Skin-on-skin: Silicone nipple covers and the aesthetics of natural beauty in contemporary Chinese fashion culture

This article examines the growing popularity of silicone nipple covers among female consumers in mainland China, exploring how their material and haptic aesthetics resonate with cultural imaginations of ‘natural beauty’ in the Chinese context. In this study, we propose that these consumer products are not only practical accessories but also aesthetic objects that evoke what we term a ‘skin-on-skin imagination’ – a sensory fantasy in which the silicone material is imagined as an extension of the body’s own skin, making the body paradoxically ‘naturally beautiful’. We argue that silicone nipple covers are mediating agents that construct the connection between one’s physical body and the cultural imagination of a beautiful body. Through a material-aesthetic lens grounded in new materialism and hapticity theory, we analyse how silicone’s tactile properties facilitate this seamless embodiment and become central to cultural negotiations around femininity and self-presentation. Drawing on a case study of Chinese consumer discourse on the social media platform Xiaohongshu, we trace how female consumers experience silicone nipple covers as both liberating and constraining, revealing layered tensions between comfort and discomfort, confidence and embarrassment and freedom and unfreedom. Ultimately, we argue that hapticity and materiality are often overlooked yet productive starting points for unpacking the complex negotiations between ideologies, embedded cultural values and everyday life as new global aesthetic trends are on the rise.