8. Wet T-Shirt Contest

The first wet T-shirt contest wasn’t held in some tropical sunny clime; it took place in January at a ski resort in Idaho. In 1969, a sales rep for a company called K2 hired a filmmaker to shoot some footage of professional skiers “hotdogging” on the slopes in Sun Valley. The 12-minute film was used as a promotional tool to sell K2’s new line of skis, and the distributors loved it. They clamored for a new film the next year, and the next. In January 1971, production on the third film was wrapping up when a K2 rep informed the filmmaker that the following week was “airline week” at Sun Valley, and gave him 200 K2 T-shirts to give away to the stewardesses (as they were still called at the time) who would be attending. Officials got together and decided to award a prize to whomever looked the “best” in a T-shirt.
After a few rounds of drinks, they decided to add a degree of “difficulty” to the contest—the ladies would have to dive into the resort’s heated pool clad in the shirt, and extra points would be awarded if she did so sans brassiere. Not surprisingly, the event was a roaring success. K2 staged a similar event later that year at the Red Onion in Aspen, and that time Playboy had photographers on the sidelines. Many of the participants were later featured in a full-color spread.

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