotic dancing venues, as the final state of undress, set as the polite and/or legal limit; or as a garment whose removal is one of many steps of a striptease, each existing to provide an increment in the viewer's sexual arousal.

Cache-sexe is a loanword from French.^[1]

Cache-sexe is also an alternate term for modesty plate, sometimes caping, a small triangular or heart-shaped jewelry worn to hide the genitals, typically made of silver, gold, or brass.

The penis gourds of tribal New Guinea, and cache-sexes of some other tribal cultures, are often perceived by Westerners as self-evidently obvious forms of sexual display, but described by their wearers as a practice providing privacy.

The Brazilian Portuguese tapa-sexo is often used in samba school parades,^[2] where performers may parade their decorated but unclothed bodies,^[3] exposing the buttocks and groin. The regulations in these parades generally prohibit people being completely naked.^[2] Thus, the tapa-sexo, a strip of tape^[3] or cloth that strategically covers a dancer's genitalia, prevents the school being penalised in such cases.^[2]

• Bikini
• Fig leaf
• Loincloth
• Undergarment

Notes