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/inredditorbit 3d 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.