Shirts Versus Skins

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Shirts versus Skins (or Shirts and Skins) is a term describing a common form of informal sports game, played, for example, on a public court or park. The name refers to the practice of the members of one athletic team in a competition of two removing their shirts for easy identification in the absence of uniforms.

This simple form of recognition is a regular sight in Streetball, Street football, ultimate, or any other pickup games. It is almost totally exclusive to men’s teams, though, owing to the taboo in many western cultures against the display of the female breast. However shirts and skins is used as a term among women but these women do not appear topless, they strip down to their bras only displaying the surrounding areas. Typically, during fast-paced integrated team sports, distinguishing between a running or darting body with a top-covering garment on vs. one with bare skin showing approximately from neck to navel is much easier than if both teams wore shirts. When team members do not know each other, as in a pick-up situation, the shirts and skins convention creates great ease during play by allowing the teams not to have to remember new faces quickly, but rather to know that if a player's torso is covered or bare, that person is either on one's own respective team or is one's opponent.

With a newer version of playing Shirts Versus Skins, the teams will play as normal, but then the losing team's members will receive 'nipple cripples' or 'purple nurples' from the opposing team member(s). This is more painful to the skins team than the shirts.