A character is walking through the halls of their high school, perhaps past the student lockers, sun streaming through windows, homecoming banners cheering the football team on are hung on the walls. They’re feeling good about themselves – at least at first.
Then they start to notice people are staring. Not just staring – they’re shocked. Or they’re laughing and pointing and shouting things.
The character looks down, and then they realise – they’re naked! Somehow, they have actually managed to come to school naked in front of everyone!
And not just that, but there’s a big test today, and they forgot to study!
Then, suddenly, they sit bolt upright in bed. Phew, it was all a dream! No, not a dream; a nightmare!
It’s an often used trope, the nightmare of being naked in high school or in college. Supposedly it’s a nightmare that a lot of people actually have in real life – asleep with an anxious mind, they imagine themselves in school naked – whether they are actually still in high school or whether that was many years ago. I’ve never had that dream myself (although I do get the “big test and you didn’t study or actually attend any of the classes” one, so I can believe it). So, when writers, artists and film-makers want to show a character having a nightmare about being embarrassed or publicly humiliated, having them dream they are naked in high school is a reliable standard to go to.
But some writers and artists, creators especially of erotic and adult content, go further. In their works, it isn’t a dream or a nightmare – it’s real life for their characters. They really do end up in school, or college, naked, and there’s often nothing they can do about it.
I’m currently writing such a story. It’s my attempt to place myself into a fine tradition of nudity-focused and erotic works that use the nude in school concept to conjure up ENF, only-one-naked, public nudity, or exhibitionist scenes – exactly the sort of stuff I like to read and write, and that I think a fair few of my readers also enjoy.
As there are many who have trod this ground before me, I thought I would pull together this blog article to talk about some other works that have explored the nude in school theme, the different ways they have accomplished creating the scenarios, and a bit of a history of the trope/subgenre.
What makes a 'nude in school' story?
To begin, let’s set some definitions about what we mean when we talk about a nude in school story.
First of all, I think for me (and this may sound like a no-brainer), it needs to be a story that is set entirely or mostly in a school or college environment. I think both college and high school are equally valid places to set a nude in school story. But if the action takes place mostly away from high school or college, it isn’t a nude in school story – even if there is a scene or two which does occur in school.
Secondly, a character or characters must be nude in that setting in some place – crucially – where nudity would not be normal or expected. So a story that takes place entirely in the girls’ locker room is not really a nude in school story, because while it is in school, naked women in that location are not particularly unusual. But in other parts of the school or college campus, wherein the social norm is for everybody to be clothed, if someone is naked, that story has enough to potentially count as a nude in school tale.
Thirdly – and this, I admit, is something where we can be flexible – the naked person should be a student of the school or college. This one is more of a personal stipulation; another reader might well consider that a story involving a teacher being naked in their place of work is by definition a nude in school story, and they wouldn’t be wrong. But for me, the genre nude in school is about pupils/students, not faculty. A lot changes when you make the naked person or people teachers, who are adults with different levels of agency and control over their own lives compared to students who are attending the school or college, and for me that changes enough of the story to move it away from what I personally think of when I think of nude in school stories.
The age factor
There is one other factor which I think needs to be acknowledge before we move on to looking in more detail at these types of stories, and that is the age of the person or people involved in the nudity scenes. Schools are attended by children and teenagers more than they are attended by individuals who are, in the eyes of the law, adults.
In the United States, High School is attended by pupils who can range in age from fourteen (9th grade) to eighteen (12th grade, or senior year).
In the UK the majority of secondary schools offer education to pupils aged between eleven and sixteen – some schools offer further education for seventeen and eighteen year olds, traditionally referred to as 6th form (because they start this in their sixth year at the school) but this is not across the board – many pupils leave school at sixteen and move on to a college of further education (which cater for any age from sixteen upwards) instead. In Australia, there is a similar age distribution – core education covers up to the age of sixteen, while some pupils remain going on to Year 12; these are the only eighteen-year-olds in the school.
In Japan, education levels are slightly less rigidly age-bound, as progress on to upper secondary school (for pupils age fifteen and up) is dependent on the student passing a set of exams. Therefore although upper secondary is for three years, a pupil in upper secondary may be older than eighteen if they did not advance at fifteen due to failing, or delaying taking, their exams in lower secondary. Japanese education establishments also include technology and specialist training colleges as well as schools, where students can again be older or younger than eighteen.
Other countries around the world have their own definitions of school age, but as a rule, a school setting will in all likelihood include a large number of people who are under the age of eighteen and may be as young as eleven or twelve.
Crucially, if you are writing or drawing erotic material (in the western world at least), the expectation is that participants in the naughty stuff (which would include titillating nudity) are legally adults, which is usually considered to be eighteen or older.
Therefore, on the basis of the fact that I’m looking at nude in school from an erotic perspective (or lewd, ecchi, hentai, adult, NSFW, whatever your preferred tag is), I’m going to restrict my look at the subgenre to only stories where the nudity is performed by persons eighteen and older (or where, in the absence of a stated age, they can be reasonably assumed to be eighteen).
That’s not to say that nude in school material covering protagonists who are younger than eighteen doesn't exist at all. Each site and publisher that hosts written or drawn adult material has their own terms of service, and some permit works involving nudity in under-eighteens.
I make no judgement about that material, and I fully acknowledge that someone might write or draw a nude in school scenario for reasons other than erotic entertainment. Stories exploring nude in school themes that skew younger could eschew erotic scenarios or any titillating elements and therefore have more in common with “naturist fiction” (which can feature whole families due to being non-erotic/non-sexual) than something like (for example) the Tami Smithers stories.
Meanwhile, I’m also aware that there are cultural differences outside of the English-speaking western world where erotic material may not have an over-eighteen restriction on protagonists and, again, I make no personal judgement about that.
But for the purposes of this blog I’m going to stick to nude in school stuff which would be allowed on Amazon or Literotica, both of which require participants in the erotic parts of the story to all be over eighteen. Suffice to say, all images on this blog are also depicting people who are, or are assumed to be, over the age of eighteen.
Where there is scope for a work that I do want to cover to involve individuals under eighteen (for example, a lot of stories using The Program as a base), I’ll mention that. Not necessarily as a criticism or warning – but they are what they are and I wouldn’t want people investigating these stories to be in for a surprise.
So that’s what nude in school means to me: a majority education establishment (usually school or college) setting, someone being naked in a part of that setting where (in the real world) being naked would not be expected or normal, and that person, by virtue of being eighteen or older, being someone it is acceptable to eroticise.
Oh, and the being naked part can’t be a dream sequence or fantasy, it has to actually be happening to someone in the story; but I think that goes without saying.
One final caveat: I’m going to be focusing for the most part on stories where at least one protagonist on the nudity side of things is female. That’s because as both an author and a reader I’m more interested in female-led stories (I don’t need them to be exclusively female, but female-led, definitely) – however, I am sure male-led nude in school stories also exist and I don’t think the subgenre needs the story to be female-led to be a legitimate example.
Now that’s all out of the way, let’s take a deep dive into nude in school.
What makes nude in school work?
I like a good nude in school story, or I wouldn’t be writing about them, and when I think about the subgenre and what makes it work, I think there are several contributing factors.
Unique environments with limited involvement from the outside world
So first of all, a school, or college (especially in the American collegiate system), is a pretty closed and self-contained environment. They aren’t open to all, they aren’t full of random unconnected people coming and going – they are buildings and campuses where everyone is there for a purpose. Indeed, most students, regardless of their personal feelings about education, are there because they have to be, not necessarily through choice. So they might all be different people, but they are all in one place for the same sort of reason, and they are usually then surrounded by walls or fences or something that provides a barrier between the school and the world outside. Sometimes, especially in boarding schools and in US colleges, students even live on the campus and barely have to go out into the wider world.
