Note: This entry is a W.I.P.
About
Expansion / Inflation is a common type of paraphilia where a particular part of the subject’s body suddenly grows, expanding like inflatable balloons. It is generally focused on the breasts, butt, belly, and full body.
Origin
While a specific origin regarding when an interest in this fetish began, it’s origins among the online community can be traced to an email list that was formed in 1994. Among popular media, some say the earliest sources of Expansion / Inflation include cartoons involving cartoon characters being pumped up like balloons, or the movie adaptation of Roald Dhal’s famous book Charlie & The Chocolate Factory (the 1970s adaptation changing the name to Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory), in which a girl named Violet Beauregarde tries a failed experimental gum which causes her body to inflate full of blueberry juice. It is often these forms of media where some people first discover they have a liking for this particular fetish, often at a young age due to said media being of a “family friendly” nature.
Breasts
The most common and popular Expansion / Inflation of them all is the breasts. The popularity of this specific form of expansion can even be seen among those who normally would not consider themselves fans of the inflation fetish as a whole, as large breasts are often seen in real life as a major sexual turn on. This is also a form of expansion a person can do in real life via means of plastic surgery, but of course in the realm of art most characters depicted usually have their breasts expanded by various means. Some overlap among lactation fetishism can be found here as well, as a semi-popular method of breast expansion among artwork or fictional stories is a character has a large build up of milk within their breasts.
Butt
Legendary American rapper Sir-Mix-A-Lot released his album Mack Daddy with his famous song Baby Got Back on May 7, 1992. A music video of Baby Got Back was aired on MTV, including the earlier episodes of Beavis & Butt-Head. Nearing the end of the music video shows a 80’s style woman standing, with her butt suddenly expanding. You can say that Sir-Mix-A-Lot is the creator of butt expansion.
Belly
This Expansion / Inflation is mostly about rapid pregnancy and sometimes stuffing in 70s and 80s horror and comedy movies.
Body
One movie that possibly birth body expansion / inflation is the aforementioned infamous blueberry scene from character Violet Beauregarde, played by Denise Nickerson in 1971 musical fantasy film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.
Spread
When deviantART was created, this type of art spread like wildfire, and later Tumblr. Searching for “inflation” on deviantART alone presently brings up over 100,000 results, with “expansion” increasing that amount to over 122,000. An imageboard dedicated specifically to inflation fetish artwork, photo manipulations, etc, also exists under the name of Inflatechan, which only disallows the posting of “paid content” from its boards.