Aliens, clothes and nudity

[Zor]

This is something I think about (and not in that sense). I'll start with John Carter of Mars: a science fiction series in which everyone (even members of advanced civilizations) walks about naked all the time save for jewelry and some belts for holsters and scabbards and similar and consider it bizarre that people on earth "wrap themselves in dirty cloth". This is particularly noteworthy since A: even going by the crude astronomy of the time where people could imagine Mars as a world with life, it was not in question that it would be Colder than Earth and B: Most of Barsoom is a desert for the most part desert dwelling peoples tended not to walk around in their skivvies (the Arabs for one, the Apaches for another). Mind you Burroughs seems to have a thing for buck-naked perfect specimens of White Masculinity excelling when thrown into an exotic environment in general. There are a few other instances of aliens which go about in the buff and disparage humans for not doing so. But this raises some comments about this sort of things relating to clothes.

As I see it there are five functions of clothing...

• Protection against the elements (a Parka, a spacesuit, etc.)
• Utilitarian Purposes (work clothing, stuff with pockets, gloves, safety gear and so forth)
• A sign of status (a really fancy dress), occupation (a chef's uniform) or both (a military uniform with Rank Insignia)
• A form of expression (Fashion)
• Functions relating to sexuality: either as a way of downplaying sexual stimulation, enhancing it or refining it to various degrees.

As such I have reason to believe that aliens that have some physiological similarity to humans would most likely were clothing to some degree, even if their sex drive were different (having a fixed mating season triggered by pheramones, males are like anglerfish and so forth). Would you agree with this assessment?

Zor

[The Romulan Republic]

1 and 2 you would almost expect to find among any technologically advanced alien society, depending on circumstances, as they are practical/utilitarian.

3-5 are more cultural, and so would depend on the psychology and values of the species in question.

[FaxModem1]

The Race(a meter tall reptilian species) from the Harry Turtledove books used bodypaint across their bodies for all such purposes except for weather and safety. It was only with exposure to our planet that it started to change, with clothing and wigs becoming a fad on their homeworld, with the caveat that humans were doing the same thing and a lot of human teenagers were going around shirtless with Race bodypaint.

[Zixinus]

The common reason for naked aliens is that its hard to design aliens in the first place. Designing clothes is a different talent and another layer of difficulty. Remember that an artist has to visulise how an alien moves about, which is already difficult without adding the complication of making clothes work with it. This is especially more difficult with non-human aliens that use non-bipedal motion or even do something as exotic as fly.
Plus, you know, there is a great appeal in having alien women being as close to naked as possible.

Clothing is interesting because it is a technology that is ancient but rapidly keeps up with changes while flexible enough to express so much. Nature assures that the heat-tolerances of animals are good enough but a sapient entity might still find it good to go from "good enough" to "great". Mammals have to spend calories to keep warm. Wind and rain are regular problems. People who live indoors most of their lives underestimate how important good clothes can be.

[Elheru Aran]

Consider our world.

Take jungle areas: the common clothing is as little as possible, but that little is jealously preserved. There's tribes in Papua New Guinea where the men literally run about in nothing but a bit of string and a carefully grown, long skinny gourd over one essential part of the body (and yes... there is some competition as to who has the longest, ahem, gourd). But without that gourd? They'd never show their face in polite society.

This is quite a contrast to Western society, where the mandatory for polite society is at least pants and a shirt. But even only fifty years ago, men rarely went out in public without a tie. A few decades before that, hats were obligatory when going outdoors. And a few decades before *that*, jackets (something similar to suit jackets, not winter jackets).

So your break-down of why clothes are worn is reasonable. But as far as it goes, the only practical reasons to wear clothing are utility and protection. A spacefaring race that doesn't care for modesty, for example, might still wear some kind of vest or belt arrangement with multiple pouches. A species with large exposed genitalia may wear some sort of protective garment. That kind of thing.

If you're interested, Wayne Barlowe has done some artwork of alien-like beings with clothing. He's a pretty good artist as far as that kind of thing goes.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Yeah Laziness the number one factor in this and so many other "generalizations" in ski-fi.
The "One Climate" world (Hoth, Endor)
The "One Religion" world (virtually any world in Start Trek)
And of course the "Only one nation" worlds.