That means that if you’re writing about public nudity of any sort, you can use a school as a setting and not have to concern yourself quite as much with the wider-world ramifications of what you’re having happen in your story. You don’t need to convolute the whole of society to make it acceptable for one lone female to go naked in public (for example) – only the micro-society of the school needs to adapt. What goes on behind those walls or fences, the wider world isn’t necessarily aware of, and laws can be different inside such a boundary.
There are comparable environments in prisons and in workplaces, of course – that mix of public interaction and relatively closed space – but schools have dimensions these other examples don’t necessarily have, or manage to have as well as a school does.
Everyone has to follow rules and faculty have complete authority
This is one of the big ones for nude in school – almost every school has rules or codes of conduct they expect all students to follow, and there are repercussions, sometimes quite serious ones, for those who break the rules.
Often, these rules are different to the rules one encounters in the wider and adult world. Uniforms, for one (although these aren’t common in US public schools they are the norm in the UK, Australia and of course Japan) – there aren’t many other places besides school that teenagers are required to dress exactly the same and disciplined if they do not.
Even US public schools, which largely eschew specific uniforms, pupils are instead expected to follow strict and sometimes lengthy dress codes, and punished if they don’t. There are countless real-world examples of these dress codes proving unfair or being administered in a discriminatory way – it isn’t beyond believability to add a nudity requirement to uniform or dress rules.
Other rules governing behaviour have to be followed too, with disciplinary measures if the student fails to comply. Even in colleges, which are of course more liberal than schools by nature of the fact that those attending them are treated more as adults, there are expectations regarding academic standards and individual conduct that can lead to punitive measures if not followed. In all these environments, teachers and other faculty members have a great degree of power over students and are often able to impose their will regardless of whether or not the student agrees that it is fair or just.
It's not hard to see why an environment where there is such a focus on making sure large groups of teenagers and young people all follow the same rules of behaviour, all go to the right places at the right times, all do the work required of them, and all obey designated authority figures without question is so conducive to stories where forced or required nudity is a theme – or where a fear of punishment for a real transgression might compel someone to go along with something as humiliating as public nudity to either complete a punishment, or avoid a worse one.
For students, there are big consequences to failure
For many adults, large parts of their path in life are defined by what they do, and how they perform in school or college. Success can mean a better quality of life for their future self, failure can mean losing opportunities they badly want and have worked hard to try and achieve. Discipline can take the form of a mild inconvenience (detention), or it can be something as serious as being expelled and unable to complete their education, which can have a real impact on their lives. Many young people are not concerned about their future, instead opting to live for the moment, but there are many more that are aware, even without additional parental or faculty pressure, that doing well in school, going on to college and succeeding there are extremely important, maybe the most important things in their lives.
So if you are writing a nude in school story, it’s not beyond the realm of imagining that a protagonist might be prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to safeguard their future college plans, or their scholarship, or their GPA, up to and including agreeing to participate in acts of public nudity. After all, what’s a bit of embarrassment and discomfort in the short term, if in the long term it means they get to go to, or stay at, the college of their dreams or win their longed-for future career?
Older adults in the wider world might have less to lose, but for a sufficiently-motivated high school senior or college student, the prospect of having to give up on her dreams is literally the most terrible thing that could happen – and if she can avert that happening by agreeing to go to class naked, well, she might at least consider it…
Strong (and sometimes vicious) social hierarchies
Cram a whole load of teenagers (or barely post-teenagers) together in a building and they are going to start building social hierarchies, which become to them both massively complex and hugely important. The most minor detail can see someone elevated from overlooked to popular, and the tiniest transgression can ruin a reputation for weeks or more.
Basically, high school (and to a lesser extent, college) can be intense and traumatic places for any student. So creating a scenario where one of them does, or has to do, something humiliating involving nudity, is a great recipe for tension and excitement.
Maybe a character has given in and indulged her exhibitionist fantasies and now needs to escape being seen naked around the school lest her reputation be completely ruined (or maybe she’s met with an accident that’s left her locked outside her locker room without a towel). Maybe a popular girl went too far in flouting the rules and has now gotten herself forced into taking part in a social experiment to go naked in class as penance – how much more humiliating can it get than everyone she ever looked down on for not having the right clothes or being in the right crowd seeing her having to walk naked through the halls she once ruled? Or, maybe our hapless naked victim has even more to fear because of that one girl who has bullied her since middle school and will now be given the most irresistible opportunity to escalate her humiliation to even worse levels.
Most teenagers feel like literally dying of embarrassment multiple times a day anyway – add in nudity, and you’re going to have a lot of fun with your story.
Almost everyone is hot and horny
Okay, that’s perhaps a little subjective, but the fact is, eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty-year-olds are at the exact point of their lives where their bodies are fully-developed and their hormone addled-brains are telling them to go out and try and fuck each other with wild abandon. So, high school and college can be productive settings for any kind of erotica just to start with.
In particular, though, stories about public nudity, exhibitionism and so-on are often very much about the experience of seeing, or being seen, in an intimate way, by being naked in front of others or seeing others naked. They are about desirability and desiring someone you see, or being seen by the object of your desire. So a school or college setting can be a real hot-bed of these types of feelings, and when you make a person go naked in that environment, you are opening a whole can of very intensely horny worms!
Relatability
A story about horny times on an oil rig, or among the high society of a wealthy European country, or among the Gods of Olympus, might be great fun and very sexy, but for many (if not all) readers, the setting is not going to be relatable. Indeed, it might also be quite a stretch for the writer, who could well be unable to draw on their own experiences (especially the Gods of Olympus one) in creating the world the story inhabits. That’s not to say that such a story wouldn’t be excellent, but it’s a bigger ask of both reader and writer to relate to what is happening.
But everyone (or almost everyone) went to school. And even if we didn’t go to school in quite the same circumstances (or quite the same country) as the characters in the story, we can relate to the things you typically find there. We can relate to the behind-closed-doors world, the rules and authority of the teachers, the pressure to pass tests and get good grades, the complex social hierarchies with their in and out crowds, and our adolescent urges and crushes.
We might not have the ability to imagine exactly what it could be like to, say, ride into battle against a dragon wearing nothing but a helm in a fantasy kingdom… but we might well know, or think we know, how it would feel to have to attend a high school or college in the nude.
Why is the character nude in school?
Let's move on from talking about the setting and world building and focus more on what these stories are actually about, which is the nudity part.
If we’re exploring nude in school as a subgenre, it’s interesting to look at all the different ways in which various writers, artists, and even game designers, engineer the circumstances of the story to actually get to the point of our character or characters being nude in school or on campus.
In real life, nudity in a school or college environment, especially prolonged nudity, is unsurprisingly a rare phenomenon. It’s possible to find a tiny number of probably-genuine real-life examples; but by and large, real school pupils and students wear clothing and would no more likely to be naked in school than in any other public place where social norms about nudity are in effect.
So if we want to create a nude in school story, we need to answer a fundamental question about our protagonist – why are they naked?
Here’s a selection of some of the ways I’ve encountered other writers and creators answering that question, grouped into some loose categories and including my thoughts about particular stories I have seen use these plot devices.
Accident
Probably the most “realistic” explanation for why someone might end up naked in school or college in front of others is that some accident has befallen them which means that they, and their clothes, are currently apart.
A lot of school-based ENF (Embarrassed Nude Female) material can draw on accidents happening to the character as being what leaves them exposed. Maybe something happens to leave them locked outside of the locker room when they were taking a shower after gym class? Maybe their clothes were torn or damaged or ruined in some way that rendered them unwearable? Maybe while they were changing, their bully/tormentor stole their clothes or even dragged them out of the locker room into the corridor?
Sometimes it’s a little more unusual – for example, Ciara Jones’ story Naked In School: Photoshoot has a girls’ volleyball team taking part in a nude calendar photoshoot before a fire alarm going off, and some other disasters, leads to them having to try and streak through their high school without being seen. The ENF comics authored by Zacball, which are often college-set, have a few different and creative accidents occurring to lead to the girls in them ending up naked in public.
