The wetsuit and male genitalia jambalaya. A predicament as classic as time itself. Photo: Terrell Woods
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Have you ever jammed your dick in a shop vac and turned it on? You can tell me. It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone, you sick freak. A long time ago, I read a Palahniuk story about a kid who got his butthole stuck on a pool circulation pump while doing some personal exploration. It is horrendous. While I haven’t encountered any nightmares as graphic or painful as the pool vacuum story in surfing, a handful of wetsuits have certainly attempted to vacuum pack the penis into a painfully braided stomach burrito. You know what I’m talking about: dick suction and wetsuits. Whether you like to admit it, everyone deals with wetsuit suction on their genitals. You know, when you hop in the water and, for some reason, your dick is glued to your stomach, but you’re acting like it doesn’t matter one bit? Yeah, you know. Let’s talk real talk. Let’s talk wetsuits and penis-suction.
“I am very aware of this issue because I’ve experienced it before,” says 7TILL8 Wetsuits President Andrew Park. “There are a lot of variables that come into play when you have any kind of multi-intersection seam line. The crotch is one of the most problematic ones.”
But the suction thing. What’s up with that? Surely, there must be some semi-scientific explanation for why and how a wetsuit manages to strangle your penis with such terrifying furor.
“We find that a lot of surfers size down,” says Park. “When you’re sizing down, you’re creating a lot of tension around certain areas, and the most common area is the torso. By putting tension on top of your shoulders and where your crotch is, it’s creating that suction. And when you get in the water where certain seam lines loosen up a little bit, you get that suction effect.”
So why do some wetsuits contort your penis into an awkward belly pretzel while others don’t? The answer is pretty simple: It’s your torso. Apparently, there should be no excess fabric in the small of your back.
“If it feels like there’s this trampoline [of material] on your back, then your torso is actually too long for the fit of the wetsuit,” says Park. “It should be placed right over the skin, and that should avoid that suction feeling when you’re in the water.”
Beyond that, your wetsuit, depending on the age and/or make and/or thickness, sucks. Literally. The water pressure from the outside coupled with the inherent tightness of neoprene and the colossally-stupid design of the male genitalia is a recipe for a few very uncomfortable moments. But what about women? Do women struggle with a similar issue? Turns out, a little.
“Yes, pattern design does affect a way the crotch fits women,” says Park. “It is very different, and it’s actually a simpler pattern for women. It’s not as prevalent in women’s suits in comparison to men. We have more responses to crotch area for men, whereas, for women, we don’t see it as much.”
As it turns out, the simple approach tends to be more effective.
“With our crotch design, we like to go with simplicity,” says Park. “We like to create one large crotch panel and one large chest and hips so there’s more flexibility in that area.”
The bummer is that you never really know if your wetsuit is a crotch murderer until you buy it. After all, you have to go commando post-purchase before the truth comes out. If you’re trying on wetsuits in stores naked, then you’re a jerk and you deserve all the wetsuit penis suction the world has in store for you. However, if and when it does happen, no amount of tugging or stretching or shifting seems to fix it. Once things are twisted around down there, you’ve got to live with the discomfort until things go back to normal on their own. Hell, I’ve had particularly bad wetsuits that have such bad dick-suction issues that I honestly can’t even tell where things are, and I, like most red-blooded males, am generally pretty aware of where things are.
“The crotch area is a very difficult area to perfect,” says Park. “It’s not just the crotch area; it’s multiple places where there’s a lot of curvatures like the armpits and the neck, the knees. These are all areas that have to be constantly reviewed and improved on. We don’t have anyone dedicated to [the crotch full time], but overall to make a good-fitting wetsuit, everything needs to be accounted for.”
