DU guys: any of you older guys have to swim nude in your high school gym class?

[CTyankee]

I was at my hubby's 50th high school class reunion and learned that the boys had to swim nude in their gym class (girls had to wear a regulation type tank suit). The men at the reunion were laughing about it (we took a tour of the old school). This was in Sheboygan, WI.

Nobody could explain WHY the boys had to swim nude. This was a public school so presumably all the Sheboygan public high schools required this.

Anybody know anything about this "phenomenon" of the 1950s?

[old mark]

1. I went to a catholic high school in the early '60's and we did the same

thing - I have often wondered about it, and it now makes me feel a bit odd to recall it.
There was also a Federal program in the early 1960's to photograph school children nude supposedly to be able to identy victims of nuclear attacks from body parts. At least that was the reason given.....
This happened all over the country, AFAIK.

mark

[begin_within]

2. I have read discussions of this on other web sites,

particularly gay discussion forums and nudist discussion forums. I won't provide links to them here because they could immediately lead to the display of x-rated images. But if you search far and wide you can find discussions of this. Apparently it was common in the 1950s but it was definitely out of favor by the time I was in high school in the 1970s. Also in the 1950s most YMCAs required men and boys to swim nude, according to what I have read. I still don't really know why though.

[ThomCat]

3. Can you imagine if any school tried to do that today?

The moment any adult saw any child nude there would be immediate lawsuits. No school district would even consider this today.

I've heard that this was done, back in the day, for hygiene reasons. But I've never head a good explanation for why boys in bathing suits are particularly unhygienic.

I've heard that it was because the filters on the pools couldn't handle all the lint and threads from the suits, but they handled the lint and thread from the suits the girls wore, so that doesn't seem to hold up.

I've heard that, after two world wars, it was an effort to get boys over any sense of modesty and used to following orders, so that they would be more comfortable going into the military after high school. But were people really thinking about young boys as military fodder and trying to prepare all boys for the military? Somehow that doesn't sound right to me either.

So, I don't know. :shrug:

[gbate]

6. That sounds like a plausible theory.

[gmoney]

11. or wet bathing suits in lockers would mildew?

and might have started during the depression when I'm sure a lot of families couldn't afford the luxury of a "swimmin' costume" -- and I think skinny dipping in general was a lot more widely practiced and less sexualized.

[CTyankee]

15. But the girls had regulation tank suits!

All I remember in high school is that us girls had "private" cubicles in the gym in which to undress and get into our gym uniforms.

When I was getting my Master's at a Catholic institution late in life I joined the gym because of its great pool. But we had a communal shower situation in the women's dressing room. I regularly swam with and showered nude with an old nun who taught there. She was the freest elderly woman with her body that I have ever known. She was a Classics professor and we chatted often about ancient Greece. It was a hoot. My husband was a bit shocked...I had to laugh...that nun was in her 70s...

[Gormy Cuss]

17. I remember hearing that it was based on hygience concerns/pool filters.

The Boys Club near where I grew up had nude only swimming well into the 1960s and maybe as recently as the early '70s. As kids we got a kick out of hearing about it since many boys didn't know that was the case until they went there for the first time.

[grace0418]

37. Maybe they figured teenage boys would forget to wash the suits all year and the lockerroom

would stink to high heaven? Not sure, just a guess. We didn't even have swim class in my high school.

[armyowalgreens]

42. I never washed my PE clothing. No one else did either. The locker room...

smelled like a nightmare.

[MajorChode]

40. With good reason

There's only one plausible reason I can imagine about why anyone would require boys to swim nude, and it's quite nefarious.

Somehow it doesn't surprise me that it was predominately Catholic schools that were doing this.

[Captain Hilts]

4. The YMCA had this as a policy until surprisingly recently. My dad HATED it as a kid in the '30s. nt

[trof]

41. My Y had nude swimming in the 40s and 50s.

I learned to swim in the altogether.

[Rabrrrrrr]

5. Yep - junior and senior high both. Grew up in Wisconsin, and that was the 80s.

I think they were still doing it into the mid-90s, but by the time my nephew was in school (started HS maybe in 2000 or 1999) they had gone to mandatory swim suits for everyone.

My gym teachers had mentioned one day that they swam naked in college as well - one had gone to UW-Whitewater, probably in the 60s.

But like you, we could never get an answer as to why - no one seemed to know; or if they did know, they'd never tell us.


We were allowed to wear a suit if we wanted, but peer pressure being what it was, only one person in any of the swim classes I ever had. However, my senior year, one of the gym classes I wasn't in managed to all decide to wear suits.

[tigereye]

27. sounds like Sparta, or something

:shrug: :wtf:


But why nude swimming for guys, and not for females - all the explanations given for hygiene, mildew, what have you, make no sense when you think about the females.

Only the military/toughness argument makes any sense. Bizarre. People would flip out now if this were a rule.

[TrogL]

7. It was a carryover of the German naturist movement and goes back to the oriignal Olympics

The German Romantic period kicked off a "back to nature" movement that spun off calisthenics and nudity.

[tigereye]

28. now that's an interesting answer- is that true?

[bullwinkle428]

8. 1950s? Hell, we were forced to do it in the mid-1970s in middle school!

