Sexually, I see a lot of foot fetishism. Why? Because even if we don’t need clothes, we need shoes (assuming we have the same bodies we do now, instead of mutations of thicker skin, etc.), and so the shoes themselves as well as what they cover would be of extreme interest and titillation. I also see people growing their hair really, really long and doing lots of elaborate hair weaving and designing, and skin coloring - dying ourselves different colors. There would be natural physical endowments/traits that were deemed more desirable, just as there are now, but the rich must have ways to purchase status and beauty, so - for example, those really, really, creepy-long fingernails that are so disgusting? Something like that would probably be supahcool, because it indicates you don’t have to do any manual labor at all, and you can have your servants dress you and wipe your butt, etc. Plastic surgery would be the new haute couture (as if it isn’t now o_0), with increasingly extreme (and expensive) procedures designed to satisfy increasingly extreme standards of physical beauty - stuff like limb-lengthening, etc.

And while people would be nude, almost nothing else would be. There would be a huge industry for “clothing” of all kinds for furniture, equipment, car seats, etc., because with unclothed people using all this stuff, we’d really need to cover things with washable fabrics… Think head rest protectors on airline seats.

I also think that some amount of fetishism might grow up over situations and conditions in which certain people would have to cover themselves to some degree in order to do certain work, like welders, haz-mat workers, divers. I think some of this would be seen as really hot/sexy/naughty, the way a lot of people in the real world see certain tight/revealing athletic gear as hot, say.

Well, I’ve talked quite enough, I reckon, but I wonder if we’d come up with ways for men to control erections, or if erections would just be oh-yawn, same-old-same-old? Menstrual stuff? Would all women use “the cup” or would signs that a woman has her period not be all hush-hush? And I wonder how it would affect us militarily? And what would the Pope wear on his head? A really tall beehive ‘do?

Fun question!

I’d think there would be no wicker chairs, sunblock would be sold at a premium (it kinda is now already), we’d worry more about pedicures, manicures, waxing and laser hair removal and less about designer names, and that–sorry, jonmc–Meatbomb would be king.

What about body adornments? I was watching TeeVee last night and flipped to a show where they didn’t have clothing, but razor-blade cuttings were the norm. Are we all trying to attract others through our plumage? Are humans more likely to have male or female body/clothing adornments?

For the most part, I don’t buy clothing for purposes of keeping my body warm, I buy it for some weird endorphin-releasing-I-must-have-this-now sort of thing (and that is pretty far and few between, once a month, maybe). For instance, I bought 2 dresses recently on clearance for no reason at all, but it turns out we have a wedding to go to on March 1 so I have a dress to wear. As my husband laughs, he of the “one dress shirt for every occasion” crowd.

In winter, I have a set layer: long-sleeved t-shirt, zippered hoodie or flannel shirt, oversized fleece jacket, and good Scottish wool scarf - you must keep the neck and chest warm in winter to avoid the plague. Track pants and LL Bean slides on the bottom. Fleece-lined track pants are even better.

I’m not sure how else it could be, given the cold temps. I’m thinkin’ people migrated toward a food source, deer, bear, elk, etc. And then someone said, “hey, this deer/rabbit/fox hide is warm!” and there ya go. Someone else figured out that flax made linen and fleece made wool.

As far as clothes being bad, I am not sure how far back in history you have to go (as Meatbomb said, it’s okay in some parts of the world today). Frankly, I’d rather the bra had never been invented.

I haven’t done my research, but I’ve jumped to the conclusion that what you are describing are small groups of people in Polynesia and Africa living by traditional, less modern ways.

(And is it any mistake that gedanken is an anagram from ‘Gen Naked’?)

Anyway, the question! One thing struck me as a bit sticky:

Developmentally, I think mankind would never have settled in parts of the world that, here, require clothing for protection from the elements.

I don’t want to shoot the what-if in the foot, but if we wanted to find a way to make this situation more plausible, I think we’d have to turn this assumption on its head: instead of saying “if mankind never decided they needed clothes, they’d choose to settle in warm climates”, I think it’s more likely to say “if mankind had settled in sufficiently warm climates, they might not have decided to bother with clothes.”

Once you get past the small tribal nomad stage, there’s a lot of incentive to grabbing some land of your own and putting down stakes. If all the really warm land is taken and the population keeps expanding, folks are going to wander to colder climates and elect not to die of exposure. Bam: clothes.

So maybe we’re presupposing a warmer Earth? Or a hairier human; or a smaller population; or, or, or. It’s one way of framing the idea.