The wearable sensors have problems of poor experience, high cost and complex construction. To address these issues, an optically wireless tension sensor is developed with strain-sensitive fluorescent material painted on paper. The novel flexible probe uses the mixture of Rhodamine B (RhB) and PDMS as sensing material and the composite is screen printed onto a piece of fine art paper. The fluorescence characteristics of RhB are found linearly depending on the tension applied to the paper slice. Therefore, the sensing functions of the paper-based fluorescence sensor are calibrated on a customized force loading test bench. The constructed sensor is assembled to a wearable device. Then, the finger flexion could be successfully detected by the fluorescence. The finest resolution of the prepared sensor is 0. 04 N over a measuring range of 6 N. This study presents an optical wearable tensiometer employing a non-lightguide principle for the first time. It has potential application in human health evaluation, rehabilitation exercise and joint posture monitoring.