Quote Originally Posted by Mike_G View Post
I think chainmail bikinis are silly, but I think Conan in a jock strap is equally silly. Both characters are poorly dressed for a swordfight. I can handle poorly armored pirates, because they don't want to fall overboard in 40 pounds of steel, and they expect to face muskets and cannon where armor won't help anyway.
The main reason Conan in a jockstrap is silly is that the freezing cold climate in his home land would have killed him before he had a chance to get into a real fight.

And when discussing pirates without armor, we should probably keep in mind that in the time period of Jack Sparrow and his piratical colleagues (late 1600s to mid-170s), members of various national navy forces around the world didn't really wear armor either. Fighting in regular clothing was kind of normal. Though naked would have been safer - bits of clothing getting stuck in a wound and infecting it was the leading cause of death for rapier fighters there for awhile.