In these types of stories, the protagonists don’t want to be naked, and certainly don’t want to be seen naked – but while it’s embarrassing for them (and fun for us to read), it doesn’t last long, and things will usually end up back to normal once they’ve been put through everything the writer or artist wants them to experience. So compared to some of the works I’m talking about here, accident-based school nudity is pretty mild – but it’s no less valid as a form of the subgenre, especially if you’re a fan of ENF (or ENM) stuff that remains relatively believable.
Exhibitionism
High school and college age is when a lot of people really become aware of, and explore, their sexuality for the first time, and for some, that can undoubtedly include their first encounters and experiments with kinks.
In an exhibitionist nude in school story, the protagonist will at some point be exploring in particular an exhibitionist kink – more often than not the desire to be naked in public – and has opted to use their school as the venue for their latest exciting adventure.
Exhibitionist nude in school stories can follow two branches; those where the protagonist wants to explore her exhibitionism with an element of exciting risk, but where it is achievable for her to go unseen and for her nascent kink to remain her own personal secret; and stories where the protagonist just goes all out and gets naked in front of people at school regardless of what the consequences will be for her (or having found a way to prevent any negative consequences).
In the first category, the exhibitionist might get out of class to sneak around the corridors naked while everyone else is still in their lesson – they might have several near misses where they are almost caught naked by fellow students or faculty (which of course makes it more exciting and arousing for them and compels them to continue further) but they know that to actually be seen will cause them trouble and shame, no matter how much they actually want it.
A good example of this is found in the hentai (Japanese pornographic) manga Naked Within the School is Breaking the School’s Rule by R-Otome. In this comic, Miki is a secret exhibitionist who excuses herself out of class, strips naked and puts on a collar and leash, then sneaks around her high school corridors and buildings, urging herself to go further even though she fears the shame being caught will bring her and her family, almost getting caught several times, getting more and more aroused until she masturbates and urinates.
Another way for an exhibitionist to go naked in school without being discovered might be for them to confine their activities to weekends or outside of school hours – perhaps they are able to come in on a Saturday when the buildings are almost deserted, or maybe they are the last one to go home at the end of the day. This scenario can be employed in real life too – some female exhibitionist creators have filmed public nudity content on their college campuses by going in on weekends; there are still people around, enough to make it risky and therefore entertaining without them getting into real trouble. If you want to see this sort of content, there are some great creators on Fansly, which is a bit like OnlyFans but allows public nudity content.
In fiction, the ongoing Saturday Night School series by Jessica Tang von Harper uses this trope as a starting point, introducing us (and the viewpoint character Charlie) to Michelle, a beautiful cheerleader with a secret exhibitionist fetish who lets herself into her high school late in the day on weekends to strip and walk the corridors nude and (she thinks) undetected. This is a long, yet to conclude series, and Michelle’s exhibitionism is explored in such a wide variety of other venues and ways as the story progresses that I’d hesitate to call it just a nude in school story, but it still deserves to be mentioned alongside the subgenre, certainly.
These types of nude in school stories work for the same reason that all secret exhibitionist/progressive exhibitionist stuff works – deep dives into the psyche of the character, their evolving sexuality and their enjoyment of taboo behaviour. But school as a setting can sometimes trump over random public places for the simple reason that in these stories, the exhibitionist is pushing the envelope while trying not to get caught by her friends, peers, and teachers – people who know her well, and where there might be real and serious consequences if her naughty behaviour were to be uncovered. It raises the stakes and gives what is happening a thrilling extra edge.
In the second type of exhibitionist nude in school story, the protagonist dispenses with all that sneaking about and just uses her school as a venue to indulge in her enjoyment of public nudity quite openly. There’s a sliding scale of this type of story from “hmm, might actually happen” to “completely nuts” – but completely nuts can still be a fun read!
At the tamer end might be a story about streaking a football game or campus event, or completing a dare – a brief burst of public nudity and, sure, the protagonist might get into trouble for it, but probably just a detention or something. And at the other end, you might have a character just rocking up to school bare ass naked as if it’s a completely normal thing to do. That type of scenario is seen in the story Heather Goes to School Naked by ExhibitionistErika, in which the eighteen-year-old title character discovers an obscure rule in her high school charter that says that full nudity is permitted anywhere on school grounds. So, she raises the matter with her teacher and principal, and lets them know that she’ll be coming to school the next day naked – of course, as it’s in the rules, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop her, and she’s free to have all sorts of fun while completely nude in public.
Punishment
In the previous categories, the person is naked in school because of an unhappy (for them) accident, or because they explicitly choose to be. But our next few categories are going to go down a route which many readers might be more familiar with when it comes to nude in school stories; those where the naked person is reluctant to be naked, and even where the nudity might be forced.
The most obvious idea for having someone have to come to school or college classes naked is that they are in some way being punished or having to perform an act of penance for some transgression or crime. Either made to strip or forcibly relieved of their clothes, they are then left, the only one naked in a building full of clothed people, as a mark of their misdeed and a humiliating punishment to ensure against future wrongdoing.
This trope has some tangential relation to real life. In the past, schoolchildren did not enjoy the same rights and safeties that they do now, and corporal punishment (that is, punishment of the body) was not only permitted, but widely used to maintain discipline. From canings and spankings with a ruler, paddle or board to more creative methods, teachers were given full permission to be cruel to children and young people in the name of getting them to behave themselves and study hard.
We don’t allow that any more, thankfully. But in a nude in school story, it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that a student might receive a more creative and (for them) distressing punishment than just being given detention or made to write lines – after all, we once thought all that other stuff was okay, so maybe the fictional education establishment of our story is run by someone who thinks that nudity-based punishments are the way to go? And maybe the people who would normally put a stop to things like that (the student’s parents) are happy to go along with it, just as parents of the past had no qualms about leaving their kids in the care of people who might beat them if they did wrong?
Being punished with nudity is the theme of the nude in school story I’m currently writing. As with all punishments, once you unpick it, you realise you have to imbue in the scenario an idea that the person being punished has consented to give up their own autonomy and comply with the terms of the punishment.
This is true in real life in schools, and other institutions also – the authority figure’s authority comes as a contract with the student, a mental state they are in whereby they agree to accept the consequences of non-compliance rather than meet it with further non-compliance. After all, if a teacher, principal or professor were to order a student to undress, and remain naked, during their time in school, what if they were simply to refuse? Where, then, would be the authority figure’s recourse? In many cases, it might be the power to impose a much greater punishment – in the case of the novel I am writing, Phoebe (the protagonist) agrees to the nudity punishment because the alternative is to be expelled and lose both her place at a prestigious private school and potentially her chance to go on to the university of her dreams. So, she consents to whatever humiliations can be sent her way while rationalising that at least it isn’t as bad as it could have been.
One element of punishment nudity in nude in school stories is that it doesn’t just give a reason for the protagonist to be naked – it also gives others a reason to accept her nudity. Nudity in the world of the school remains taboo, it’s just that in this girl’s situation, it is being used to teach her a lesson (or make her think twice about breaking the rules again). But everyone understands that she isn’t doing this through choice, and so they aren’t necessarily making a judgement towards her as a person based on the fact that she’s the only one naked in a class full of clothed students.
Later on, we’ll come to scenarios where that open acknowledgement that the student is nude against her own wishes is deliberately absent, but for this category, we might have her treated with a little sympathy by her peers at least.
A (new) rule
Let’s say that nudity isn’t specifically linked to punishment, but is instead something that is brought in as part of the rules that the school expects some, or even all, students to adhere to.
Like the idea of nudity as punishment, this might have some tangential resonance to real-life practices. In the UK, Australia and Japan, and in some schools in the US and Canada, school students are usually expected to wear a designated uniform. Every boy in the school wears the same clothes as every other boy, every girl in the school wears the same clothes as every other girl. Their wardrobe conformity is about showing they belong to that school, about ensuring discipline and encouraging them to remain focussed on learning rather than what they or their peers are wearing, and about giving a good impression of the school in the wider community.
