Have you heard of the body swap fetish?
If so, you may have felt a little lost, trying to grasp what it was. After all, the body swap kink doesn’t seem like a kink at all, but an area of interest like cake decorating or foreign films.
On the other hand, you may have understood immediately the appeal of the body swap fetish, because the idea of someone transforming from one character or entity into another causes your whole body to hum.
The body swap fetish is very real for some, but it may still feel unusual or strange that a concept or idea, rather than something traditionally sexy or sexual, is what drives their libido and satisfaction.
Read: What Are My Kinks? 13 Ways to Find Your Kink
What Is the Body Swap Fetish?
The body swap fetish is when someone feels sexual and psychological excitement, arousal, and pleasure from the idea or enactment of swapping bodies or physical identities with someone else. It is a kind of transformation fetish.
People with a body swap fetish may feel an unexpected sexual excitement when watching movies or reading stories that imagine body swapping.
Read: 17 Transformation Fetishes and Kinks
There are many different fantasies and specific kinks that fall under the body swap fetish.
10 Body Swap Fetishes & Kinks
1. Gender Role Body Swap
Gender swapping by role play, or gender cosplay is perhaps the most common way to explore body swapping. It can be a way to change the power exchange dynamics or it can be playful and fun.
Gender body swap fetish play can also involve autogynophilia, a fetish where a male is aroused by the idea of himself as a woman. Perhaps the only way outside of fantasy to body swap is to change genders, which is sometimes explored as a sexual fetish through sissification, or forced feminization.
Dollification is also a body swap fetish of sorts, related to gender swap or sissification. The object can be to transform into a female doll or mannequin.
Read: Gender Play: 12 Gender Bending Kinks and Fetishes
2. Non-Consensual Body Swap
Some people who have a body swap fetish are excited by the idea of being forced to change identities. The transformation isn’t sexually stimulating to them unless it has that element of surprise or fear. The vulnerability and powerlessness of transforming unexpectedly into someone else is the arousing part of the kink.
Read: Fear Play: 12 Examples and Tips for Playing with Fear
3. Age Regression and Progression
Age play is all about role playing or transforming into a different age, either progression or regression. Reverting into a child or baby can be about giving up responsibility and finding comfort, but it can be part of a body swap fetish too.
Read: 11 Age Play Fetishes and Kinks
4. Choose Your Own Identity
While some only feel excitement when the body swap is non-consensual, others enjoy the body swap fetish because the idea of choosing and constructing your own identity is what’s exciting.
Read: BDSM Roles: 33 Dominant and Submissive Roles
5. Exploring Various Identities
Like actors taking on different roles for the experience and challenge, the body swap fetish can be intellectually and sexually stimulating for the adventure of exploring different identities.
Read: Sexual Roleplay: A Guide for Roleplay Beginners
6. Body Swap BDSM: Total Power or the Ultimate Submission
Changing age or changing gender in a body swap fetish can change power dynamics. Body swapping play can be part of BDSM. Sometimes dominants and submisives play at body swapping to change it up.
Transforming into a confident and powerful role can be exciting. Being reduced to the prison of a lowly identity can be the ultimate form of submission or humiliation.
Read: Humiliation Kink: 18 Examples of Erotic Embarrassment
7. Mind Control and Hypnosis
One way to explore this role play and fantasy-based fetish is through mind control and hypnosis. The idea of being programmed or directed by the will of another, enough to transform into another identity, is exciting for many.
Read: Under the Spell: Hypnosis Fetish and Hypnokink
8. Body Swap Race Play
Occasionally we hear about high profile celebrities or politicians who assumed the identity of someone of another race. The word “transracial” sometimes gets bandied around.
With racial politics, minstrel theater history, and appropriation questions, most people don’t talk about exploring different races as body swap play, but there have films and books about this. They may be considered in poor taste or worse.
However, there are people comfortable with race play and some people of color advocate for the agency to explore their sexuality without being stifled by rules they didn’t make. Whether or not this kind of body swapping makes sense to you, it exists in role play.
Read: Raceplay: BDSM Power Play or Just Plain Racist?
9. Plushies, Furries, and Cosplay
Furries and plushies enjoy the fun of dressing up as a favorite cartoon character or animal figure. For some, it is a way to enjoy the body swap fetish. Puppy play and pony play are popular fetishes that involve dressing up and acting like a puppy or pony, and these can be perceived as kinds of body swapping through anthropomorphism.
10. Feeder Fantasy and Gainer Fetish
Many of us imagine body swapping every day, into someone who is slimmer. That transformation is sexually exciting for some people with a body swap fetish, but there is a whole fetish culture surrounding feeders and feedees, where the fattening body is the source of sexual arousal.
Feederism is about deep submission for some people, as the feedee can become morbidly obese and unable to care for themselves. For others, it is not about the power exchange at all but about the body swap fetish.
Read: Feederism: Feeding and Gaining Fetish Explained
Body Swap Fetish as Transhumanism
The body swap fetish is one of those really interesting fetishes that isn’t made up of obvious sexual triggers connected to biological markers of reproduction. But some people hold a deeply seated belief in transhumanism, and it isn’t just a matter of science fiction literature.
Transformation beyond what we perceive as human, and transcending nature through technology and engineering, is part of our evolution. In this philosophical perspective, virtual reality or sex robots are not unnatural or cold, but part of our potential.
Read: The Pros & Cons of Sex Robots
Creating and transforming our bodies and our consciousness through technology, science, spirituality, and imagination is essential. In this way of seeing, procreation or sexuality are not limited by our ancient genetic programming.
Our minds, through machinery, technology, and laboratory explorations, create and procreate. Creation is not limited in any way. From this perspective, the body transformation fetish is not necessarily just a fantasy, and it is rooted in a more expansive kind of sexuality.
Do you have a body swap fetish or kink? How do you indulge your fetish?
Tell us what you think