Sports Nudity
Everyone at some point or the other has probably seen one of those crazy streaking fans that run onto a field and disrupt a match. Men and women both feel an urge to make a point by striping off all their clothes and running naked onto a football pitch or a rugby match. Even tennis has had its share of streakers. They seem to have some strange desire to do something crazy for the amusement of others. At other times it isn’t nudity by streaking that is the only type, sometimes sports players get naked and engage in a spot of naked sports.
Streaking has been around for a long time, it seems to happen in every sport but why though, what is the motivation that some people feel the need to take their clothes off at a sporting event? It could be that they want to experience the thrill of running around without their clothes on or the fact that they want to entertain the crowd by their actions. A tennis match in 1996 experienced a streaking woman who got loose from the crowd. “The 1996 Wimbledon's Men's singles final between MaliVai Washington and Richard Krajicek was interrupted by a female streaker just before the toss. Melissa Johnson, a 23 year old student thereby became Wimbledon's first streaker,” .Nudity is an odd phenomenon, although it has become a social state people enjoy in some places in the world. Nude beaches are popular all over the world and there are even nudist camps where people enjoy being in the au natural state that they were born in. Now it has even come into the world of sports.
As a society we insist that our members wear some sort of clothing to cover their bodies. Some defy this tradition and go without clothing and now have taken to playing sports without them as well. This phenomenon has a historical tradition as well because some ancient games were played with the athletes being completely naked throughout the process. “In ancient Sparta, the Gymnopaedia was a yearly celebration during which naked youths displayed their athletic and martial skills through the medium of dancing,” As times moved on and people evolved as did cultures and traditions, the nudity of athletes wasn’t really acceptable anymore. Athletes soon found themselves in all kinds of outfits and uniforms. However some rebels decided to continue fighting societal norms and yearned to play their favourite sports in the buff. We can just imagine two athletes playing a sport like tennis or badminton in the nude but we really don’t want to picture a full contact sport like rugby being played in the nude. A very probable reason for not playing sports in the nude is for the protection of the athletes. Being hit by something like a hard football hurts when a player is fully clothed but if a person’s clothes are removed, that hit of a ball becomes so much more dangerous. A big reason for guards and other protective gear were introduced into sports to protect vulnerable areas of an athlete. By being naked, the athlete is fully exposed and at the mercy of being hit in an awkward area. Benign things like swimming and athletics can be done in the nude but definitely not contact sports. One has to wonder why nude sports haven’t caught on more because they should have for the obvious reason that people are naked. Nudity in sports probably mirrors nudity in society. As long as nudity in society is a fringe element with nudist camps and beaches the only acceptable place for people to be naked in public, the same way only certain sports and certain athletes can be acceptably naked while engaging in sports.
Hopefully more athletes will keep their clothes on in the future and keep themselves protected from being injured by being hit. Nude sports don’t seem likely that they will become very main stream any time soon because being naked in public is just not kosher amongst the members of society and unacceptable. There will always be those that will go the route of being naked while playing sports but they will be few and far between.
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