It's the same thing with the "Naked Alien" business.
I mean, in most Sci-FI WITH clothing, it is basically Human knock off clothing dressed up a bit.

[madd0ct0r]

One of the reasons I wear breathable clothes Is because I sweat, and a wicking fabric is needed between me and solid surfaces, or prorus ones I don't want to wash daily.

Even other mammals don't sweat generally, so you might find plastics more common than for us

[Elheru Aran]

A few things you could play with when writing:

--Perhaps the aliens are allergic to say reptile skin, so it's weird for them to see people wearing crocodile-skin boots...

--A religious aversion to fabric made from the hair of a certain animal which resembles a sheep and produces something very similar to wool; the leader of the human delegation who comes to make a treaty with the aliens is wearing a wool suit...

Or turn it around; say the aliens have visited Earth before, and the leader of *their* delegation shows up wearing a finely sewn (after their fashion) suit of human skin.

[Zor]

The "One Climate" world (Hoth

Because Ice Worlds don't exist in real life

Zor

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, while it is physically possible for a world to be covered in ice, it isn't normal. And long-term ice coverage will destroy a planetary biosphere to the point where it has no breathable atmosphere.

This is something I think about (and not in that sense). I'll start with John Carter of Mars: a science fiction series in which everyone (even members of advanced civilizations) walks about naked all the time save for jewelry and some belts for holsters and scabbards and similar and consider it bizarre that people on earth "wrap themselves in dirty cloth". This is particularly noteworthy since A: even going by the crude astronomy of the time where people could imagine Mars as a world with life, it was not in question that it would be Colder than Earth and B: Most of Barsoom is a desert for the most part desert dwelling peoples tended not to walk around in their skivvies (the Arabs for one, the Apaches for another). Mind you Burroughs seems to have a thing for buck-naked perfect specimens of White Masculinity excelling when thrown into an exotic environment in general. There are a few other instances of aliens which go about in the buff and disparage humans for not doing so. But this raises some comments about this sort of things relating to clothes.

Burroughs' Mars basically says "Climatology? What climatology?" While more scientifically literate 1900-era authors would correctly conclude Mars should be colder than Earth, and drier, Burroughs basically chose to ignore the issue.

Burroughs is soft SF by the standards of 1900. Hard SF would be something more like Wells or Verne.

As I see it there are five functions of clothing...

• Protection against the elements (a Parka, a spacesuit, etc.)
• Utilitarian Purposes (work clothing, stuff with pockets, gloves, safety gear and so forth)
• A sign of status (a really fancy dress), occupation (a chef's uniform) or both (a military uniform with Rank Insignia)
• A form of expression (Fashion)
• Functions relating to sexuality: either as a way of downplaying sexual stimulation, enhancing it or refining it to various degrees.

As such I have reason to believe that aliens that have some physiological similarity to humans would most likely were clothing to some degree, even if their sex drive were different (having a fixed mating season triggered by pheramones, males are like anglerfish and so forth). Would you agree with this assessment?

I can't think of a sixth item on the list.

Aliens who are well adapted to their environment might well not have much need for (1), and (2) would tend to be situational. People on Barsoom presumably have belts with pouches, Barsoomian metalworkers would presumably wear protective gear, and so on. That doesn't mean the culture in general is fully on board with clothes.

It's sort of like how (at least in the US) the custom is to NOT wear gloves, unless you have a specific reason TO wear gloves. Someone walking around with gloves on in weather that doesn't require it, in a situation where the hands don't obviously need protection, will look strange.

(3) and (4) seem to be an outgrowth of (1) and (2). Precisely because everyone and their cousin Fred wears clothes, the exact nature of how we choose to wear our clothes becomes a status symbol and a form of self-expression. See the "Lizards from Worldwar" example cited earlier. A bunch of scaly alien lizards, whose scales protect them against their environment and most workplace hazards, might well not bother to develop clothing as a status symbol, and might instead express themselves and their social standing through, oh, body paint. The greatest leaders have uniquely shiny bodypaint, and stripes and dots and curlicues act as a signaling device.

