But what in the hell is with the shirtless male population? I’m serious. There are a lot, A LOT, of males who are involved with the police who are not wearing a shirt.
Sure, here in Canada we might go shirtless when, I dunno, we swim. Sometimes on hot days I “might” take my shirt off when cutting the lawn, but the societal norm is to wear a damned shirt.
I see episodes all the time with guys in cars, walking down the street, walking around the neighbourhood, and all sorts of public activities with NO SHIRT ON.
Well, hard as it may be to believe, there are (unlike Canada) parts of the world where you don’t immediately congeal into a block of ice if you remove your shirt.
And you can go barefoot without risking gangrene.
You’d be amazed how many U.S. Dopers post while totally nekkid.
I assume you just started watching? My wife and I noticed this trend on the show 20 years ago.
Well… it’s warmer down here. And you’re not dealing with the High Society types, right? Don’t forget, these people have to sign a release to appear on the show, and a person who sings a release to appear on Cops after they tied up their baby’s daddy with a phone cord isn’t likely one that graduated valedictorian of their HS class and is concerned with the finer points of societal integration.
It’s not very common among your average American, but when you are dealing with criminals - it is more common. Plus if the police go to a house to say - address a noise complaint - and the person answers the door looking nice and listens to the officers - it doesn’t make for good TV.
I don’t think there are any stats for this sort of thing, but I don’t think it’s so much that there are so many shirtless folk here as it is that shirtlessness seems to correlate strongly with doing stupid shit that gets you arrested.
With that said, here are some probable contributing factors:
A lot of COPS episodes are filmed in Southern and Southwestern states, where it gets mighty hot in the summer
Males in the 18-24 range like to be seen shirtless because they seem to think women are just dying to see their fit torsos and will want to have sex with them (evidence: endless shots of shirtless young guys on Facebook)
Relatively poor individuals without a job, as many COPS arrestees seem to be, have no particular incentive to put a shirt on just for hanging out
There seems to be something about being drunk or high that makes shirt-wearing annoying.
I might also propose the theory that men who are vainglorious are both more likely to walk around showing off their chest AND to want it broadcast nationally.
Heh, yes; I’ve joked myself while shirtless that “OK, I’m ready for my appearance on Cops”.
Getting drunk makes you feel warmer because there’s more blood at the surface of your skin, thus the dangerous practice of trying to stay warm in cold weather by drinking. In already hot weather that likely makes people feel even hotter.
I live in a beach town and get annoyed at all the shirtless males. At the beach or within a block or so of the beach? Fine. At the sundries an souvenir shops right at the pier/beach? Fine, whatever.
But there’s a lot of shirtless walking around town, pumping gas, shopping at 7-11. Ugh.
Oh, also, many of them are 30-something year old men on skateboards. Double-Ugh.
I agree. There is a relationship between being arrested for some minor crime and being shirtless. Both involve defying social norms. When you take your shirt off in a public setting, you’ve essentially decided to temporarily put aside the rules of normal public behavior.
Trailer Park Boys seems to portray a certain amount of casual outdoor shirtlessness in day to day Canadian life. Are you suggesting that’s not actually a documentary?
Foolish comment: but, initial reading of the thread’s heading had me (not American) initially thinking: “Is it a prominent part of the general culture of the USA, that there’s a particular kind of shirt which – according to strong convention – male citizens of that country don, prior to having sex?”
Back in the late 1990’s there was a TV show called “Maximum Exposure”. It was clips of weird or sensational video tied together by narration. They did an episode of videos of police and firefighters in action, called “Guns and Hoses”.
They ran a few arrest videos from the US, and noted the shirtless factor. They then played videos from about 15 other countries, all of which featured shirtless malefactors. It’s apparently a worldwide phenomenon.
It isn’t climate related either, because one of the dudes was Russian, and the cops were wearing winter gear. Mind you, the lit Molotov cocktail he was brandishing IN HIS APARTMENT might have been keeping him warm…
The cops are often bursting in on people in their homes. I think it’s pretty normal for males to be shirtless at home and not particularly linked to criminal behavior. Being male and shirtless outside is pretty normal and not “trashy” in the South if a male is performing physical labor like yard work or playing a sport. Going shirtless in indoor public places is definitely seen as trashy by many.
