In the unforgiving fluorescent light of Rosenfeld Hall, a dormitory on the periphery of Yale’s campus, students crouched in a hallway and quickly stuffed their clothes into plastic grocery bags. Shirts were left inside out, socks balled in pant legs. Giggling, they hurried into a basement storage room, where some 40 people stood around, under stone arches and gargoyles, wearing nothing but shoes.

. . . another senior, says the party changed her idea of what an attractive body looks like. “We’re used to the naked bodies we see on movie screens,” she says, “not natural, typical bodies. I found that people who would have been considered heavy with their clothes on actually looked better naked. I’m not sure why. And definitely the gaunt look was a lot less attractive. Visible hip bones looked alarming. It was a nice reality check.”

. . . “You find yourself accepting people in a completely different light. For me, there’s something totally captivating about it. It reinforces in a really profound way this common thread of humanity. Everyone is bared in all their glory, but it turns out no one is actually that glorious.”

As for the rest of the outfit, just leave it at the door — this party’s naked.

Rachel Aviv is a freelance writer in Brooklyn.