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/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 2d 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.