Even in US public schools where students are permitted to wear the same clothing to school that they wear at other times, there are (often lengthy) dress codes, usually prohibitive, telling students all the things that they are not allowed to wear (from revealing clothes on girls to gang colours or offensive slogans on t-shirts).
So the world over we are used to the idea that students in school are told what to wear or not wear (and disciplined or punished if they don’t conform). Therefore, as with punishment, it isn’t beyond the reach of the reader’s imagination to accept that a rule requiring some, or all, students to be naked in school could be brought in and enforced.
One interesting take on the “all students” nudity rule can be found in the hentai manga Today Is A Naked Schoolday by Guglielmo. In this comic, protagonist Arisa explains that her high school has a rule/tradition that one day a year, all students (and faculty) leave their clothes at home and attend in the nude – to promote body confidence and encourage good behaviour, apparently. The twist in the tale here is that Arisa-chan – oversleeping and running late to school in the manner of all good anime heroines – arrives to class in her birthday suit only to learn that she’s got her dates wrong and Naked Day is next week! So Arisa has the humiliation of being the only one naked in a school full of clothed students – but because the school itself is perfectly okay with nudity (albeit usually only on a specific day) she isn’t just told to go home and put her dress on. Instead she just has to ride it out and go through the day in the nude – and of course, shenanigans ensue when she’s paired with a male student who has made the same mistake. But unlike a lot of only-one-naked protagonists Arisa isn’t really all that bothered just about what people are seeing – after all, everyone is going to see her naked again in a week’s time – so much as she is for standing out and being the focus of everyone’s attention. It’s the idea that being nude is okay if everyone is doing it but not if you’re the only one, which makes for a fun story.
At this point when talking about stories where schools have some sort of nudity rule, I’m going to focus a bit on a particular “shared universe” of stories; the one I understand is usually called the Nude In School Universe, but I’m going to call by it’s other name, which is The Program.
It’s at this point, too, that I’m going to be breaking my “18+ rule”, because in the very first story in the Program universe, the protagonist is (I believe) not quite seventeen. The Program stories are hosted on ASSTR, a site that allows erotic material involving under-eighteens as long as that material is signposted correctly.
The very first Program story is Karen Naked In School, authored by Karen Berger (Karen Berger is also the name of the title character). I’ll be honest, it won’t blow you away with quality writing, but it needs a mention if I’m going to talk about The Program universe.
In the story, high school junior Karen arrives at school one Monday to be abruptly brought to the principal’s office and informed that her school is taking part in a new education program in which one boy and one girl from each grade have to attend school naked for one week. Although Karen is in the first cohort, the idea is that each school week, different pairs will participate.
Not only do the chosen students have to go to school nude for five days, they have to abide by other rules too. They can’t cover themselves in any way, and when not in class they have to remain in public areas of the school (with the exception of timed bathroom breaks) to ensure maximum visibility. They also have to change and shower with the opposite gender rather than their own, and must also comply with “reasonable requests” – clothed students and faculty can ask them to take part in certain activities, such as going to the front of the class, or assuming certain poses, and they have to obey. As the story progresses, these “requests” become more sexually explicit, as the boys in school learn they can take advantage of having a naked girl who has to do whatever they ask, while the faculty indulge in various BDSM punishments/experiments on the nude students. ASSTR also allows stories where the sexual stuff is non-consensual, so there’s more than a little bit of that.
All of this would be a bit much in the real world, but in the story, although Karen starts out hating having to go naked and being miserable about all the butt plugs and nipple clamps and other stuff, she eventually overcomes her reservations and enjoys herself, even the stuff she isn’t initially consenting to. It’s a very BDSM-driven story so understandably the “Happiness in Slavery” theme is quite overt. Karen ends up learning that she enjoys being a submissive, but she has also overcome her shyness to get there, which was supposedly the point of the whole thing (her parents actually signed her up for it, believing it would help her).
This blog isn’t really intended to review the stories I’m referencing, and if Karen’s adventures are your thing I make no judgement – but if you haven’t already encountered Karen Naked In School, I honestly can’t really recommend it as a piece of writing. But what is interesting is that there were enough happy perverts on ASSTR that the idea of the Program itself, the state-mandated education initiative involving boys and girls agreeing (or being forced – that is a distinction we’ll get to in a moment) to go to school naked endured beyond this one story and became a sort of shared universe for writers of all stripes to play in, with a set of rules for them to follow to craft their own stories where protagonists had to go to school naked for a week and let people do whatever they wanted to them.
The idea of The Program is as follows. The US government, possibly fearful that a generation of young people might find themselves ill-equipped to manage in the rapidly-changing world of the early 2000s, adopts a radical and experimental education plan which every public high school in America is signed up to. That plan is as detailed in the pamphlet that Karen was given on her first day – every week, one boy and one girl from each grade are chosen to attend school entirely naked at all times, following a specific set of rules for conduct (including having to comply with “reasonable requests” from faculty and students). They’re also permitted to go naked anywhere else, both at home and out in public – and this is sometimes also enforced. Sometimes if they complete their time in The Program, there are benefits – usually, if they don’t, there are repercussions.
As the universe of stories grows, two distinct pathways of stories develop, depending on the temperament of the individual writer.
One is considered the ‘dystopian’ universe. In this strand, taking part in The Program is mandatory, imposed on the youth of America by a totalitarian government, enforced by sadistic or fascistic school administrators and enjoyed by cruel and sexually-voracious peers. High schoolers, especially girls, dread the weekly choosing of who will be next to have to go naked, hoping fervently that it isn’t them – the overall effect is a bit like a nudie Hunger Games – and usually have a horrible experience – but when some rebel and try and escape from The Program, their experience is made even worse.
The other pathway is a much sunnier take on the theme. In this pathway, participating in The Program is a great privilege and guys and girls are eager volunteers. Sometimes it’s because going into The Program earns rewards later on, and sometimes it’s just because they’re kinky and liberated and just really into the idea of being allowed to go everywhere naked for a week, and can’t wait to get involved in all manner of sexual adventures with guys, and girls, at school. These teens either put themselves forward or beg their parents to enrol them in the scheme, and spend the week having an absolute blast. In these stories, the nudity isn’t forced, and the sex is entirely consensual, whereas the dystopian stories are more allowing of rape and violence.
As I’ve said, my decision to include The Program universe in this essay is neither an endorsement nor a criticism. Aside from anything else there are a lot of stories in there, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to read them all before writing this, so it would be wrong of me to say they’re all x or all y. As with a lot of erotica written by amateurs of all levels of talent, you’ll doubtless find both good and bad there. I will acknowledge that a lot of the kinks these stories cover aren’t mine – no shaming, it’s just that my area of interest is in public nudity, only-one-naked, stuff like that, and non-consensual, BDSM etc. don’t ring my bell. So, again, I can’t really say these stories are all good or all bad, just that I didn’t really enjoy a lot of them.
(And once more, I will warn that some writers have chosen to write about protagonists who are under the age of eighteen, with some even rolling The Program out to middle school age and lower, which could well be the sort of thing that winds you on a watch list if you get caught with that on your computer…)
But all the same, I do find them interesting, firstly because of the diverging pathways, dystopian and non-dystopian. The same rules are in place in both pathways, but with a little tweaking one way or the other a writer can give us an exhibitionist paradise or a fascist body-tormenting hell.
Not just that, but they show how a writer coming up with a “new rule” scenario to get their protagonist naked in school also has to engage somewhat with the wider ramifications of that in society. In the real world, any initiative like The Program could and would be reacted to with horror by the general public. So if a writer wants a student to be made, or allowed, to go naked in school as a matter of policy, they do in some ways have to reconcile with the roles adults might play in facilitating, or even trying to prevent that.
The next few stories I’m going to talk about aren’t just more entertaining, but they also take some of those ideas and examine them in much more detail.
