I came across a web forum today talking about how guys used to have to swim nude during gym class, at the Y and when on a swim team.
I was a little shocked because most of the old images you find of swim teams display swimmers partially clothed. I guess this was just for the camera’s eye — and yours. When I was in gym class and on the swim team — we wore bathing suits. I’m still a 20-something though. Apparently many men over the age of 40 have a completely different story to tell.
Along with hundreds of others (around 700 posts so far) — Philip recalled his historical experiences with swimming:
“I grew up always swimming naked at school, at the Y, and on the swim team. This wasn’t a choice, so we didn’t consider it right or wrong. Adults made choices for us all the time. When to go to school, what kind of shoes to wear to church, how to behave at the grocery store. We were accustomed to rules already being in place, and we adapted to them, as kids do everywhere. So nudity in gym class and at the YMCA was an accepted part of a pre-existing system. And as an accepted part of this system, we considered it normal, not sexual. It helped that the gym teachers were also nude. Generally, before class got underway, the teacher would be wrapped in a towel, but once class started, he would hang it over a chair and get in the pool nude with the rest of us. No one thought anything about this. It was completely accepted that swimming was done nude, so we would have thought it strange if he hadn’t swum nude as well. I don’t know when things changed, or why. That happened after I graduated from high school. Nudity among boys in environments such as these – public or private – was never something to be feared or ashamed of. I should add that, because it was pre-accepted, we didn’t have to go through any sort of adaption or acceptance phases. We were free to enjoy it, without guilt or embarrassment. In 11th grade, mine was the last gym class of the day. We often stayed after for another half hour or so, if the swim team wasn’t practicing, and played in the pool naked. I feel bad for kids today who are so ashamed of themselves that something as pleasant and innocent as this is necessarily avoided. We’ve lost a lot.”
My — how things have changed. The forum has been going for over a year now and has over 700 posts. Check it out here if you want more of an interesting perspective on how things used to be.
Finally, I found this swim team photo from years ago. Can you imagine what would happen if something like this was taken in modern day times?
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As a non-American, I can also confirm that it was common practice in US schools for boys to attend swimming lessons naked, and in some cases for longer than is generally assumed and reported. Generally you read that it was practiced until the late 60s or mid 70s. I was a 16 year old german exchange student in 1982 for three months at a high school in Illinois and four months at a high school in Wisconsin and still in 1982 we boys, and only we boys, had to swim nude at both schools.
The reason given at the time for the requirement to swim naked, that fibers secreted by swimwear could clog filters, was of course absolute nonsense: in 1982 there had long been modern swimwear made of Lycra, which did not secrete fibers. And why should only fibers from the swimming trunks of us boys clog the filters, but not those from the swimsuits of the girls, which were made of the same material?
That we boys had to swim naked in high school was generally accepted at that time and was not questioned in the slightest or even rejected, but considered completely normal. It was also accepted by us boys as usual, although it would have made no sense to resist, because swimming lessons were compulsory and it was prescribed at both schools that we boys had to swim naked without exception; no one could pinch or shirk. Everyone had to pull down his shorts or briefs for swimming, there was no exception, that was simply the rule.
For me as an exchange student, this was very unusual and also surprising at the time, but I had no problems with it or even found it humiliating as one sometimes reads. At my first swimming lesson in Illinois, I was assigned a locker in the locker room that was in a different hallway than those of my classmates. I stripped barefoot, took off my shorts and polo shirt, I already wore my speedos under my shorts, and then put on flip-flops to go into the shower and then into the pool hall, just as I was used to doing at home in Germany. I was still standing in front of the locker when the first other boys came into my hallway, through which one reached the shower, including my partner student, who told me from behind that we boys have to swim naked at the school. As I turned around from the locker, I saw, the 15 boys in my class who were by now standing around me in the hallway, all completely naked. Of course they grinned about the German exchange student in the swim briefs and were certainly curious how I would react or whether I would be coy or try to get an exception from swimming naked as an exchange student. But of course I simply untied my briefs, pulled them down and put them in the locker, and when my partner student told me that naked also means barefoot, that flip-flops were not allowed and that I had to be barefoot in the shower and the swimming pool, I just took them off too. That was at that time quite loose and relaxed. Of course, it was normal among 16 year olds that the guys looked at my crotch to see how the German is built there and there was then also one or the other adolescent saying and especially great astonishment that a German has a circumcised penis, but that was it. Everything was relaxed and nobody was teased or bullied. Everyone was accepted as they were. You could even say: the nudity made everyone the same. The moment I pulled down my speedos in front of the other boys and was naked like them, I was accepted by them and included in the community. Retrospectively, I have to say: we were never as calm, relaxed, and companionable as we were during swim lessons when all 16 of us were completely naked. And it was no different at my second high school in Wisconsin! I asked my partner student beforehand if we had to swim naked at the school and after he said yes, I immediately stripped naked like everyone else in the locker room. That was also completely relaxed and without any problems. Those were then completely different times in the U.S., as I think better than today.
