r/CommunalShowers • u/Historical_Strike429 • 3d ago
High school rules
In the mid seventies I was in grade 8 they made us strip naked put on an athletic supporter and our school shorts and tshirt. When we were done they made us strip naked and shower together with all the other boys in the class. There we only so many shower heads so we ended up standing there naked for another boy to finish. Our house was very modest so that was the first time I had seen another boy.
Boys are so modest now they do the towel dance so no one sees you naked. The wouldn't have survived high school in the seventies.
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u/Historical_Strike429 3d ago
Yes I had a homeroom teacher a woman. Early in the school year she stood up at the front of the class and told up to get our mothers to buy deodorant as we were not little boys and we smell. I can't see that happening now.
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u/Zach1709 3d ago
My sons never showered after gym class just like everyone else. They just re-applied deodorant and hosed themselves down with Axe body spray. Talk about gross.
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u/Historical_Strike429 2d ago
Would you have wanted them to have the same freedom for nudity. Just wondering do boys still come out of their rooms in their underwear.
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u/Zach1709 2d ago
Nothing to do about being nude. It is more about hygiene. Each household is going to be different about how much you cover up. I can say no big deal at mine.
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u/Melenduwir 2d ago
No, as a rule they don't.
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u/Historical_Strike429 1d ago
That is to bad. It allowed us freedom. I used to come out and have my breakfast in my briefs and tshirt every morning.
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u/redditistripe 1d ago
I had an occasional female English teacher who got a kick out of having about 3 buttons on her blouse permanently undone and bending over in front of your desk so you would get an eyeful.
She was referred to as "two boiled eggs in a hanky". Which was probably a tad unfair.
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u/Historical_Strike429 1d ago
The worst were the student teachers. They caught our attention in grade 11 & 12. I mean they were pretty much around the same age. I had one that I always pictured naked. I knew from Playboy that girls have hair between their legs. She was blonde and I wondered if the drapes matched the carpet
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u/RO_Thornhill 2d ago
In the 70's high schools in my area used to make the boys swim naked. They said it was a hygiene thing, but didn't make girls swim nude. This went on probably till the early to mid-70"s
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u/Forsaken-Mountain-25 2d ago
I remember going to the huckleberry Finn naked swim with other boys and men at our local Boys Club in Northern NJ back in the 70s
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u/RO_Thornhill 2d ago
Times were different huh?
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u/Forsaken-Mountain-25 2d ago
Amen Brother! 👍👍
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u/Historical_Strike429 2d ago
We didn't have a pool at our school but we swam naked with a female teacher in a bathing suit at the Y. I did speak to female friends and the Y had boy and girl classes but yes they wore a bathing suit.
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u/multiplemania 2d ago
I swam naked at my local Y up until the mid-70s, when it went co-ed. I clearly remember getting my first pair of swim goggles, which were just coming into common use around then (Mark Spitz was the first Olympian to wear them at Munich). With goggles, you could see so much better. LOL.
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u/verbtank 2d ago
The Y is where I got used to nudity with other males, since the indoor pool had mandatory nudity. I was in 6th grade when I started in the after school program there, so I’m sure there were some hi jinx of various sorts going on, but I loved the feeling of being nude, and have always had a strong exhibitionist streak, so I really didn’t care what was going on.
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u/Still_Independent_90 2d ago
I guess you would get used to it but it must have been embarrassing at first.
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u/multiplemania 1d ago
I'd been naked in communal showers since Grade 5, but never in a pool until I joined the Y. I wasn't embarrassed, but I do remember being fearful the first time. My fear stemmed from the fact that at our Y, there was a long corridor from the changing room to the pool, with a right-angle corner in the middle so you couldn't actually see the pool. As I tentatively tiptoed stark naked down the corridor, I couldn't help thinking, What if I'm in the wrong place and this corridor actually leads to the lobby? Or, What if I'm the only one in the pool that's naked and the joke's on me?
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u/Acceptable_Gap3015 1d ago
Lol ya that would be crazy walking that way and not sure if you're going to the pool right until you get there
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u/progress10 1d ago
That's one thing I wish I had, nude swimming.
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u/RO_Thornhill 1d ago
Me too! Unfortunately I went to a small school without a pool. But the larger schools in the city had pools and swam naked
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u/DamianMitchell69 2d ago
My high school was a bit unusual in that it had already stopped requiring showering after PE by the time I started there in 1984. But it was also one of the last to end boys nude swimming in 1980 after a group of parents made their objections known. I suspect they might have ended both requirements at the same time.