It’s a social experiment
What I mean here is any story where you have a concept where a school or college is conducting, or has been chosen to conduct, some sort of psychological/sociological study. One or more students will, in defiance of social convention and norms, attend classes completely nude. Meanwhile, assorted researchers or professors or other learned types will observe either their behaviour and experiences, the behaviour and experiences of those around them, or both, in order to get insight into some aspect of human behaviour or the human mind.
While it sounds pretty far-fetched, the worlds of psychology and sociology are full of studies that have involved pretty wild stuff being engineered by social scientists, psychologists and researchers to learn more about people’s reactions, behaviours, thought processes, instincts and drivers. There have even, I’m sure, been studies involving public nudity. So it doesn’t require much of a step to imagine some sort of nude in school study being carried out – and as with a lot of fictional science, as long as everyone is consenting, that seems to be okay, I mean, these people volunteered, right?
Such a social experiment is the premise of M Millswan’s OMG! I’m Naked In School. In OMG!, the protagonist, Carolyn Timmons, a High School senior, has volunteered to take part in a controversial study along with seventeen other young men and women. For the duration of the study she and her fellow participants will be naked 24/7. They will be naked at home, attend school naked, and go about in the local community naked. The study has been enabled by law and its terms will be honoured by the local and school authorities, so all the participants will experience no legal repercussions over being naked all the time. They are just expected to live life as normal while naked, although they will be observed at key times by the researchers conducting the study, usually through cameras.
The crucial element of the study that makes OMG story interesting when compared to similar takes on this theme is that Carolyn, and indeed every one of the other eighteen, is going naked willingly. While they all have their own reasons to want to take part, they are all volunteers; not just that, but they are the only successful volunteers from a wider pool and have been through an extensive process to demonstrate they are the right candidates to participate in such a study. Millswan apparently based the idea of the book on the real life case of Brattleboro, VT – a town where it was widely-known in the local community that there was not, in fact, any law on the books prohibiting public non-sexual nudity, and where in the mid-2000s this knowledge briefly gave rise to a trend among groups of teens from the local high school – male and female – of going naked in public. So in OMG, while 24/7 public nudity is a cause of nervousness and anxiety in Carolyn because of inbuilt social convention, she is always a willing participant. Carolyn has a choice whether or not to have the experience of going nude in school and elsewhere, and she chooses to go through with it even if in practice for her it might be a bit scary.
Carolyn is a genuine volunteer for public nudity, but the same cannot be said for Dani in D H Jonathan’s The “Volunteer”, which is why the title includes those scare-quotes.
The “Volunteer” is probably one of the best-known works among people familiar with the nude in school story, and probably deserves an essay for itself, as it has a lot to say about nudity, social convention, college life, and ethical practice in sociology and psychology, but I’ll try and be as brief as I can here.
Jonathan’s novel is about Danielle – Dani – Keaton, a college student who in a moment of weakness and bad judgement cheats on a paper. Cheating and plagiarism is a serious academic offense and when she’s caught out on it by one of her professors, she faces suspension and the loss of the scholarship that is enabling her to pursue her education. However, the professor has hesitated on turning her in to the university, and instead Dani is offered an ultimatum; assist the professor by becoming the participant of a social experiment she wishes to conduct, and the cheating will not only be forgotten, but Dani will receive some other academic advantages to boot.
The catch? The social experiment is for a student of the college – Dani – to spend the eight remaining weeks of the semester completely naked, 24/7. Not in isolation or in a controlled situation, but out in class and on campus and everywhere that she would normally go.
Not only that, but for the experiment (which is a study in both how she experiences public nudity and also how her nudity is experienced by other students) to work, Dani can’t tell any other students that it’s an experiment. Certain key faculty members have been briefed, of course, both to protect Dani and to prevent the experiment coming to an end before it has even begun – but Dani cannot disclose to her fellow students that she is going everywhere naked because she has been told she has to. Instead, she must maintain the story at all times that the fact she is naked is entirely her own choice and something she has chosen to do to make a statement about body freedom in society. So Dani, who is very much not somebody who would naturally go naked in public to make a statement about body freedom in society, must pretend to be someone she is not, and deal with all that entails as well as the very extreme psychological distress of going everywhere on campus and in class completely naked, and the effect this has on her relationships with her friends and potential romantic interests.
It's that part – the lie Dani has to tell – that makes ‘The “Volunteer”’ work so well for me. Dani has to pretend to be bold, brave, unconventional, a trailblazer unbothered by social convention and unconcerned with modesty, when in fact she is none of these things – she’s just a regular, vanilla California college girl.
Unlike Carolyn in OMG, Dani has no excuse she can give to excuse her nudity. Carolyn and her fellow volunteers are going naked in a world that has been, out of necessity, prepared for their presence; up to and including laws being passed at a national level – so anyone in their small town or school seeing her or the other participants nude knows that it is in the name of a very well-publicised social experiment.
But because Dani is bound to secrecy, she just has to show up naked one day, shocking everyone around her – and then defend her right to do so even when she doesn’t necessarily believe in it herself, and force the world around her to accept her nudity when it would actually be much easier for her to allow herself to be prevented from being naked. It’s this disconnect between thought and action that makes Dani such an interesting and compelling character – we see her behaviour as the others around her do, but we’re also privy to her often contradictory thoughts and we understand the pressure she is under. So many nude in school stories create humiliation or embarrassment for their characters by having a parade of bad nudity-based or sexual things happen to them, but in Dani’s case, the stress and discomfort is much more subtle and psychological.
**Spoilers for ‘The “Volunteer” ahead – seriously, if you haven’t read it already, go do it, it’s really good.**
In the end, it all unravels. Dani’s professor is exposed as having orchestrated a decidedly unethical study in which Dani’s consent to participate in the extremely unsafe act of going naked in public so as to enact a social experiment was extracted from her by coercion (blackmail, in fact) rather than given freely, and legal action follows. But freed from the constraints of the experiment, Dani undergoes an epiphany; while she might have been forced to go naked against her better judgement, the experience itself has changed her for the better. The values she was forced to pretend she had become the ones she truly believes, and the following semester, when college restarts, Dani is once more naked on campus, this time by choice. Her actions and conduct have helped to confirm that the campus is, technically, but very much genuinely, a place that can and should be clothing optional, and with that permission granted, she goes on to take full advantage of it. No longer required to lie in order to keep herself at college on her scholarship, she is free to be herself; and it turns out that the person she is is a naked one.
I should say here that Jonathan has now written and published a sequel – The Girl Who Stopped Wearing Clothes – which is about Dani’s life after the study, now that she is of her own volition going naked everywhere; as well as introducing a new character taking part in the next phase of the professor’s social experiments. I can’t say more than that because I’m still reading it at the moment, so I don’t know much yet of what happens – but I can say that the writing is as good as ever.
**Spoilers end here for The “Volunteer”**
Interestingly enough, The “Volunteer” is the first story I’ve mentioned in this blog that takes place on a college campus and involves college-age characters. That’s actually a surprise to me, as earlier this article, I said that there are difficulties in setting nude in school stories in high school because usually only those in the senior year are of the acceptable age to appear in the titillating nudity scenes – whereas college girls and guys are (with a rare exception) always over eighteen and definitely a popular subject for sexual fantasy.
There are an enormous number of erotic writings and comics, pornographic videos, sex comedy films and everything else adult-orientated in entertainment taking place on college campuses, and yet I find myself short on examples of these when it comes to the nude in school subgenre.
Partly I think this is down to the greater level of individual freedom enjoyed by college students compared to high schoolers – they are legally adults, free to make their own decisions regarding how they behave around campus, and when they do transgress, they are not able to be punished the same way. Nude in school stories have, at their root, the idea of teachers who impose specific rules of conformity on teenagers who, during school hours, have to obey them as absolute authority or face punishment. College students who misbehave tend to be granted certain lenience (in part because they are, or someone is, paying the university for them to be there) and when they do cross the line, punishments tend to be academic in nature rather than things like detentions - unless it's something really serious, in which case they are simply expelled. So the authority of the college isn’t absolute, even in the US system where colleges are much more self-contained and where students usually live on, or immediately adjacent to, campus for the duration of their time there.
