To pre-empt any feelings of reverse sexism against us women for showing only male nudes,
women weren't allowed to take part in the original olympics
.
I did a search for ancient women athlete images. None were fully nude, except this ancient rare Han statuette :
some semi nudes are:
Young Minoan woman Bull Leaping.
This excerpt from a British Museum blog, explains attitudes towards nudity in those times:
Although we must separate art from life, nevertheless, they enjoyed many more occasions for nudity than any other European civilisation before or since. The reason why they performed athletics in the nude was said to be because, in the early Olympic Games, a runner lost his knickers and as a result also lost the race. That story may be true or not but either way, it doesn’t explain the true nature of Greek athletic nudity as an expression of social, moral and political values.
The circumstances in which men and boys appeared naked were dictated by an exclusive attachment to certain values held by an elite ‘club’ of male citizens. To be naked was not the same as to be nude. The first befits manual workers or those engaged in lewd behaviour. Nudity by contrast was the uniform of the righteous. When a young man in ancient Athens exposed his athletic body to his peers, he was not asserting his sexuality, rather, he was demonstrating his qualification to compete in athletics and at the same time to be worthy of putting on a second skin of bronze and defending his city on the battlefield. ...
The ideal Greek male body, then, is at the very heart of the Greek experience.
Female nudity was much rarer than male nudity and the wives of well-to-do citizens were expected to stay indoors preserving their reputations with their pale complexions. Sculptors become increasingly skilled at showing the body beneath thin tissues of drapery and to judge from such objects as terracotta figurines and white marble sculpture, women were adept at flaunting their figures using drapery as a means of exaggerating their shape and so drawing attention to the body beneath. ...
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/2015/02/20/the-shock-of-the-nude/(It doesn't touch on the Greek reputation for same-sex love). Hope this little intrusion of pedantry into this lighthearted thread will be excused
Poll
Topic: Olympics in the Nude