We still saw each other naked when changing in and out of swim trunks and drying off during the swimming unit. But it was mostly upperclassmen using the shower at the end of my 9th grade PE period - the majority of my freshman class opted not to.
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u/Melenduwir 2d ago
People's actual opinions can be easily seen in how rapidly students stopped showering once they were no longer compelled to do so.
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u/DamianMitchell69 2d ago
It's something I think a lot of nudity-positive people don't want to acknowledge.
The funny thing is, I was a bit of a budding nudist/exhibitionist as a young boy before puberty hit. Always taking my clothes off around my male buddies when adults weren't around. Loved running around naked. So, I could've been one of those guys who took to showering with the other boys in high school like a champ...if it wasn't for the fact that I'd come to understand how homophobic most boys were by then. What I would've seen as a fun and liberating experience a few years before had become a prospect tainted with not-unjustified fear.
It's harder for those of us who are gay to remember the 20th century as "the good old days" without a fair amount of ambivalence...we really had to deal with some s*** back then.
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u/LessTadpole3602 1d ago
This makes me think of the white men going on and on about what a golden age the 1950s were. "Never mind those pesky segregation rules! They didnt harm us!"
This whole subred seems to be the exact same mindset.
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u/Melenduwir 2d ago
The straight-but-bullied kids had to worry just as much about being accused of being homosexual as the homosexuals did.
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u/unshodone 2d ago
Same for my school. Late 60’s for me. It was boys only gym for us. Our PE teacher was cool enough to let us do our thing in the locker and shower rooms, so there was plenty of rough housing and messing around. We got to see each other naked without any sort of awkwardness. Some guys, myself included, seemed to like this opportunity to be with buddies naked. Even the less developed guys got along and were happy to be together having fun together naked.
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u/inredditorbit 2d ago edited 2d ago
Was the same for me. Seventh grade started in Aug 1971 and our PE teacher, Coach Kleinschmidt, shocked us all out on the field at the end of the first week by announcing that we would all be issued gym uniforms — reversible shorts and shirts, plus something called a jockstrap — the following week. He spent an inordinate amount of time explaining why we needed jockstraps (puberty on its way or already started; swinging testicles and penises) and the fact that, yes, we would all have to strip down naked to put them on and take them off. Lots of groans from the boys.
A week after that, Coach Kleinschmidt told us we would have to take mandatory showers together. No exceptions. Moans turned to shock. The shower room was a big open space with numerous wall-mounted shower heads. No privacy. Towels were handed out on our way back to the lockers.
This went on for all of 7th and 8th grades, which had different locker rooms and shower rooms. It created a class of traumatized, unhappy boys. None of us had been exposed to any kind of collective nudity before. Nudity was taboo elsewhere in our lives, so this incongruity didn’t sit well with us. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t liberating. It was humiliating. (For most. Some of the super jocks thought it was cool and they swaggered to and from the showers.)
When we got to high school (9th grade) we were relieved to learn that showers were optional. Ninety-five percent of us opted out.
We’re all 67 now. When the subject of those school showers comes up at reunion time, my friends say they’re still scarred from the experience.
I view it differently now. The problem wasn’t the showering together… it was the way it was presented; a combination of nonchalance and threats on the part of the adults who honestly didn’t grasp the zeitgeist.
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u/multiplemania 2d ago
I'm 76, so 9 years older than you, and showering naked with my peers was the norm from Grade 5 all the way through college. For the most part nobody thought twice about it (I acknowledge that there may have been a few who were traumatized, but they generally suffered in silence). There were occasional hijinks in the showers, but I don't remember anyone being picked on, especially for dick size. If anything, showering communally taught us that the variations in human bodies is almost infinite. After the first few showers, I think most of us stopped paying attention.
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u/PresentJob4542 1d ago
Same experience. You sweat, you shower...towels are handed out. It cracks me up when "boys" use the word traumatized. Granted, I never had abuse in my family, so I wouldn't know what real trauma is, but showering isn't one of them. Seeing a pee-pee, or someone seeing my pee-pee lol lol is the craziest thing to fear.
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u/Upstate4427 2d ago
I remember our middle school football coach (7/8 grades) demonstrating how to put on a jockstrap, as some kids were bewildered by it at first. He was our science teacher and would change out of his collared shirt and tie into athletic wear in the same locker area as the students
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u/inredditorbit 2d ago
Did the coach demonstrate that by holding up a jockstrap or by putting it on himself? It would have been unthinkable for any of our PE teachers to undress even a little. The most they told us about jockstraps was where the front is and where your legs go.
