I've recently run across several references on LJ to "strip $game", from Scrabble to Candyland, and I'm just bemused. Especially here on a hot August afternoon, I can't wrap my mind around the idea that being naked constitutes losing.
I'd say that in my own personal experience, getting naked is almost always either a win in itself or one of the points required to meet the victory condition. Even in strip Parcheesi, winning the game per se is not really the end condition.
Of course, I've never been involved in torture, fraternity hazing, or serious gambling.
OMG!!! *megahugs* Oh, ooops, sorry, the LJ party mask! Let's see, who am I? Well, you and your lovely spouse met myself and dear_hubby at the Chicago Worldcon, right after you and she joined "the squid club"; I was not as jet-lagged as I might have been, being my "job" in the Netherlands was a night-shift thing... we've been in apas together before that, and I picked up something special for you in Belfast not too many years, (uh, yes, years) back.
Enough hints? Glad to see you!
Crazy(going off to add you as "friend" now...)Soph
PS the icon is of dear_hubby, just in case the near indistinguishable profile helps....
The winning condition in the metagame for strip N is to arrange it so that everyone "loses" exactly as many games as they have articles of clothing. It is important to remember that, if played with friends, strip N is a cooperative game, not a competative one.
Strip $game (and yes, I forwarded the scrabble references) played by anyone past high school, or at latest undergraduate sensiblities, means it's likely that one can play for any number of strategies; cattitude mentions one viable one. The important bit is that after undergraduate level, nudity is no longer particularly a condition to be avoided.
I'm still enough of a body prude, even in hot weather, to not enjoy the thought of being naked unless I'm very, very safe.
That said, I see your point enough to entertain the notion of the opposite sort of game: that losing rounds requires you to don another article of clothing, and another, an another... ending in a roomful of sweating well-stuffed and indistinguishable sausages.
OK, I'm younger than you but that's never stopped me from holding an opinion. I think nudity can be constructed in several different ways, depending on the context.
It might be that nudity is humiliating because it's undignified, especially if it's imposed by someone else rather than chosen. (Obviously there are more or less extreme forms of this.) You seem to be assuming that that is the attitude of young people playing strip games, and you're rejecting that attitude because you're old enough not to find nudity embarrassing.
You're presenting nudity as pretty much neutral; it's good to wear fewer clothes when it's too hot, purely as a matter of comfort and convenience. This is a reasonable view. I don't know how much it's correlated with age for people to be relaxed about nudity like this, but I suppose it's at least a reasonable contention that this context is more likely to apply to older people than younger.
But nudity can also be, for example, deliberately erotic. In that case, the act of removing clothes, preferably gradually, might for some tastes at least be more meaningful than the fact of ending up naked. It seems to me that that's the kind of dynamic that strip games are playing into. It's reasonable enough to want to be in a mildly erotic situation with friends, but in a context where it's unlikely that there's going to be any followup. Maybe one grows out of enjoying that kind of thing, I don't know.
(IMO strip Scrabble sounds like it would make for a bad game of Scrabble and a bad strip-tease, but that's not really the point here.)
Nudity can be deliberately erotic--but in those contexts, I again want to be choosing it directly. If I want to be naked around/for someone (or some two or three), I want to be sure that that's how things are going to end up.
And if someone isn't comfortable that way, I don't want to pressure them into taking their clothes off.
OK, I see where you're coming from. I sort of agree; there should always be good communication and making sure everyone involved knows exactly what's going on and is comfortable with it. That's a good principle. Except that I can't help wishing for some room in this principled and reasonable and sensible system for a bit of harmless fooling around on occasion.
I can't really justify this. I'm on dangerous ground if I'm defining any situation as too distantly sexual to need to bother with the rules that I would not hesitate to apply in a definitely sexual situation. And now I've invoked ageism in my earlier comment I'm going to look particularly stupid if I complain that having to be responsible and sensible all the time is no fun! There are too many people out there who are totally irresponsible and inconsiderate about sex for me to insist very hard on laxity this area anyway.
Yeah, the world would be a better place if more people thought like you. So if the proportion of people who are this kind of thoughtful is higher among 40-year-olds than 20-year-olds, that's a good thing on balance. Certainly worth relinquishing the prospect of playing silly strip games and other such sub-flirting silliness.
I'm not opposed to such fooling around--I just don't get it. (Of course, I don't get dating [relationships, I think so, just not dating] or the appeal of peanut butter sandwiches, either.) Or rather, I don't get it in the context of "we want an excuse to get someone naked" rather than as a twist on a game with people who'll be comfortable regardless of who "wins".
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Of course, I've never been involved in torture, fraternity hazing, or serious gambling.
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Enough hints? Glad to see you!
Crazy(going off to add you as "friend" now...)Soph
PS the icon is of
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Neither of us remembers "the squid club", though as K says "it sounds like the sort of thing we would do."
I suppose it would be too much to hope that you're coming to Boston?
Hugs! Keep in touch!
Oh... and hi, redbird! Nice party! Will there be strip pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey later?
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Particularly on a hot day.
Time to dome the cities, I think.
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That said, I see your point enough to entertain the notion of the opposite sort of game: that losing rounds requires you to don another article of clothing, and another, an another... ending in a roomful of sweating well-stuffed and indistinguishable sausages.
Crazy(okay, am I being really, reallly mean?)Soph
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It might be that nudity is humiliating because it's undignified, especially if it's imposed by someone else rather than chosen. (Obviously there are more or less extreme forms of this.) You seem to be assuming that that is the attitude of young people playing strip games, and you're rejecting that attitude because you're old enough not to find nudity embarrassing.
You're presenting nudity as pretty much neutral; it's good to wear fewer clothes when it's too hot, purely as a matter of comfort and convenience. This is a reasonable view. I don't know how much it's correlated with age for people to be relaxed about nudity like this, but I suppose it's at least a reasonable contention that this context is more likely to apply to older people than younger.
But nudity can also be, for example, deliberately erotic. In that case, the act of removing clothes, preferably gradually, might for some tastes at least be more meaningful than the fact of ending up naked. It seems to me that that's the kind of dynamic that strip games are playing into. It's reasonable enough to want to be in a mildly erotic situation with friends, but in a context where it's unlikely that there's going to be any followup. Maybe one grows out of enjoying that kind of thing, I don't know.
(IMO strip Scrabble sounds like it would make for a bad game of Scrabble and a bad strip-tease, but that's not really the point here.)
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And if someone isn't comfortable that way, I don't want to pressure them into taking their clothes off.
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I can't really justify this. I'm on dangerous ground if I'm defining any situation as too distantly sexual to need to bother with the rules that I would not hesitate to apply in a definitely sexual situation. And now I've invoked ageism in my earlier comment I'm going to look particularly stupid if I complain that having to be responsible and sensible all the time is no fun! There are too many people out there who are totally irresponsible and inconsiderate about sex for me to insist very hard on laxity this area anyway.
Yeah, the world would be a better place if more people thought like you. So if the proportion of people who are this kind of thoughtful is higher among 40-year-olds than 20-year-olds, that's a good thing on balance. Certainly worth relinquishing the prospect of playing silly strip games and other such sub-flirting silliness.
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As for strip$game, I wonder how many ways you could set it up so that losing mean putting more clothes on....