Preface To Shirts: If I Have To Be Skins, I'm Going Home

"Shirts versus Skins (or Shirts & Skins)," says the Wikipedia, "is a common form of denoting team affiliations in an informal sports game; typically when played on a public court or park. The practice involves the members of one team wearing shirts while the other does not. This is used in the absence of uniforms."

There's also apparently a band called Shirts Vs. Skins, though I've never heard their music.

I also happened to find this poll which "explores male shirtlessness in sports particularly in team sports or other group sports where guys are only involved," & that sounds a little gay.

I never thought of it as gay when I was a kid, but I hated shirts vs. skins games, & don't remember ever taking my shirt off when a shirts vs. skins game was played so I either a) didn't play in those games or b) managed to weasel my way onto the shirts team (which was also probably the losing team, full of guys too self-conscious to take their shirts off) (how awful was it that we were self-conscious at an early age) so I didn't have to take my shirt off.

The weird thing is, I'm pretty sure we had shirts vs. skins games in middle school gym class. I think perhaps the coaches who taught P.E. would choose the teams so that the fat kids & the deformed kids & whoever else didn't want to take their shirts off were put into the same team. I don't remember having any mean P.E. teachers in middle school. The really mean apparently taught in high school.