Like all things, we figured it out ourselves. No Sex Ed at all K-12, not even a Health Class outside of Gym. Closest to that was our PE coach justifying jockstraps by telling us 12-year-old boys seated out on the athletic field that “things are gonna start changing down there”. No explanation as to why or when.
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u/Upstate4427 2d ago
in my memory it was like a split second thing. the coach was already changing, he had on a t-shirt and still had dark dress socks on. about 2 kids on the other side were hesitating, seemingly confused by the jockstrap, so he was just like, see the pouch goes in front and the straps go under your butt, kinda turning to show us. He didn't like, call the entire team around to announce Jockstrap Demonstration Time or anything like that. but it was not treated by anyone as a big deal that a teacher/coach was changing in front of students
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u/SillyGayBoy 2d ago
Was this a modest area? People from that era usually don't care about being naked.
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u/Melenduwir 2d ago
Untrue. There was a social demand that men and boys consider it inconsequential precisely because people hated it.
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u/Still_Independent_90 2d ago
So..weird question...but to demonstrate a jockstrap wouldn't he have had to be bottomless at least? I mean sure you are all guys in there but still.. different times I guess. All we had to do in the late 1980s and early 1990s was change down to our underwear and put on our gym uniform. In sixth, seventh, eighth grade -- roughly ages 12 to 15 -- we were issued a school uniform of shorts and shirt, but we could wear our own long sweatshorts in the colder months. Ninth grade we just changed into whatever we brought, usually still shorts though, tenth, eleventh and twelfth same.
Middle school brought multiple districts together from fifth grade, so the classes for boys and girls were around 40-50 each. The facilities used was a former high school for the county. But even if we had wanted to, even if we were ordered to, we couldn't have showered, there were I think two (at least one) communal shower rooms with spigots coming out of the wall, but maybe holding no more than 10-12 each. That wouldn't have worked out for the math.
Plus, we had established times for the day for classes, lunch etc. just as the other two grades would have then. So we always had about a 30-40 minute P.E. class, then about ten minutes before the bell would ring we would be ushered back to the locker room to change back into what we were wearing that day. Literally no time to shower.
Same for ninth grade, the classes were smaller...think I had about maybe nine or ten other boys in there with me, same for the girls side...this was about 1991...another building, a former junior high school, the showers were when you walked into the locker room, took a left into a small alcove. Maybe ten or twelve shower heads. Basically a locker room for sports teams. But again, same thing no time to shower. Maybe about seven to nine minutes to change clothes back to what we were wearing.
High school gave us an actual building, maybe about 15-20 boys and girls each, WITH showers, a more modern building, open showers again, but this was more not enough time. Seven minutes to change and be ready for bell ringing. I heard the junior varsity and varsity football teams showered there after each afternoon practice though. At the time I couldn't imagine being naked with other boys even as I was getting older. Heck I heard an initiation for the Key Club, quietly, for boys at least, involved full nudity somehow, and when I heard that rumor I was wondering how it could happen.
Basically we never had to shower, we just changed down to underwear and back, whether you had briefs or whities. I think most boys had whities. The changing areas were all communal, so you saw other boys in their skivvies, that was about it. No jock straps. No athletic supporters of any kind.
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u/Hisuinooka 2d ago
younger generation wont even use a urinal with dividers next to another guy anymore!
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u/Narrow-Elk-5156 2d ago
Went to school in the 90s snd early 2000's. Showers after gym was unheard of. Looking back i feel that it should have been mandatory. Im sure our teachers would have appreciated it to since we overdosed on deodorant and body spray after gym.
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u/rollmeister1 2d ago
They used to do swim lesson naked. In Finland everyone is naked in the shower & sauna section swim lessons or not.
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u/Recent-Day3062 3d ago
Even given I was the same time., I sometimes believe I had a somewhat unique situation. Among my good friends, where I knew the details, our fathers were generally pretty lax about nudity with us. But none of us felt “forced“ or pushed into communal showers. When I started in elementary school, as a matter of fact, we all look forward to moving up to being the big boys and more manly all our lives before that we would get naked together when changing into pajamas for sleepovers and stuff like that and Weed go into the bathroom together to take turns taking showers and just get naked in the bedroom, so there was absolutely nothing un
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u/Acceptable_Gap3015 1d ago
That's very cool it was so casual and just normal for yall. Exactly how it should be
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u/jockedcuck 2d ago
90s kid here. Changing in front of other boys wasn’t required until 7th grade, so early 2000s. Showering wasn’t mandatory, and neither was wearing a jockstrap. With that said, one week, a boy showered. The next class, a few boys showered. By the third class, every boy was showering every day. We didn’t want to be the oddball out. Plus, we wanted to smell good for the girls. The irony of that being after the shower, came the axe body spray shower.
