The legend of the Shirtless Guy was born little more than a year ago when student Jacob Authier decided to go topless at Chapman University.
By wearing nothing above the waist each day except sunglasses and black paint on his nipples, Authier has given the small private university in Orange one of its first campus characters.
Authier's half-nakedness has inspired the second most popular online group at Chapman -- the Club Dedicated to the Fellow Without a Shirt. With 509 members, it ranks behind only the George Bush Is Not My Homeboy club in popularity.
The junior film major's muscled chest and back have been rented out for student political campaign slogans and birthday wishes at just $1 per message.
And students eagerly await holidays, when the Shirtless Guy usually comes through with something special.
For St. Patrick's Day, he colored his nipples emerald green. And on Valentine's Day, he had a heart scratched with a pocketknife on his chest and wings on his back -- body art that alarmed school administrators enough to get the Shirtless Guy an appointment with the dean of students.
"He just wanted to make sure I was OK," Authier said.
At a fraternity Halloween party this year, one of the students dressed up as the Shirtless Guy.
Authier, 20, says his evolution from regular guy to Shirtless Guy was gradual. He said that while growing up in Coalinga, where his father taught middle school while his mother stayed home, he rarely wore shirts indoors because he didn't like feeling constricted.
When he arrived at Chapman two years ago, he flirted with the idea of losing his shirt, but for most of the year he wore a black hooded cloak instead.
By last fall, he decided to go the distance -- the full half-monty, so to speak.
"The idea just kind of stuck," said Authier, who lives on campus with his brother Josiah, 19, a sophomore. "And that's when people started to notice."
Sophomore Regina Aletto, 19, said she was so intrigued by the Shirtless Guy that in February she started the online Club Dedicated to the Fellow Without a Shirt, available to Chapman students. The group posts Shirtless Guy sightings and debates his general hotness.
"I was wondering if anyone else thought this guy was weird too," she said. "Turns out that everyone at school was obsessed with him."
