![]() After much research, he concluded that the average male streaker was "a tall Protestant male weighing 170 pounds with a B grade average dated regularly, came from a town with a population less than 50,000 and a family where the father is a business or professional man and the mother is a housewife." Female streakers, the study found, "tended to be small, 5 feet 3 inches and 117 pounds." In 1974, a psychology professor at the University of South Carolina did one of the first studies on the phenomenon. Not surprisingly, academics and opinion writers tried to explain the streaking craze. ![]() When the streaking craze died down, Opal moved to San Francisco, where he was found murdered in 1979. As a result of the Oscar publicity, he pursued a brief career as a stand-up comic and was hired as a "guest streaker" for Hollywood parties. ![]() Undeterred, the 33-year-old streaker managed to extract his full fifteen minutes of fame from the situation. "The only way he could get a laugh was by showing his shortcomings," quipped an unruffled Niven. During the broadcast of the Academy Awards ceremony, streaker Robert Opal shocked the crowd of Hollywood swells by letting it fly during David Niven's introduction of Elizabeth Taylor. Full national exposure came that same month. He's just in the mood to run in the nude," crooned Stevens of the eponymous nudist. In April, hayseed comedian Ray Stevens's single "The Streak" rocketed to number one on the pop charts. The nude collegians paraded past the campus's Ionic columns as a crowd estimated at 1,500 watched and cheered. In March of that year, the University of Missouri endured a mass streaking by more than 600 students. The spring of 1974 represented the high moment of modern streaking. Not to be confused with simple nudism, streaking is an inherently exhibitionist act and thus the perfect public gesture for an exhibitionist age. Have tagged Lady Godiva as the world's first streaker, but she rode-not ran-while deliberately concealing her nudity under her long, flowing hair. Streaking, the practice of running naked through a public gathering, has been around for many years, but it attained full-fledged craze status only in the 1970s when, it seemed, all manner of strange behavior was soaring into public consciousness.
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