(5) is a complete crap-shoot, since it will depend on what the aliens find sexually attractive, and when they find it so.

--A religious aversion to fabric made from the hair of a certain animal which resembles a sheep and produces something very similar to wool; the leader of the human delegation who comes to make a treaty with the aliens is wearing a wool suit...

They might not even recognize it; wool isn't visually distinctive from other kinds of cloth, and if it's forbidden to make that type of cloth, they won't necessarily know what it looks like. Plus, for all they know, we have naturally occuring plant fibers that just happen to look a lot like wool.

Or turn it around; say the aliens have visited Earth before, and the leader of *their* delegation shows up wearing a finely sewn (after their fashion) suit of human skin.

Same problem. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't know a people-leather suit if I saw one, not if it was preserved well enough that it would last and not decay.

[Elheru Aran]

--A religious aversion to fabric made from the hair of a certain animal which resembles a sheep and produces something very similar to wool; the leader of the human delegation who comes to make a treaty with the aliens is wearing a wool suit...

They might not even recognize it; wool isn't visually distinctive from other kinds of cloth, and if it's forbidden to make that type of cloth, they won't necessarily know what it looks like. Plus, for all they know, we have naturally occuring plant fibers that just happen to look a lot like wool.

Or turn it around; say the aliens have visited Earth before, and the leader of *their* delegation shows up wearing a finely sewn (after their fashion) suit of human skin.

Same problem. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't know a people-leather suit if I saw one, not if it was preserved well enough that it would last and not decay.

Both of these are fair points. Both of these can be averted with careful writing. Or not so careful, as the author's talents may lie.

"Say, that's a nice robe you're wearing, Ag-Bahz. Is it a special garment on your planet?"

"Very special, Mr. Smith. My grandfather harvested the material for it on this very world. I believe he found most of it in a place you call 'New-York-City'. It seems he found the source of many of these skins just walking around right there... a number of them even came with artistic patterns, see this butterfly here? It seems that was in the lower back of a particularly attractive female of your species..."

[Sea Skimmer]

Nude aliens are just silly unless they are physically large. Otherwise its hard to see how they could not need cloths, humans need clothes to adapt to a wide range of climates plain and simple. Without them we could not live on large areas of the planet, and if we still had fur, the same story. The more a creature weighs the less a factor this is going to be.

[Simon_Jester]

Large, I assume, because creatures with low surface-to-volume ratios are less sensitive to temperature extremes?

Well.

That's a compelling argument. On the other hand, it may be that there exist alien biologies which have found ways to adapt to temperature extremes more fully than on Earth. We wouldn't be able to predict these temperature regulation mechanisms, but perhaps they're as far beyond the mechanisms of us warm-blooded animals as the warm-blooded animals are beyond the cold-blooded ones.

Or there may be intelligent tool-users for whom clothes are ubiquitous tools... but they're still viewed very differently than on Earth. Lots of humans carry knives, virtually all humans use knives, but knives are not seen as a necessary accessory except in a handful of cultures. If you have no utilitarian reason to have a knife on your person, you usually won't, and there are only a few societies where someone is 'naked' because they walk around without a knife on.

Using knives is a universal experience, but not carrying one for personal use except when needed is also a near-universal experience.

Clothes might be similar in the eyes of a hypothetical bunch of aliens.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah, bigger you are the easier you regulate without large metabolic changes. Extreme form of this is the dinosaurs which we now strongly believe were both hot and cold blooded. But also feathered...which makes that function way more useful.

Even then though you almost certainly couldn't have one land dwelling species which is biologically okay in the tropics and the polar regions, it isn't for nothing that so many animals hibernate or migrate to avoid the winter. Either you use thick fur, you have clothes or you get the hell away from cold, you will not make enough heat to avoid death without extensive insulation. Surviving the worst heat on earth requires clothing too, to keep the sun off your skin. And we have ample enough evidence that even domestic animals like horses and dogs can appreciate clothing, so it's not like this is some picky human nature thing.

