The Nudist Parties of Yale

This just in: well-lit nudity not only makes almost everyone less attractive, it also makes conversation just so much more profound, as the organizers of a Yale nudist party discovered.

This was no bacchanal. A few students danced, with less body contact than normal, and the men seemed more self-conscious than the women. When a couple started making out in the back of the room, a barefoot member of the Pundits, the student society that threw the party, asked them to leave...

“It’s one of those things people feel they need to do before they graduate,” says Megan Crandell, a senior who estimates that she has been to a half-dozen naked parties during her time at Yale. “The dynamic is completely different from a clothed party. People are so conscious of how they’re coming across that conversations end up being more sophisticated. You can’t talk about how hot that chick was the other night.”

We had nudist parties at my school, but it didn't add much to the conversation, devolving by the fifth drink into demonstrable bets on which clamped orifice made the best make shift bottle opener. If a girl won the contest, she was in high demand for the rest of the night.

Black Tie Optional [New York Times] (via Centripetal Notion)