When I recently watched a TikTok of someone smashing two pies into a model’s face, my type A self immediately felt compelled to wipe up the cream filling dripping down her head and blouse with a paper towel. But apparently, what I deemed a hot mess, others think of as, well, hot.
Pie throwing is a common outlet for a food fetish known as sploshing, Lana Holmes, a psychologist at Onward and Outward Center for Inclusive Therapy and Wellness in the metro Atlanta area, tells me. Sploshing can also look like sitting your bare ass on a cake (a.k.a, cake sitting), wading in a kiddie pool of milk and cereal, or even more vanilla activities (sorry), like licking frosting off your partner’s skin. The more examples I learned about, the more I understood the appeal (and the more I needed a cold shower).