And even if you handwavium that away, you'd still need all kinds of clothing, gloves and masks to have a plausible industrial revolution. At which point an advanced intelligent species innovative enough to build starships and become relevant to humanity just totally declining to go further with clothing, say for all it allows as a form of self expression, is just pretty damn silly. They can't be unthinking drone morons or they'd never solve any damn practical problems and figure out how to start making rocket engines explode.

You want some naked aliens for a story or whatever,whatever then, but this is another one of those sci fi cliches which requires a total lack of initiative in an alien culture to be persistent for arbitrarily long periods of time, which is totally contrary to the kind of dynamism we would expect a race with advanced engineering to need.

Humans are a pretty high stress creature, so our sensitivity to temperature makes sense, why not evolve to be sensitive when you are already smart, but a much less sensitive species would still hit all these problems before it can blast off into space.

Aliens in which is not a social requirement to use clothing at all times in public are one thing, the classic naked grey aliens make as much sense to me as the conspiracy theories they come from. Funny that tin foil appeared at the same time..just like all our UFO reports began after stratospheric aircraft entered service.

[K. A. Pital]

Unless the race just mastered bio-engineering without machine tools.

Then lack of clothes could be totally plausible.

[Formless]

These are aliens we're talking about, you guys realize; who says that fur will evolve on every planet? Textiles aren't just a technological development that can happen everywhere, they are predicated on a biological coincidence. For instance, if everything evolved feathers instead, clothes may or may not exist but I'm certain they wouldn't look like the stuff we drape ourselves in.

[Zor]

Or there may be intelligent tool-users for whom clothes are ubiquitous tools... but they're still viewed very differently than on Earth. Lots of humans carry knives, virtually all humans use knives, but knives are not seen as a necessary accessory except in a handful of cultures. If you have no utilitarian reason to have a knife on your person, you usually won't, and there are only a few societies where someone is 'naked' because they walk around without a knife on

There is another point about knives that you are overlooking: their use as weapons. Unless you are in a situation which warrants having a knife carrying a knife on your person can send a bad message in a lot of situations. Just as people are going to be suspicious if your carrying a hammer to a formal event.

Besides if your carrying a knife you need something to carry it with unless you want to hold it all day long.

These are aliens we're talking about, you guys realize; who says that fur will evolve on every planet? Textiles aren't just a technological development that can happen everywhere, they are predicated on a biological coincidence. For instance, if everything evolved feathers instead, clothes may or may not exist but I'm certain they wouldn't look like the stuff we drape ourselves in.

Feathers are rather specialized artifacts with a complex evolution and development. But in any case there are other materials that are used for fibers textiles in various ways from plants, from cotton to retted fibers such as hemp to barkcloth. There are others such as silk and probably other critters that could make fibers that could be used in addition to wool. Then there are things like hides.

Zor

[Ziggy Stardust]

These are aliens we're talking about, you guys realize; who says that fur will evolve on every planet? Textiles aren't just a technological development that can happen everywhere, they are predicated on a biological coincidence. For instance, if everything evolved feathers instead, clothes may or may not exist but I'm certain they wouldn't look like the stuff we drape ourselves in.

It seems to me that whatever adaptations the plants and animals have to their environment on a given alien world, there will be SOME way to harvest that for a textile-equivalent, even if it doesn't resemble exactly what we on Earth. Really, the important qualities you need in primitive clothing are layers (which can be as simple as skins, stuffed with leaves or feathers or fur or whatever alien equivalents) and something to physically hold them onto your body (which is somewhat dependent on the animal's physiology, but if there is plant life on the planet there is going to be some way to use that to make primitive cordage, because otherwise the plants would be unable to support themselves if they didn't have some sort of fiber or stem equivalent). Even if the details of what parts of the plants/animals used are important, it should be trivial to harvest certain elements to make clothing. Those plants/animals need to physically support and insulate their own bodies - whatever mechanism they use to do so should be exploitable. And from there it's just a matter of technological development to refine those elements into some textile-equivalent.

[Simon_Jester]

Aliens not having fibers to make cords and textiles out of... That is a nonstarter. Among other things, because the total lack of fibers and cords and textiles would be a crippling handicap in the development of early technology.