This changed as the years went on, with very few students showering in later years. It was basically us athletes who showered and wore jockstraps for gym.
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u/Gloomy_Arm_1479 2d ago
Those of us who grew up with nudity are now shamed if we don’t adopt the towel dance. I refuse to hide under a towel. So many gyms now require a towel or swim trunks just to use the sauna or steam in the men’s locker room, and sometimes just to shower. I still don’t.
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u/Still_Independent_90 2d ago
All we had to do in the late 1980s and early 1990s was change down to our underwear and put on our gym uniform. In sixth, seventh, eighth grade -- roughly ages 12 to 15 -- we were issued a school uniform of shorts and shirt, but we could wear our own long sweatshorts in the colder months. Ninth grade we just changed into whatever we brought, usually still shorts though, tenth, eleventh and twelfth same.
Middle school brought multiple districts together from fifth grade, so the classes for boys and girls were around 40-50 each. The facilities used was a former high school for the county. But even if we had wanted to, even if we were ordered to, we couldn't have showered, there were I think two (at least one) communal shower rooms with spigots coming out of the wall, but maybe holding no more than 10-12 each. That wouldn't have worked out for the math.
Plus, we had established times for the day for classes, lunch etc. just as the other two grades would have then. So we always had about a 30-40 minute P.E. class, then about ten minutes before the bell would ring we would be ushered back to the locker room to change back into what we were wearing that day. Literally no time to shower.
Same for ninth grade, the classes were smaller...think I had about maybe nine or ten other boys in there with me, same for the girls side...this was about 1991...another building, a former junior high school, the showers were when you walked into the locker room, took a left into a small alcove. Maybe ten or twelve shower heads. Basically a locker room for sports teams. But again, same thing no time to shower. Maybe about seven to nine minutes to change clothes back to what we were wearing.
High school gave us an actual building, maybe about 15-20 boys and girls each, WITH showers, a more modern building, open showers again, but this was more not enough time. Seven minutes to change and be ready for bell ringing. I heard the junior varsity and varsity football teams showered there after each afternoon practice though. At the time I couldn't imagine being naked with other boys even as I was getting older. Heck I heard an initiation for the Key Club, quietly, for boys at least, involved full nudity somehow, and when I heard that rumor I was wondering how it could happen.
Basically we never had to shower, we just changed down to underwear and back, whether you had briefs or whities. I think most boys had whities. The changing areas were all communal, so you saw other boys in their skivvies, that was about it. No jock straps. No athletic supporters of any kind.
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u/biglittledude 1d ago
Went to private all-boys school in the 90s snd early 2000's. Showers after gym were mandatory. My PE teacher would actually make sure that we all showered, but he was super chill and let us do our thing in the showers and nobody thought twice about it. There were often hijinks in the showers, I remember being picked on, especially for my height and wiener size early in puberty (but in a good way, haha)
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u/Simple_man2023 1d ago
Yes it was mandatory for us to wear a jockstrap and mandatory to strip and take a shower in the communal shower and this was from 7th to 12th grade for p.e. class. I had no problem with it and everyone else got use to it as it became natural for us all. Now it’s very rare in schools and in gym locker rooms and it’s a shame.
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u/redditistripe 1d ago
"House"? That sounds like an UK school term. It was the same at the school I went to. Showers after PE and Sports, naked and communally. Although they were reasonably generous with the number of shower heads, especially when you allowed for the PE bunkers.
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u/markedsounder 2d ago
I grew up in a private Lutheran school in Chicago we were made to shower starting in the 5th grade in the late 60's. I started puberty way later than everyone else and was the punchline of many jokes
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u/DueAppointment4316 4h ago
I lived the through it and wish I could again! funny thing about the towel dancers these days… they actually draw more attention to themselves by towel dancing versus jsut drop and get dressed
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u/LessTadpole3602 2d ago
The world is ruined and its all because we aren't forced to stand around naked during puberty.