That’s one theory I have, anyway. Or it could be that, all theorising about the nature of authority in colleges aside, the nude in college subgenre is so dominated by two massive and well-crafted works that most of the other examples I have found just come across as derivative of those. The first, as I have already mentioned, is ‘The “Volunteer”’, which has cornered the market in “college girl has to go naked everywhere on campus as part of a social experiment” themes.
The second? Well, we’ll come to that in our final category of answer to the question “why is she naked in school?”
You’re caught in a lie that you can’t get out of
The Unintentional Nudist is a relatively short story written by an author who went by the name TrackJim and published on The Writings of Leviticus – a forum/hub for bondage and enforced nudity stories – around the turn of the millennium.
The story concerns a college freshman named Tami Smithers, who has started to attend a prestigious, but significantly conservative, New England college to study mathematics while on a gymnastics scholarship.
Tami and some other girls are tricked into taking part in what they think is a sorority a hazing ritual where they have to streak nude across campus. Unfortunately Tami has been set up by the villainous Wanda, and she is caught out naked in public. The college, which, as I have mentioned is very conservative in its expectations of student behaviour, would undoubtedly view nude streaking as an offence serious enough to cost Tami her scholarship, and without that, she would have to leave college. So, in a panic, Tami tells an outrageous lie to explain herself.
Tami has, she says, been called to God. She claims to have strong religious beliefs and tells the authorities that she is naked because her religion requires her to be. She is a “religious nudist” and as an act of faith has renounced any and all clothing – not just clothing, in fact, but any semblance of modesty!
Tami briefly thinks it’s a smart lie. Streaking is a disgraceful transgression, but practicing a religious belief? That’s something that is protected by college charter and state and US law. To punish her for practicing her religious beliefs, no matter how unconventional those may be, would be discrimination, and she reckons on that being a path the college would not want to go down, lest they leave themselves open for legal action, lawsuits, and so on.
But as things progress, Tami realises she has bitten off far more than she can chew.
The college dean, Dean Jorgon, and others are sceptical, but Tami has them in a bind. They can’t accuse her of lying, just in case she isn’t; because then it would look even more like they are discriminating against her by ridiculing or rubbishing a genuine religion. To protect their institution they have to go along with it. But Tami’s audacity has infuriated the dean, and he’s not prepared to go down without a fight.
What follows is what nowadays might get called “malicious compliance” – in the presence of a lawyer, in the name of “protecting” her beliefs, Tami is coerced into signing an agreement confirming everything she has just made up about her “religion” is true – and that she will from henceforth be practicing it 24/7.
If Tami is going naked and renouncing modesty as an act of faith, she is told, the college will do everything they can to ensure she is able to continue following her religious observance permanently. She will be going nude anywhere on campus – around her dorm, in common areas, and in all classes. She will be provided with items and materials to ensure her total and constant nudity has no impact on her ability to attend classes or gymnastics training. The college will even assist her by removing any and all temptation to break her “vows” by confiscating all the clothing Tami has in her dorm, up to and including her bedding.
Jorgon and the lawyer, Henry Ross, believe that by forcing Tami to live the life she has claimed she requires, they will make college so uncomfortable and humiliating to her that she will have no choice but to admit that she made up the “religious nudist” thing and that, plus the original offense of streaking, would be enough to ensure that the college can boot her out with no repercussions.
But they have underestimated Tami’s iron will, and underestimated how much she values her college education. Tami’s family in Rhode Island is not wealthy, and the college is prestigious and expensive. Her gymnastics scholarship is the only way she would ever be able to attend such a school. If she loses the scholarship, she loses her college place, and with it everything she has worked for so far in her life. So Tami decides that if she has to go naked 24/7 to keep herself on the path she has fought for, she will do it, she will make that sacrifice.
That’s the establishing premise of the Tami Smithers stories, of which The Unintentional Nudist was the first. The Unintentional Nudist itself is… well, it’s fine. Not particularly well written, not particularly fleshed out, but not horrible to read. But the full ramifications of Tami’s lie and the life it causes her to live aren’t really explored in full, and Tami as a character only really comes into her own once other writers were inspired to dig a bit deeper and tell the story of what happens next.
Because what The Unintentional Nudist had at its heart, beyond the flat characters and random shouting and nonsensical stuff with Tami’s mother also being roped into the humiliation, was a damn good idea in the lie Tami has to now live.
When she was faced with the legal contract (which ostensibly “protects” her beliefs against discrimination, but actually forces her to comply with them at all times), Tami couldn’t refuse, because to refuse was to admit she’d not just done something bad, but had then lied to cover it up, and she’d be out of college for sure. So she signs and then all of a sudden she has to become a completely different person in order to maintain the lie she’s just committed herself to.
She’s a lot like Dani in The “Volunteer” in that respect. Someone’s got her over a barrel and the only way she can get out of it is to a) go naked in public and b) act like it’s something she very strongly believes in the rightness of being able to do. Neither Tami nor Dani start out with any positive feelings about going to school naked, but they both have to pretend that it’s what they want, no matter how embarrassed or uncomfortable they really feel. At least Dani is in sunny California, though – Tami has to contend with the Vermont winter as well! It really is going to take all her courage and strength to be able to get through not just her first year of college, but all three years.
This idea is picked up and run with by a couple of writers, but I’m mostly familiar with those written by Donnylaja, who has written a lot of enforced nudity fiction over the past couple of decades, all of it very well done, and who got permission from Tami’s creator to continue the story however he wanted it to go.
It would take too long to summarise all that happens in Donnylaja’s stories – there are a good number of them and they are a satisfyingly long read – but one of the things he makes a lot of use of is the idea that Tami’s “religion” doesn’t just forbid clothing, but any sort of modesty or shame. So, Tami – in addition to being naked all the time, embarrassed in every social situation, and freezing cold for half of the year – also has to portray herself as somebody for whom any need of bodily – or sexual – privacy is no longer essential. So, if she has to help in an anatomical display by spreading her legs wide and giving everyone a good look at her lady parts, if she has to model for a sculptor in revealing poses, if she has to do gymnastics in the buff and let everyone see everything, if she gets signed up to a human sexuality study where she’s induced to orgasm after orgasm by electrical probes… well, her religion says she has to be completely okay with this; so she’s the perfect person to get volunteered to do those sorts of things. Indeed, half the time Tami is being put forward for these extra-curricular activities and experiments by Dean Jorgon, who is hoping that the worse he makes things for her, the more quickly she will crack.
The only thing is, the more stuff Tami does, the harder it becomes for her to even consider coming clean. If she’d admitted lying about the streaking at the start, maybe that would be okay… but if she admits she made her religion up after months of public nudity, not to mention all the other depraved stuff she’s found herself having to do… well, she’ll end up looking like some sort of deranged pervert of the highest order – very much not the sort of girl who would have any future at a conservative Christian college. So poor Tami just has to keep going, keep being naked, and keep agreeing to do all the other stuff that people say she should have no problem with because, after all, it’s her religion. And the more she does, the more committed she is to the lie and the harder it is to break it… especially when she starts finding herself an inspiration, a heroine, to other girls on campus, and then gets to add the fear of letting them down into the mix.
In places the Tami stories can be extreme (they originated on a bondage site, after all), which means they may not be for everyone. But they’re incredibly well-written by an author who has worked very hard to make Tami into a strong and compelling character who really grows and progresses throughout the stories. I enjoy them a lot and they have been a big influence on why I like nude in school stuff in the first place.