Around age 12 at the time. I was definitely a late bloomer, puberty-wise...like I needed any more hits to my self-esteem at that time! :rofl:

[LeftyFingerPop]

9. We used to have to do "Nude Trampoline".

[S n o w b a l l]

24. ...

:rofl: You are so silly! :)

:loveya:

[Dogtown]

10. 60 YO and "no". n/t

[AngryAmish]

12. At a lot of Catholic boys schools in Chicago it was the norm into the 80s

[kwassa]

34. considering the charges against certain Catholic priests since then ...

is it surprising?

[Fire Walk With Me]

13. This gives me an idea for the next DU get-together.

Pinatas!





...what were you expecting?

[CTyankee]

14. Hey, a DU "nude swim"! There ya go!

Sounds like fun. Include me out, as Casey Stengel said (or was it Yogi Berra?).

[Fire Walk With Me]

25. No! I said "pinatas"! You people are missing the point!

;)

[Deja Q]

21. Well, what would we use to hit on the piñatas with?

:yoiks:

[pokerfan]

16. nude swimming

Before the YMCA began to admit females in the early 1960s, swimming trunks were not even allowed in the pools,<4> and high school swimming classes for boys sometimes had similar policies, citing the impracticality of providing and maintaining sanitary swimming gear and clogging swimming pools' filtration systems with lint fibers from the swimsuits. These practices were common because of the perception that there was nothing wrong or sexual about seeing members of the same gender in the nude, especially in these indoor contexts among equals in 'birthday suit uniform'.

In some English schools, Manchester Grammar School for example, nude swimming was compulsory until the 1970s.<5> This was also the case for some U.S. junior high schools.<6>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_swimming

[tigereye]

29. it certainly didn't happen in my jr high or high school in the 70s...

lint. That's ridiculous! :rofl:

[blue neen]

32. Hey tigereye! How are you?

Believe it or not, one of my friends went through this at the local high school. He's still traumatized by it. This would have been around 1965.

[tigereye]

35. hey neen!

what's goin on? How was your summer? :hi:

[mitchum]

18. At my school we had Nude Algebra

[begin_within]

36. Were you up all night cramming for it?

[dembotoz]

19. 56 and no

[Bucky]

20. The only weird part was when the nuns insisted on drying us off with their tongues

Nun tongue--yuck, scratchier than cat tongues!

[Schema Thing]

22. *I* sure wasn't gettin' nun when I was that age

[triguy46]

23. No. But in Jr. High, at the local Y, swimsuit optional, I was told. I ran and hid.

[arcadian]

26. A lot of social clubs are like this.

The Metropolitan Club in D.C. and the Bohemian Club in S.F.

[XemaSab]

31. .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPb-PN9F2Pc

[struggle4progress]

30. When I first went to college, there was an unofficial rule at all athletic events that a spectator

had to run across the field naked

:shrug:

[kwassa]

33. we had to swim nude, but we had no pool.

Talk about rough.

[hunter]

38. We had coed swimming in the 'seventies.

Supposedly coed P.E. classes were something innovational. There was always an informal competition to see who could wear the least amount of fabric, by boys and girls.

A lot of guys wouldn't take coed PE classes because they were afraid of being beat by a girl. There were a few girls who were exceptional swimmers, distance runners, softball or tennis players.

I was one of the least athletic kids in our high school. I got beat by boys and girls. I always took coed P.E. because it seemed to be more cooperative and less competitive.

[av8rdave]

39. I belonged to a Boy's Club when I was young...they required nude swimming

It would have been a lot better had it been coed. Oh well...

[Drunken Irishman]

44. Or if you were gay...

:P

[av8rdave]

53. I would think that would be pretty cool

Guess that would be the equivalent of me being in a pool with a lot of naked women!

[Drunken Irishman]

43. WTF people?

Really? Nude?

Wow.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

45. I had to swim nude to school both ways in winter.

Damn kids with your Sonic the Pokemon and your Vin Diesel.

[grasswire]

46. do PE classes still shower?

Hm?

[nickinSTL]

47. uh...weird. Not only the swimming...

I never went to a school that HAD a pool, so it would never have been an issue.

And when we went to the local pools - swimming naked, AFAIK, never crossed anyone's mind as being remotely acceptable, much less a requirement.

[Ptah]

48. Born in 1950.

There were no pools at any of the schools.

[Orrex]

49. We had Libary Studies in the nude

But, honestly, who didn't?

[zanne]

50. Wow. Were there cheerleaders? nt

[piratefish08]

51. nude dodgeball

sucked.

[HughBeaumont]

52. I had heard of this as a kid . . .

. . . and before I joined the elemetary school's swimming program, someone said we'd be swimming naked. Of course, even as a kid, I would never have done that; I mean, come on. That's the last thing I would want to do is swim with a bunch of other nude kids. The whole idea just sounded creepy. I thought it was a joke that someone was trying to pull.

It wasn't until around HS when I watched some movie about parochial schools that I found out they did this for real.

:wtf:

I'd sooner go to a purity ball with a hot blue pimp suit than do that.

[cwydro]

54. Best thread ever!

This is hilarious...I mean I had no IDEA!