Skimmer's point about stereotypical naked aliens is well taken; what I'm getting at is that I can easily imagine a social convention by which people don't wear clothes unless they'd be uncomfortable without the clothes. And they may have a broader, though obviously not infinite range of comfort than humans- we can't assume that Earth has the best temperature-regulation mechanisms for living organisms in the universe. The same alien would happily put on a pair of pants and so on if it actually got cold enough to make them uncomfortable. But in a climate-controlled environment such as a spacecraft, or living in a city where one spends brief or no periods of time outside climate control, they might almost never need to do so.

They might think of clothes as being like armor- you wear them to protect yourself, and they may be beautiful and ceremonial and highly functional in their intended role, but you don't wear them all the time.

Or there may be intelligent tool-users for whom clothes are ubiquitous tools... but they're still viewed very differently than on Earth. Lots of humans carry knives, virtually all humans use knives, but knives are not seen as a necessary accessory except in a handful of cultures. If you have no utilitarian reason to have a knife on your person, you usually won't, and there are only a few societies where someone is 'naked' because they walk around without a knife on

There is another point about knives that you are overlooking: their use as weapons. Unless you are in a situation which warrants having a knife carrying a knife on your person can send a bad message in a lot of situations. Just as people are going to be suspicious if your carrying a hammer to a formal event.

Okay, then pick virtually any other very functional and commonly used tool. Anything that is highly useful, and has been so since pre-industrial times. A length of rope, a canteen/bottle/whatever of water. You name it. It doesn't matter.

Furthermore, knives' utility as weapons doesn't stop plenty of people from carrying utility knives, which are often small, unremarkable items placed in a pocket. Think Swiss Army knives. Or, in pre-industrial times, tiny little knives for things like trimming small objects.

People don't abstain from carrying knives because they're scary. People abstain from carrying knives because they're unnecessary. In a society where it was necessary for everyone to carry a knife, we'd get used to it. In societies where lots of people performed manual labor and needed basic tools available to them at all times, carrying knives was more common. We live in a service economy where most people lack basic skills to repair or shape common objects, and for this very reason few of us carry knives, and carrying knives becomes a 'weirder' act, and we associate public carriage of knives more with their use as weapons than their extremely important use as tools. It's use as tools that has been the main reason for knives to exist, literally since prehistoric times.

The point being, our decision to carry or not carry knives is determined by necessity, and there is no social rule dictating that we must carry them... with the result that most of us don't do so unless we foresee needing them. The same goes for a length of rope, a container of water, a writing utensil, and so on. Even though these things are undoubtedly useful and many of us have had the experience of being inconvenienced by not having them immediately to hand... not everyone carries them.

Items that are not universally necessary under all circumstances, and are not socially mandatory, will not reach 100% use among the population. Even if they are used commonly and are easily available to everyone.

Besides if your carrying a knife you need something to carry it with unless you want to hold it all day long.

So what? You vastly underestimate the number of people who have dealt with this problem.

[Formless]

You guys missed the point, and in an all too predictable way at that. Having access to plant fibers is unimportant; on Earth, harvesting plant fibers for clothing came later. Have you ever considered why? People didn't always wear cotton, because cotton requires more processing. Also, not all plant fibers are useful for making clothes. Hemp, for instance, can be used in clothes, but is far more often used in rope. And there is insulation to consider-- plant fibers aren't generally adapted to keep plants warm like furs are. Hell, harvesting animal fur came after harvesting and processing the skins of animals themselves (and we still harvest leather for some kinds of clothing, like shoes, jackets, and other outerwear). An idea with no predicate you can observe in nature is an idea that is unlikely to emerge in a primitive society. Its simply more difficult to think about things you have no experience with. Humans likely wear textiles because we saw that other animals had fur, and realized that co-opting that fur to keep ourselves warm was a good idea. If no animal in the alien ecosystem has that particular adaptation (even if they have alternative adaptations like feathers or similar structures-- and no, Zor, it doesn't matter how complicated those structures are), then its an unlikely idea to emerge even if they realize that plant fibers are potentially useful technology in rope and other applications. LOTS of primitive technologies have a biological source for their inspiration (heck, lots of modern tech still takes inspiration from nature). It takes a lot of technological development before you get to more complex, inorganic or non-naturalistic tech. This is like thinking that just because nylon will necessarily be possible for them to create (because its an inorganic chemical structure) they will wear clothes made of nylon. That belies that you are thinking about this in a far too anthropocentric manner.