What I think they bring especially to the subgenre is the idea of a reluctant heroine who finds herself trapped into a situation where she has to be naked in school, without it specifically being a discipline/punishment thing, which is something ‘The “Volunteer”’ also does. Additionally, the Tami stories also add the idea that nudity isn’t necessarily supported by the college establishment, but that they have to go along with it because it’s presented as a legitimate, and protected, belief.
Real Life Nude In School?
So now you've read my deep dive into some of the particular types of nude in school material you can find on the internet, divided up into what the reasons are for the person or people to be naked.
But away from fiction – could something like what happens in these stories happen in real life?
Well, disregarding stories where someone streaks or gets locked out of the changing rooms naked, or loses their costume on stage in the school play, or anything like that… sticking to stories where someone actually attends school naked – I think the answer, rather obviously, is going to be no. Nude in school in that way remains firmly belonging to the realm of fiction.
There would be too much controversy around such behaviour for it to happen in the real world. While in the historical past quite extreme disciplinary measures have been used by schools on children, these days those things are rightly outlawed. And while schools do still manage to employ creative punishments to maintain discipline some of which involve shaming or humiliating the wrongdoer, it would be considered extremely unwise for any educator of teenagers to add nudity into that mix.
That’s not to say it’s never been tried – while researching this blog I found a couple of instances where school pupils in India were made to strip naked as punishment – I certainly don’t think it would be welcomed. Indeed, the stories I read about Indian schools were in the news because the actions of the teachers had prompted widespread condemnation even in the local community – it is extremely unlikely those teachers would be given the freedom to try that punishment again, and nor should they be.
Ultimately, stripping a high school student in front of their peers or teachers exposes them to a distress, humiliation and sexualisation which would run counter to the school’s duty of care towards that student. If such a punishment were ever used, the student would almost certainly tell their parents the moment they got home, and no reasonable parent would be happy to hear that their daughter (or son) had been paraded nude in front of their class like Cersei in Game of Thrones because they forgot their homework. No, they’d take action, and the school would never in a million years be able to defend their choice of punishment, because they had broken the aforementioned duty of care.
Okay, so forget punishment, what if a student just decided one day to come to class naked? Would that be allowed in the real world?
Again, almost certainly not. For one, schools usually have uniform or dress codes which they strictly enforce – nudity might be shocking and taboo, but it’s also a breach of what clothing the student is expected to wear, and could be prohibited on those lines alone! It’s also improbable that, in a world where girls’ skirt length and the visibility of their bra straps on their shoulders are rigidly policed by the schools they attend, a school would turn a blind eye to someone showing up completely naked.
Dress code aside, we come again to the fact that schools have a duty of care towards all students. Would a student be considered safe (especially a female one) if they wanted to walk around naked in front of everyone? What about the other students? Would the school be confident they were looking out for their wellbeing if they let one of them go to class naked and show their genitals to everyone?
The answer is almost certainly not.
That’s not to say that random, deliberate incidents of nudity in school or class could never, or have never, occurred. In 2005 I read a news story about a school in Norway where a nineteen-year-old female student had launched her campaign for russ president (I'm no expert but I think russ in Norway is a student activity a bit like Rag Week where students get a bit rowdy...) by taking to the stage in the school auditorium and stripping completely naked, with the national flag painted on her crotch. So shameless displays of nudity by high-school students can certainly happen – but specifically attending class in the nude? Almost certainly not.
But what about college, the realm of Dani Keaton and Tami Smithers? Colleges, after all, are often thought of as liberal places, and the young men and women who attend them are legally adults. If a student decided, as Dani and Tami have to pretend they have, that they wanted to exercise a right to attend college classes completely naked, would they be able to?
The answer is, maybe? As the text of The “Volunteer” itself recounts, in the early 1990s the University of California, Berkley, was home to Andrew Martinez, ‘The Naked Guy’ – a twenty-year-old student who made a conscious choice to go naked on campus and in class, citing philosophical reasons and feeling encouraged because he had earlier had charges against him after leading a nude protest on campus dropped (because county ordinance did not prohibit nudity unless it was also accompanied by lewd behaviour).
However, while Martinez was enabled to go nude on campus by a loophole in the law, and became briefly a local celebrity because of it, his actions were certainly far from tolerated by the university authorities. After Martinez had managed a few months of his nudity, U of C Berkley closed the loophole by passing policy banning public nudity on campus, with the city following suit the next year. In the end, all Martinez managed was to antagonise the university into banning him, and anyone else, from going naked. It’s highly likely that any college student today would have the same experience – if they went to class naked and it wasn’t explicitly against the rules, it soon would be.
That’s not to say that colleges and universities are places unfriendly to nudity. It’s just that nudity tends to be tolerated as protest or as artistic endeavour, or part of student tradition, rather than a recognised way of dressing in class. Several universities have Naked Mile-style mass streaking traditions to which campus security turn a blind eye (or even help to ensure happen smoothly), and there are no end of arts students interested in pushing boundaries by incorporating public nudity into thought-provoking photography or performance.
As for nudity on campus as a form of protest, well, a good example of that being permitted would be the case of the feminist academic and economist Dr Victoria Bateman, who teaches at Cambridge. In 2017, Dr Bateman attended work for a day, including meetings, completely naked with a slogan painted on her chest in protest at the result of the UK government’s ‘Brexit’ referendum, which had ended with Britain voting to leave the EU. Dr Bateman’s nudity, which she had not told anybody in advance that she was planning, was not deemed a barrier to her attending work or meetings and reportedly nobody in attendance asked her to cease her protest, possibly because while it was visually very noticeable, it did not affect the normal day-to-day business of the college. Dr Bateman subsequently went on to use nudity and undressing on campus in other ways as a form of protest to oppose Brexit and show her support for feminist issues, and has now written a book, Naked Feminism, outlining the philosophy that underpins some of her actions and arguing for the right of women to use nudity in protests.
Of course, as a faculty member, Dr Bateman may be entitled to a leniency that an undergraduate student might not be afforded, but at the same time, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the arguments she uses to justify using nudity as protest could be used by a student to the same ends, and reasonable to expect that they would receive the same level of tolerance from their university – provided they put their clothes back on at the end of the protest as Dr Bateman does, of course.
A life of “permanent protest” may bring them closer to the sort of scenarios depicted in nude in school stories, but is likely to be a difficult one after not very long. In much the same way as events like the World Naked Bike Ride are tolerated in cities all over the world because they happen on one particular day, but riding your bike naked in the same city every day would not be met with the same level of acceptance, completely renouncing clothing, even as protest, would probably be beyond even the most liberal real-world college.
Ultimately, of course, it depends very much on the individual institutions. University of California, Berkley reacted to Andrew Martinez by quickly closing the legislative loophole that allowed him to attend classes nude. The Economics Department at Cambridge took a more laissez-faire attitude when Dr Bateman arrived for work with no clothes on. And at least one US institution actually has a tradition of allowing nudity among students.
The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), the private art university founded by the Walt Disney Company, is sometimes described as being "officially" clothing optional. This is inaccurate - CalArts doesn't appear to have specific policy either allowing or prohibiting nudity in public areas - but it does seem that the combination of a socially liberal institution and a philosophy of nurturing student artistic creativity above anything else has led to an environment where casual nudity is not as taboo, or unusual, as it might be in any other college.. While this accepting attitude might more often be demonstrated in allowing student nudity in the name of art and performance, it is also reported by actress Alison Brie, who graduated from the university in 2005, that among students the only place casual nudity is supposedly considered actually out of bounds is the campus cafeteria. How often students actually take advantage of this permissive attitude to casual nudity only someone with a long experience of CalArts could tell you - but Brie herself has spoken about thinking nothing of occasionally taking a "jaunt" around campus in just her tennis shoes "to exercise my right" to do so - not a million miles from what D H Jonathan has Dani claim she is doing when she goes naked on campus in The "Volunteer".
