Words: Jon Axworthy Illustration: Bill Brown
Look around the beach on a hot day this summer and you’re likely to see lots of guys in shorts, and not much else, rowdily playing rounders, kwik cricket, footy or badminton. Look a little harder, and you’ll also see plenty of chaps playing the less well-known pastime of ‘hide the bod’. It’s a one-player game that involves wearing as many clothes as possible, even though the sun is beating down and the temperature is in the high twenties. And unfortunately, there are no real winners: the only figure on the scoreboard is the number of things the players feel they need to change before they’ll be self-confident enough to even consider going shirtless.