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in 1970-1973 we had to take a shower before going swimming in gym class. the teacher would inspect us to make sure we soaped up properly. the boys in high school had to swim without swim trunks. that was wierd ,, not sure why they made them do that. i dont know how high schoolers do not have to take a mandatory shower before swimming.. its a state law in Illinois that people must do that prior to going swimming, to any pool. (check the sign next time at your gym)
You must have gone to the same school my husband went to. He told me the same thing and it was in that time frame as well. That to me is outrageous on one hand but swimming naked is really nice on the other hand. Just not in front of classmates. I remember those showers, but I don't remember being that self conscious about it. I couldn't go into a locker room today and do it. I'd prefer some privacy and the general public would appreciate it as well. I will however swim naked.
We had showers after swimming. No gym teacher in there, so it wasn't too pervy. The girls complained about the "dyke" in their class staring at them though, and I'm sure the gay(or merely labelled gay) boys were tormented as well.
Don't lump us all into that group, as it seems the leftists are more like that than most.
It sounds like a carry over from the liberal hippie days, and there were not to many conservative hippies.
OMG, does every thread you go on have to be about the left? It's political that kids don't shower, really??
We can go on a tour of trailer parks in Arkansas and Alabama and I assure you we will find plenty of conservatives that don't shower.
I never really thought about it at the time, but after the Sandusky thing I realized how messed up gym class, school athletics and group showering is. I remember in football, there were at least a dozen volunteer "coaches" that would just hang out in the locker room in their jock straps after practice. Why did they have jock straps, they weren't playing? What kind of adult man wants to spend his evenings in the boy's locker room? Why did everyone's parents think it was "ok" that all these guys were "volunteering" to be around young boys in the locker room? I looked up the math teacher "coach" on Facebook and sure enough, now he's retired and living with a much younger man, and his Facebook photo album is filled with "Tom of Finland" drawings... Not that there's anything wrong with that between consenting adults, but the locker room stuff is a bit disturbing.
That was how it was in junior high. The teacher would mark us as we came out. However if we were on our period we took half showers, basically bottoms still on. In high school we were supposed to take showers (with our bathing suits on) but most just sprinkled water and the teacher was a guy so he never knew if we did. Not sure about the males. When I took regular P.E no one took showers because most of the time the showers were broken and too many girls. PE in high school was coed, junior high school was gender segregated.
I should mention the male teacher was when I took swimming.
Junior High (early 1970s) "showering" was mandatory. You stepped on a treadle that put some goo on your feet (to avoid Athlete's Foot) and walked to the shower, opened your towel, let a bit of water hit you and done. Yeah, that was our "mandatory" shower.
In high school (mid 70s) it was optional, thank God. I don't LIKE communal clothes-changing areas, never mind a shower. And having to do that as a young teen sucked. I always felt sorry for the really unpopular girls, for them it must have been hell.
Wasn't keen on swimming either. While I enjoyed the class, I hated having to strip down totally in front of strangers (I wore the bikini to school since I had it first period). It was embarrassing. To add insult to injury, I had very long, thick hair and in spite of bathing caps, my hair would be soaked. We had 10 minutes to dress once finished and there were four of the new hair dryers (connected on a wall) (no personal hair dryers yet back then) and even if I could have got one of them, it takes a good 15 minutes to even get my hair to the damp (non-dripping) stage.
So for four full months in 10th grade, no one saw me with dry hair (it would finally be almost dry around 3 PM, LOL).
How friggin' hard would it have been to have individual showers with curtains? Many more would have showered for real then.
And to the teacher who had us do something called "bobs," which meant dunking your head in and out of the water and seemed to have no purpose other than to ensure that water got up under the swimming cap, I hope your hair fell out. Even the girls who wrapped their hair in plastic bags and then the cap got wet hair.
Don't miss P.E. I was skinny as a kid/teen and I'd have rather taken more foreign language.
Thanks - I thought there was a bigger point crying out for attention. A lot of times people subliminally avoid it, maybe because they're taught to be good students, in the sense of knowing how to shape their thoughts so as to accommodate the political exigencies of school. You're not encouraged to look at things analytically (another sense of being a good student) because that enables you to realize that the institution is the problem. We need to have the guts to believe that some lies can be that big, and they can be told directly to you for 13 years of childhood.
I think the idea of public school-that education should be available to all-is one of the most important things provided by our government. I learned each item you are decrying the lack of in a public school. It is all there, if the student chooses to look for it.
I think that communal nudity is something a lot of us over, roughly age 35, got used to, but the acceptance of it has definitely changed in recent years. I've mentioned in other threads that I have a noticeable spinal deformity, which got me some bullying, but also some friends and contacts in the nudist culture, which is a part of how I overcame any shyness about it. And legitimate, non-sexual nudism has definitely "lost ground' and insulated itself a bit more when compared to the Seventies and Eighties.
When I first dealt with group showers, (in an older gym, in the seventh grade) you got in and got out quickly. There was, however, considerably less shyness among the boys who had learned to swim at the local 'Y', where all-male groups and classes still swam nude (in 1962).
But by the time I'd moved on to high school (as mentioned in a previous post, with a lot more "jock" culture) most of us were pretty much at ease walking to and from an open shower with the towel over a shoulder instead of around our waist. And since the shower facilities were only a few years old and better than what a lot of us had at home, many of us brought along our own soap, etc, and actually bathed.
And our instructor was the football coach, a former Big Ten athlete with a nice wife and family, and an "at ease" manner; no one ever doubted that he liked girls -- and girls exclusively.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 06-28-2015 at 01:05 PM..
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You must have gone to the same school my husband went to. He told me the same thing and it was in that time frame as well. That to me is outrageous on one hand but swimming naked is really nice on the other hand. Just not in front of classmates. I remember those showers, but I don't remember being that self conscious about it. I couldn't go into a locker room today and do it. I'd prefer some privacy and the general public would appreciate it as well. I will however swim naked. 
Even the girls who wrapped their hair in plastic bags and then the cap got wet hair.
