a few other points about this that i've seen come up (once again, going behind a read more to save your dashboards):
textile clothing protecting the carapace from damage while doing things like welding or working with sticky materials, i.e. xenonite in its liquid form before it sets as solid – well, maybe? but again, given the clearly advanced state of eridians' materials science, they've gotta have the equivalent of glue-remover or w/e for their carapaces. also, they don't have nerve endings on their carapaces afawk, and they don't have any biological need to fear pathogens or infections unless their orifice is open or their carapace is very severely damaged, so superficial detritus probably wouldn't be much of a concern. and all that being said, if they did want to protect their carapaces from superficial (or greater) damage, they would be unlikely to use textile cloth to do it. they'd more likely use leather or maybe even thin panes of metal (i.e. xenonite that conducts sound well, so their sonar perception isn't 'muffled' for their auricles)
textile clothing as a status symbol – we don't know enough about eridian society (other than their intense communalism) to speculate much about what notions of hierarchy and status they might have. we know they have some, from weir's point about grace choosing to gloss a higher-status referent in language as the pronoun "she" and the same-status referent as "he," meaning that both grace and rocky are referred to as "she" on erid (trans woman grace headcanoners, yes, i see you and i'm right there with you). but status or honour in a social position like 'saviour of erid,' 'captain of the ship,' 'my teacher,' 'older person than me' doesn't necessarily automatically mean that person can exercise power over others, or that their status in a specific role translates to social power outside of that role (see david graeber's points in the dawn of everything about how in a lot of Indigenous north american plains nations, leaders of major hunting expeditions would have authority & respect for the duration of the expedition because that 'one leader, many followers' model of social organisation was most efficient for the work they were all getting done, but back at home where that role didn't apply the 'leader' wouldn't actually have any social power or clout). also, imho, the fact that eridians have eidetic memories (i.e. presumably remembering everyone they ever meet) – and that at least in the film, they carve things like mission crests and marriage stones into their carapaces – makes me think the need for clothing as an immediate external marker of status probably just isn't present
textile clothing for temperature protection: per weir's eridian worldbuilding document as well as book/movie canon more broadly, eridians (and other erid life forms) evolved to exist in very specific temperature ranges given the overall climatic stability on erid. (kinda like how Indigenous Andean farmers have for centuries cultivated totally different crops on specific different elevation points they're at in the mountains, bc they're experts on what grows best at these precise locations & temperature ranges!) eridians flat-out can't survive being too cold for too long (rocky... <3). per andy weir, they're actually semi-cold-blooded, because their ambient circulatory system is maintained at 210ºC, which is the average outdoor temperature, and the water (sorry, grace) that powers the state changes in their steam-powered muscles evolved because of water's high heat capacity acting as a buffer for temperature management. all this being said, because eridians definitely would have a major biological drive to NOT get too cold, i really doubt that they'd ever migrate to areas too cold for them (or the animals they eat) to survive in the first place – especially considering that if an eridian's body gets too cold, they shut down and go into dormancy essentially so their system can heat back up & recover (which is what happened to rocky on the hail mary – weir has a whole section written about heat rejection in eridian physiology) until they had technology to accommodate their temperature needs. which clothing would count as, but i'm pretty suspicious about exactly how much help textile or even leather clothing would be for eridian physiology at maintaining heat. xenonite, our miracle substance, famously has a REALLY high heat-retaining capacity so imho is probably what eridians use to protect their bodies when going into colder environments on erid – an idea rocky probably drew on to make his ball (although in the book he also has a lil astrophage-powered cooling backpack)
rocky should be naked because it's funnier if he's just kind of a freak: i see you, i hear you, i respect you. however! that rock can be a freak for other reasons that are more consistent with plausible worldbuilding, too! for instance, book!eridians' social stigma around eating may very well still exist in film!eridian cultures, and rocky might just be a lil weirdo who was like 'fuck it, it's not like grace is ever gonna meet any other eridians, right? so why not just shove my meat-covered hand up my hole in front of the alien? rocky look beautiful when eat!'
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