The Nation: Takeoff

In the cool Southern California evening, a Van Nuys housewife last week shed all of her clothes, slipped out of her house, and began running through the San Fernando Valley streets. She was eventually seen loping through a small public park, but before she could be caught she had disappeared into the night, another statistic in a growing Los Angeles-area fad: streaking. Streakers generally race nude between two unpredictable points, and the idea is catching on among college students and other groups.

Few streakers are reported to police, who are not overly concerned anyway, but passers-by have been shaken by the spectacle several times in the past few weeks, and no one knows where they might strike next. Richard Kimball, a disc jockey for radio station KMET, is trying to correct that by broadcasting "streaker alerts" for Angelenos; when a racing nudist is spotted, listeners phone in their reports. Why do streakers streak? "By being unashamed of his body, a streaker can be unashamed of himself," says Shelley Duval, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern California. But if an arrest occurs, "the guilt over nudity returns."