From classical times right down to the modern age, people have understood that playing games in the nude is the best way to have maximum fun. The storied Olympic Games of ancient Greece were thus conducted free of textile hindrances, a legacy upon which 20th-century “naturists” drew heavily in defending their al fresco coed naked ball games:
Across the ages, prudish objections to nudity in gaming have been deflected by the claim that undressed “exercise” or “sport” or “physical culture” has nothing to with, you know, squalid old sticky sex. But this claim, although tactically useful in defense against the Grundies, has always been a blatant lie. Absolutely the oldest monkey game of all is to make up excuses for displays of prowess and physical beauty. It’s the fast smooth road to both sex and status!
Fine artists have never been able to decide what is better: men and women naked at play together, or a canvas like the one above by Alfred Schwarzschild that focuses on a bunch of naked ladies playing, er, with themselves. More tits makes for better ogling, didn’t you know? Fortunately, comic postcard artists like O’Neil and Pedro reject these dubious dichotomies. They understand that we want and need to see a bit of sexual tension, whether the game is nudist women’s basketball, or some skeevey barely-a-game shenanigan dreamed up by the men at the camp to get some feelie hands-on time with their feminine comrades in physical culture:
You might be like me, though, and be too much of a body-shy introvert for nudist games (or for any other public naughty-bits flapping). When I’m up for nude games that aren’t happening in my own home, I naturally turn to the twin miracles of display screens and electronic gaming. (Sites like Best Sex Games and Best Porn Games offer a convenient intro to an enormous spectrum of arousing electronic amusements.) The alluring nature of electronic screens was not lost even on nature-loving, sun-worshiping nudists of the old school; or so a famous photograph tells us. Sony used this image of naturists, seemingly transfixed by electronics with their implements of “physical culture” gaming still in hand, to advertise one of its early portable televisions:
Fortunately for sedentary people, there’s lots of precedent for conducting intellectual games in the nude, too. (Computer gamers of minimal sartorial habit, though not often accused of intellectualism, will nonetheless be pleased to hear this.) My best evidence for the proposition that any kind of game can be played nude for the purposes of display and status enhancement is this famous 1963 photo of celebrated French artist Marcel Duchamp playing chess in public with the delightfully-endowed naked-person Eve Babitz:
I rest my case.
