I’m the owner of the latex fetish clothing company Kinky King Latex, which has an e-commerce website at kinkykinglatex.com. Several months ago, I decided that with the help of several of my employees, I would make videos to promote my website on Youtube. Little did I know that those videos would turn into an interesting and surprising social experiment.

We arrived in downtown Chicago at about noon – a perfect time to hit the lunchtime crowds of office workers. I changed into my first of several outfits – a black inflatable latex catsuit – in the less than clean bathroom of the “hut” where the attendant spent his days collecting obscene amounts of money for renting parking spaces. The attendant was quite surprised to see me emerge hooded and inflated.

After leaving the parking lot, we began to run into our first pedestrians. We expected gasps, stares, questions and general amazement at the sight of a latex encased, hooded and inflated man walking down the street amongst thousands of people. But what we got was almost no response at all. Many people averted their eyes. Some looked for 1-2 seconds. Most stared straight and acted as if they had not even seen me.

Ok, I thought. If these people won’t give me a good reaction for the video on the street – I’ll go into an enclosed area – where they’re sure to react. We spotted a Barnes & Nobles and entered it. After video taping for about 5 minutes inside – even stopping to browse the magazines amongst other customers – we still did not elicit any reactions! Next, McDonalds. Ordered some food. The woman who took my order did so in a totally normal way, as if I was wearing a business suit. The only reaction at McDonalds came from the manager who told us that it was forbidden to video tape inside…

Out of several thousand people who saw me that day, perhaps 10 took photos with their cell phones, and 5 asked what the inflatable catsuit was used for. So in the end, our videos we made showing people’s “non-reactions” were as interesting or more so than the reactions we had intended to elicit. The lesson learned was clear: people intentionally block or ignore stimuli that are outside of their comfort zones. Next time perhaps we’ll put someone in a latex sleep sack or some other type of bondage equipment and see what happens then…