So, it seems that the sort of long-term nude in school stories that we see in all these great stories and comics would not be impossible in the real world. But they would, barring attendance of a particularly liberal institution (or particularly strict and draconian one) be extremely unlikely, and mostly would remain confined to the realm of fiction. But that’s okay! Fiction allows us to enjoy these themes and tropes without having to worry about the real-world repercussions of them, and in a lot of ways that’s actually better. Sure, it requires some suspension of disbelief, but that’s what fantasy is, and if nude in school is your fantasy, there are plenty of good writers able to give you material that caters to that.
Key Nude In School Works
Although I have covered some examples of nude in school/college material in this blog, there is a huge amount more out there. The following is a list of some of the stories, comics and creators I have found or been recommended by others, as well as – where possible (I haven't read all of these) – some notes about what you will find in the stories and other content.
Most of these links go to NSFW places with the exception of the Amazon links.
Novels
(DH Jonathan)
College student Danielle (Dani) Keaton finds herself coerced into taking part in a unique social study after cheating on a test. Now, to keep her place at university, she must renounce clothing and go naked on campus and to class for the rest of the semester – and she can’t tell anyone else that it’s for an experiment.
Social experiment nude in school theme. Public nudity, only-one-naked, ENF, CMNF, CFNF, small amount of masturbation and consensual sex
(DH Jonathan)
The further adventures of Dani Keaton from The "Volunteer", and of some of the other characters from that novel.
(M. Millswan)
High school senior Carolyn Timmons and seventeen other young men and women have volunteered to take part in a controversial social study, their town having been chosen for the experiment due to having no laws against non-sexual public nudity. Now Carolyn must spend the duration of the study completely without clothes, whether in school, at home, or around town.
Social experiment nude in school theme. Public nudity, CMNF/CFNF, consensual sex
Short stories
(Ciara Jones)
A high school volleyball team get ready to do a nude calendar photoshoot to raise money. A fire alarm going off begins a chain of disasters that leaves the girls exposed in school.
Accidental nudity theme. Public nudity, ENF, streaking.
(ExhibitionistErika)
Budding eighteen-year-old exhibitionist Heather discovers that public nudity is actually permitted at her high school, she takes full advantage of this to attend school naked for a day.
Exhibitionist theme. Only-one-naked, CMNF/CFNF, exhibitionism, masturbation.
(K C Silkwood)
Christy and her friends on the high school softball team get bored and decide to pull down each others shorts during practice one day. But when one girl accidentally winds up naked from the waist down, Christy is forced to run the bases in the nude as an apology - then her clothes are stolen...
ENF, only-one-naked, CFNF/CMNF
(K C Silkwood)
College sorority pledge Payton Miller is coming to the end of her grueling initiation period for membership of Zeta Alpha Nu sorority; but before she will be accepted, she has to complete a long list of challenges. A list made all the harder when Peyton emerges from the showers to discover her clothes have been stolen and that the sorority president expects her to complete her tasks in the nude...
ENF, only-one-naked, CFNF/CMNF
(Prof. Plook)
Four girls, egged on by their exhibitionist ringleader Hildy, have planned a spectacular and memorable school prank, in which they will anonymously streak across stage during assembly. But the prank goes wrong, and they are forced to run nude through the school pursued by classmates who hope to uncover the identities of these naked beauties.
Story collections
(JC Parker)
Contains the story ‘One Step Too Far’ - when Caitlin becomes anxious about her dissertation defense, she listens to her partner and incorporates her exhibitionist fantasies as a way to overcome her stage fright.
Exhibitionism, ENF, only-one-naked, CMNF/CFNF
(JC Parker)
Contains the story ‘Reconciling’ - a newly hired professor seeking tenure’s future is dependent on meeting with the Dean at the department banquet. But when an unfortunate spill ruins her dress, she is forced to seek help from the person she's tried to avoid, her ex-girlfriend.
Partworks/serials/collaborations
The Tami Smithers series (Tami the Unintentional Nudist)
This series begins with The Unintentional Nudist by TrackJim, but the best stories are those by Donnylaja, which can be found on his website here.
College freshman Tami is caught streaking on a dare and fearing loss of her scholarship tells an outrageous lie – that she’s following a religious belief that requires her to be naked at all times and reject any modesty. The stories follow Tami throughout college life, being put through all sorts of situations, making friends, falling in love – all the while having to pretend she’s a religious nudist.
Lie/pretend nudist in school theme. Public nudity, only-one-naked, ENF, CMNF, CFNF, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, bondage, consensual sex.
The Program/Nude in School universe
Set of stories united by a shared concept – an education program for US high schools that requires one girl and one boy from each grade to spend a week coming to school naked, during which they also have to comply with “reasonable requests” from classmates and faculty (based around nudity or sexual behaviour).
* Contains some scenes involving underage characters and some scenes of non-consensual sex.
New rule nude in school theme. Reluctant, public nudity, only-one-naked, ENF, CMNF, CFNF, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, bondage, consensual sex, incest, non-consensual sex
Hentai Manga/Comics
(Guglielmo)
Arisa’s school has a strange custom – on one day a year, everyone attends naked. But when Arisa arrives late, she realises she’s gotten her dates mixed up, and now she’s the only one naked in school!
New rule theme. Only-one-naked, CMNF/CFNF, ENF, public nudity, consensual sex.
(Guglielmo)
Honour student Yuri discovers she is the recipient of a new award from her school – the ‘Sexiest Student’. The award has been initiated as part of a government-sponsored program to improve sex education, and the reward requires Yuri to strip nude in a school assembly and then provide the services of a “sex model” to the other students while remaining naked for the entire day.
New rule theme. Reluctant, only-one-naked, ENF, CMNF/CFNF, exhibitionism, masturbation, urination.
(Guglielmo)
Winner of the ‘Sexiest Student’ award Yuri must now go naked from classroom to classroom, greeting all the students at her high school and complying with their requests for her “sex model” services.
New rule theme. Reluctant, only-one-naked, ENF, CMNF/CFNF, exhibitionism, masturbation.
(R-Otome)
While everyone else is in class, secret exhibitionist student Miki strips nude, puts on a collar and leash, and sneaks around the corridors and empty classrooms, becoming more and more aroused with each moment and each narrow escape.
Exhibitionism theme. Exhibitionism, ENF/CFNF/CMNF (fantasies), masturbation, urination.
(Charu)
A series about high-school girls who have a fetish for exhibitionism and how each explores her kink while trying not to get into too much trouble. School locations figure often with Issues 2 and 3 specifically involving characters being fully nude on school premises.
Exhibitionism theme. Exhibitionism, CMNF, masturbation. Issues 6 and 7 have a futanari (futa) main character (futanari is a hentai trope involving female characters who have male genitalia).
Film clips
There are a great many film clips on various adult websites involving actresses playing the role of high school girls who find themselves nude in class and in school (a lot of these originate in Japan) – far too many to link here.
The following are two other clips I have come across with nudity in school that are good or interesting enough to mention here.
Young Colombian student is filmed sneaking around her college campus in the nude – there are other students around.
Exhibitionist theme. Real life, exhibitionism, CMNF, only-one-naked.
Clip from a hentai anime in which school girl Sayaka is informed that she is now required to attend school naked, and has to strip nude in class.
(No idea if this is just one of many nude in school scenes in this anime or the only one, as this was the only clip I’ve seen)
New rule theme. Reluctant, ENF, CMNF/CFNF, only-one-naked.
Creators
Zacball
Zacball writes comics in collaboration with various artists, all with an ENF/public nudity theme. Ongoing series include Frankie’s Naked Night, where a college student finds herself accidentally naked on campus and must get to safety without falling victim to further disaster
Patreon / Deviantart / Twitter
TheENFMan
ENF artist who has drawn numerous fun and energetic cartoons involving embarrassing public nudity and exposure, including several that take place in a high school/college environment.
I'm sure there are many more stories, comics and creators of stories and comics that use the nude in school theme. If you have any recommendations you think should be included either here or in perhaps a future blog - or ideas of other nudity tropes I could write about another time, hit me up on Twitter at @therequiax.