Why are aliens always nekkid

It did bother me some that gay relationships seemed to be strictly off limits, but polyamorous relationships were literally everywhere. It kind of struck me as a little "culty." Come to think of it, though, most of the aliens in Star Trek had similar clothing tastes as humans with pretty much the exception of tar monsters (RIP Tasha).

 

Ahem. Scots... Romans.... If you have nice legs, it can be very manly

 

But if we're to remove the idea of audience engagement, I think a fairly solid argument can be postulated as to why aliens would have some kind of garments.

It goes like this:

A creature that takes the route of intelligence over physical accoutrements (like us) and achieves success is going to eventually spread outside the environmental range in which it evolved. Humans are East African creatures originally. Nice and warm. Sunny. Tropics. Little need for covering the skin, lots of need to shed heat. When we moved up into Europe and Asia: Winter has come! Our little yarbles and bubbies are no longer happy. Enter clothing! Yay! Warm again! Regardless how a creature starts, I think some kind of similar journey, be it from cold to warm or warm to cold would happen eventually for them before they started tossing rockets into space. If you start out furry, then you have a complex, detailed, ornate shaving culture instead.

 

Oh, you're assuming I'm not following the cute blond guy with the nice arms and chest in the Man Dress™ to see what deck his quarters are on and find out his shift rotation. Right now I'm in Engineering hoping Lieutenant Commander La Forge doesn't notice that I'm checking the crew manifest rather than keeping an eye on the antimatter containment field.

Later in the series, Guinan has a heart to heart with me about why stalker is not a good look for anyone.

 

My issue with the blond guy is less that he's wearing that skirt and more that he tried pairing it with those boots.

 

But if aliens evolved from tardigrades, they could be able to survive in a wide variety of environments without needing garments .
Or, they could be really tiny and the large creatures we see could be just a spacesuit or even a transport.

 

Though I agree with this example, as an argument for the original question of why aliens are pretty much always nekkid, it feels like a reverse engineered exception trying to cover a pervasive situation.

 

@Wreybies your post on the Trek Dress made me think of this song.

 

Space fighters might have to operate at distances from their bases where the signal delay would make drones non-viable. Having a pilot puts the decision-maker in a position where the decisions can happen quickly enough to matter. In any event, drones are alright for dropping bombs on the minions of local warlords as they zoom about in their technicals, but they'd be hard pushed to cut the mustard against an actual air force.

 

The Feeling of Power, by Isaac Asimov

 

But - assuming humans are any kind of example - once intelligence reaches the point where we are functioning in large part on abstraction then necessity isn't necessarily going to be a driving force for anything we do. I mean, look at the ridiculous complications that culture has loaded onto something as simple, natural, basic, and primordial as breastfeeding. If you were an alien dude, sitting in your alien house, typing at your alien computer, talking to your alien forum about these bipedal tetrapods you had thought up for your story, creatures that feed their babies via these funny protrusions on the ventral side of their upper torso, but then you want it so that - for reasons that are hard to explain - the females actually can't feed their babies when the babies are hungry because exposing these funny protrusions in public spaces causes all kinds of inexplicable discomfort and issues, your alien forum buddies would be vociferously poopooing your idea because it makes no sense that the very thing that keeps babies alive and growing is somehow proscribed by law.

My point to this is that I think once they are actually in the habit of wearing garments for practical reasons, impractical reasons may well take over once the initial need is no longer so pressing.

 

Or, as an example that may resonate more directly with the males in this conversation, I'll use myself:

When we're not getting the shit beat out of us by hurricanes, the weather in Puerto Rico is pretty much idyllic. It's not East Africa, but the climate here is close enough that my body would be perfectly happy and comfortable to freeballit almost all year 'round. There are certain activities where garments would make sense for physical protection, but as regards me just puttering around the house doing household things, chatting here on the forum with the goodfolk of the wf.org, there's no practical reason for me to wear clothing. Yes, I know many of you are living in Winterfell right now, but not me. I'm a Dornish lad, enjoying the blessings of a sunny day.

I still wear clothing because public dong is a no-no. Even in my house, alone, with just my dog, who is as indifferent to my dong as a dog should be, I still wear clothing. Yesterday was sweltering and there was good practical cause to be nekkid, and still I had shorts on. All of this because of the weight of culture, not practicality.

 

Nah, like most indigenously equatorial denizens, I'm made for it. I pretty much tan on command. When I was in Berlin (where public dong is totes fine in parks and along the Wannsee) I took advantage of the opportunity as often as I could. Admittedly, the brightest day there doesn't hold a candle to a typical day here, but still...

 

Pretty sure this is why god invented sunscreen, and the applying of said sunscreen could be a lot of fun depending.

 

There was an article in Cracked a few years ago that pointed out that, at least for comic books, pants must always be worn.

Even if you're a twelve story high lizard:

 

I'm surprised command didn't stretch the UCMJ to require that it cover your dangly bits. Of course, they probably did and you ignored it, no? You don't strike me as the sort who would have a tattoo of the Air Force Pomeranian ripping a sofa cushion to pieces (that's a zoomie thing, isn't it?) prominently displayed.

 

I never have naked aliens, it just makes no sense because these aliens, in most stories anyhow, have to have vast technological expertise and cross light years to get to Earth, why would they be so primitive as to have no clothing on? In the movies and on TV, far too often they play the aliens as primitive savages, inferior to humans, to make the human viewers feel better about the setting. It's far more likely, at least in near history sci-fi, that humans would be inferior to the aliens.

 

Still even in those primitive cultures they tend to cover their genitalia. I think aliens don't cover up because they have no visible genitalia.

 

Adam and Eve were naked, until they ate from the tree of knowledge.
So technically by that logic clothes are evil as per what the God has proclaimed.
(Quick everybody take off your clothes so you don't piss off God.)

 

Okay. Now what?!?

 

It's the difference between rubbing yourself with sunscreen and rubbing yourself with sunscreen.

 

And another excellent question is, why don't these nekked aliens ever poop?