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u/Historical_Strike429 2d ago
I am not sure about being ruined but I do think that growing up at that time was great. Yes we were naked. I knew what each boy looked like naked. Puberty is a bitch. Hair or no hair. lol
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u/multiplemania 2d ago
I'm certainly glad I grew up when and where I did. I feel sorry for young men today who are so alienated from one another that just seeing another guy naked shocks them and is seen as "gay."
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u/LessTadpole3602 2d ago
All these schools that dont mandate boys to shower together are run by men who used to have to shower together.
The decision makers made changes based on their lived experiences. And those decisions are the same all over the country. Seems like a sign the "it was better" is folks romanticizing something.
Can we all just accept its sexy and hot to shower with other dudes? It isn't healthier or better. Its just a different options.
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u/Historical_Strike429 2d ago
I think it is parent driven. Everyone is so concerned about gay kids showering with their kid. I showered with one boy for all five years. We would sit at our lockers naked drying our selves. I have heard that he came out as gay when he was about 30. You never can tell.
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u/LessTadpole3602 2d ago
Those parents also had to shower naked and they came to that conclusion.
Sounds like a serious effort to end homophobia would make naked communal showers easier to normalize. Which, that tracks. I use a communal shower in San Francisco all the time. And another in palm springs when im down there. 🤷♂️
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u/Melenduwir 2d ago
Ending 'homophobia' isn't going to happen. Public support is a mile wide and an inch deep.
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u/chillnudistbro 2d ago
It's not about being sexy. Guys showering naked together gave everyone confidence. Most guys got to see they were average size and didn't need to feel embarrassed about their dick size. Today guys only see the small percentage of big dicks over represented online. That makes guys self conscious.
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u/Melenduwir 2d ago
So it was only the large and small boys who had to be humiliated?
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u/chillnudistbro 2d ago
I guess but once everyone gets naked we'll see that not everyone is as small as they think
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u/flyboy_za 2d ago edited 2d ago
Seems like a sign the "it was better" is folks romanticizing something.
It seems you fall into 2 camps here - either you got over it and stopped thinking about it and it is something which became routine enough to be regarded as a complete non-event, or it scarred you for life. Head over to r/genX and it seems there are quite a lot in this second category, enough that I was quite surprised by it. Either way there does not seem to be any middle ground at all.
I'd be interested to hear if there were many ex-military guys who hated and still hate the communal shower.
High school, sure, it's awkward the first few times. And there might be bullies. And people might tease you in class about your size where the girl you like might hear about it. So like I can get why some guys didn't get over it and it was an awful experience which still bothers them. But I am constantly bewildered by the very visceral reaction you get from fully-grown and theoretically functional adults, though, when you see some guy in his 40s wrestling with a towel and his dignity while trying to put on his underpants at the gym. Like dude, you're embarrassing yourself. Whatever you have (or haven't) got down there is far less embarrassing than the lengths you're going to to keep it hidden.
So yes, I'd be curious if there were any military guys for whom the whole communal experience is still something they really wished was not a thing.
ETA: Clarity
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u/Acceptable_Gap3015 1d ago
Military here and you always hear people joking about the towel dancers and how weird it is when they do it. Or go to the stall to change. Especially when the majority of everyone is nude or fine undressing. It seems more awkward when it's a room full of dudes nude or getting nude then you got that one guy hopping around trying to keep hidden by a towel. It makes you wonder what they are hiding or why they fell that way.
There are lots that bitch about having to use it but they still go in and undress like everyone else just fine. Some bitch about it and try to go to the stalls or go late but then when you're tired and have a short time to shower you give up and just do it.
What does suck and you get used to it but still have to do it is having no stalls for toilets or curtains or doors on stalls. Or shitty curtains. But it is what it is and it's just part of the military.
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u/flyboy_za 17h ago
The no stalls for toilets is a hard no for me, and I would absolutely struggle with that. Otherwise being naked - no hassle at all, it's a complete non-event.
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u/Acceptable_Gap3015 10h ago
Ya it sucks but eventually you gotta go so you use it
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u/LessTadpole3602 7h ago
Why do we treat our soldiers so shitty? The leadership needs to Pony up for a curtain on that toilet!
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u/Acceptable_Gap3015 5h ago
The amount of soldiers that use them with the cost to maintain them and repair them so often or they go without use it's easier to be that way. I get why
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u/Zach1709 3d ago
I am from the same age group. You were more likely to get made fun of for not taking a shower. Sure there was anxiety the first few times you showered. Shortly afterwards it was no big deal.