And do note that I'm not even suggesting that they would go around naked. I'm just saying, it might be that textiles specifically aren't necessarily something all aliens will think of wearing, as opposed to skins, rubber, and other things we would consider "primitive" or just plain odd because of our peculiarities. We may also have a body type that is particularly convenient for draping clothes off of. Consider the difficulties presented by things such as tails, antlers, claws, bony plates, serpentine biology (lack of legs, in other words), and so forth. Perhaps you should look at more fantasy art-- it becomes obvious fast that these can present problems to an artist depicting fantasy races. In reality, we should expect the same problems could effect aliens, or even issues we can't imagine because of that lack of experience I talked about.

[Formless]

Ghetto edit: if you prefer a science fiction example, think of Wookies: because they have fur, they don't need clothing. Obviously, that example goes in the opposite direction of my previous argument, but it shows just how anthropocentric your assumptions are and how important it is to remember the evolutionary side of the equation. Humans evolved to sweat and remove heat; aliens could have any number of alternative adaptations to the climate of their evolutionary environment.

[Elheru Aran]

Wookiees don't wear clothing, but they do (at least in ROTS and a few episodes of Clone Wars) have armour, as well as decorative plaiting/beading in their fur.

In general however that's true, anthropocentrism probably does inform a lot of tropes about aliens wearing clothing. It's possible, I suppose, to imagine an alien species that wears steel plate in order to cover highly vulnerable organs, or some such adaption.

[Zixinus]

If there aren't textiles, there is leather. Or at least, something to make cord or rope or something similar enough to tie and lash. Without that, very simple technology is not reachable. How will you secure stone tools to wood or bone (and whatever local equivalents exist?). How will you make carrying items? You are not without clothing, you are just stuck with bad clothing materials.

And if you can make rope, you can make some sort of textile or use it to make overlapping layers of something.

Protection against hazards be they artificial or natural is essential. The natural reaction of almost every animal to a storm is to seek shelter from it, so the wind and rain doesn't radically cool your body temperature. Imagine if you could move rather than be stuck somewhere. Bam, advantage.

But say that elements and temperature are not a problem. Then there is utility such as pockets. Even if the species has eight hands and natural pouches, more pockets and carrying capacity than natural is always better. Not to mention storage of liquids or powders. Even if temperature and elements are not an issue, these are. Even Chewbacca wore and utility belt.

I also do not buy climate-controlled environments. We already have those and people wear clothes there to. It has not occurred to people to be naked just because the air conditioning is just right. The main reason to be naked in such an environment is the desire to be naked. Spacers may be naked not because they can be but maybe because they already spend far too much time in spacesuits.

[Elheru Aran]

I also do not buy climate-controlled environments. We already have those and people wear clothes there to. It has not occurred to people to be naked just because the air conditioning is just right. The main reason to be naked in such an environment is the desire to be naked. Spacers may be naked not because they can be but maybe because they already spend far too much time in spacesuits.

One reason to wear clothing in a climate-controlled environment: People still perspire sometimes-- I know I'll have sweat running down my armpits sometimes even indoors if I don't wear clothes, the fabric absorbs the sweat. The climate control is never perfect for everybody. Naked asses on furniture is kinda gross in a shared space. Nudity taboos, which do make sense sometimes-- a hot co-worker could be quite distracting walking by without clothes on.

In an alien species, I can conceive of various reasons. Sexual pheromone masking, perhaps-- that causes a bit of havoc with Turtledove's Race when it turns out that the Earth spice cinnamon causes a powerful sexual response among them, so if a species responds similarly to pheromones or other stimuli, camouflaging/covering it up would be a useful function of clothing.

I'm sure there are any number of other reasons that could apply. Simple hygiene is one.

[Adam Reynolds]

This reminded me of an amusing Robot Chicken sketch with Chewbacca:


Though more seriously, another possibility is that a particular race was uplifted rather than having evolved naturally, which prevented them from developing the social custom as they advanced.