Shirts versus Skins is a common form of denoting team affiliations in an informal sports game; typically when played on a public court or park. The practice involves the members of one team wearing shirts while the other does not. This is used in the absence of uniforms.

Games

This simple form of recognition is a regular sight in streetball

Streetball

Streetball or street basketball is a variation of the sport of basketball, typically played on outdoor courts and featuring significantly less by way of formal structure and enforcement of the game's rules...

, street football

Street football

The term street football encompasses a number of informal varieties of association football. These informal games do not necessarily utilise the requirements of a formal game of football, such as a large field, field markings, goal apparatus and corner flags, eleven players per team , or match...

, ultimate

Ultimate (sport)

Ultimate is a sport played with a 175 gram flying disc. The object of the game is to score points by passing the disc to a player in the opposing end zone, similar to an end zone in American football or rugby...

, and other pickup games. The identification by manner of dress negates the need to remember the division of players among friends, or to learn the faces of strangers in a pickup game. The system is typically used for men’s teams only, owing to the taboo in many western cultures against the display of the female breast

Breast

The breast is the upper ventral region of the torso of a primate, in left and right sides, which in a female contains the mammary gland that secretes milk used to feed infants.Both men and women develop breasts from the same embryological tissues...

. An alternative to the shirts-skins system is the use of pinnies

Scrimmage vest

A scrimmage vest, sometimes referred to as a pinnie is a piece of clothing or sportswear , often made of mesh, used in practices as a substitute for a sports team's usual uniform or to differentiate temporary teams in informal scrimmages...

.

Popular culture

The concept of shirts versus skins was a primary inspiration for the movie Shirts/Skins. It also serves as the base for a 2008 television series Shirts & Skins

Shirts & Skins

Shirts & Skins an American 6 episode television reality series premiered September 15, 2008 on Logo. The show explores the lives of the San Francisco The Rockdogs, "an all-gay basketball team trying to uphold its three-generation legacy of international Gay Games gold medals, and U.S...

A Bisexual character in Canis Canem Edit frequently asks Jimmy if he would like to play shirts and skins.