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I swam nude for my freshman year. No gym at all, all academics soph. year, and for jr and sr. years we had suits. I really liked nude swimming.
It was freeing and liberating, just as the california hippie nudists were saying. I was a tall, dorky, immature
ginger frosh w no manly hair yet, but the older kids left the freshmen alone. One kid who always mouthed off and talked crap got himself wet-towelled, but that was it. Overall, it was great fun. I wish I could have swam nude all year thru all four years.
We had to swim nude in Jr.High in Clarence, NY in the 70’s. It totally sucked. None of us liked it except the 2 gay guys in our gym class that spent the entire pool time half or fully aroused. If I had a kid and they were forced to swim nude, I would sue the living shit out of the school system. If we couldn’t swim nude with the girls, we shouldn’t have been forced to swim nude with the guys. The worst of it was playing water polo with some guys wang rubbing against the back of your neck. Talk about degrading. Practicing lifeasving techniques wasn’t much better if you are familiar with victim towing techniques. We were told to do it because they saved money on bathing suit laundering. What a crock of shit. They were some of the most disturbing memories of my life. If we swam with the chicks, they WOULD have been the best memories of my life !
I wish times hadn’t changed.
Bring back the good-ol-days!
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I used to go skinny dipping as often as possible. It was really enjoyable and very freeing. The shy guys kept their penis covered by their hands whenever they were out of the water and I was one of those guys for the first few times. It was so liberating when I finally realized that we were all different and yet basically the same. People who have never tried it, really should. Besides being incredibly comfortable, it’s easy on the laundry. 🙂
I also grew up swimming nude in junior high school in Dearborn Michigan. It had always been the tradition in all of the pub;ic and private high schools in Michigan for ever and ever. We did not have a YMCA so I do not know about the history except by reading.
No swim suits were allowed on the boy’s teams and boy’s swim classes. I also swam on the swim team. I have always been looking for a nude swim team to join since leaving high school. But this was the late 1970’s and by 1980 nude swimming seemed to have suddenly vanished across
America. I often wondered why. I am still looking for a nude (men’s) swim team Hit me up if someone knows of one.
I tried to post on another forum but threads get lost or dropped.
My school had a school and we swam nude. It was a catholic high school.
Some of my cousins who went to public schools (my father converted for my mother) would not even believe that there was a such thing as required nude swimming. I didn’t mind it at all. In fact, with all of the talk of bullying nowadays, my recollection was that bullies are no longer bullies when they are naked. My school was all-male and swimmers on the team swam in suits and practiced in suits! If anything, I wish I could go back in time once in a while. It was very freeing and therapeutic to swim nude without fear of arrest. As an adult I have gone to nude beaches occassionally, but I just can’t get into the whole naturist scene. Kids of a certain age will run around naked without any modesty. So when I was in HS I got to do the same thing without being yelled at and told to get some clothes on. And it was free.
When I was in Junior High school and the beginning of High school we swam in the buff. We just did it because we were told to. I think it is a good thing it is more about exploring your sexuality I think than anything else. Unless you had the kid who was a little ahead of the rest of us in the confidence department who talked about sex before anyone else.
This was sort of a right of passage for being a male at least in our world because it was cloistered from the girls.
It would be the first and maybe the last time as a male where there would be this sort of experience, Some men later might belong to a mens clubs but this would be it for most. I think it is a great leveler. Even though there might have been some unspoken competition about body development Physique and genital size I think most boys had the opportunity to see all different shapes and sizes yet still having the same construction. the porn industry has really distorted what the average guy is working with. I think guys today are more intimidated about there bodies and general physical appearance. I go into a gym today and the older guys are comfortable about being naked. They know there are homosexuals around them. They ignore it because a glance
or even a stare doesn’t bother them because it does not effect them in a personal or physical way. The younger guys seem to be hung up. It is very similar to having a neighbor right next door and never talking to them or seeing them.
Sadly ,like even being on the internet, it is one more thing that distances ourselves from each other. Things are becoming insular and at the same time distorted the reality factor is missing. Group socialization seems to be around alcohol and there is less of a sense of propriety or manners. There also seems to be a lack of awareness of people around one another when in public. These seem to be very strange and not very pragmatic times?!
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I probably wouldn’t have believed it had I not done it myself, although it was in a college pool in Amherst, Mass., in 1964. However, I’m always been more impressed that a high school had a swimming pool rather than over what people wore in the pool. Never been in a YMCA, not all of which even had swimming pools.
We swam nude during gym class at the University of Illinois when I was a Freshman there in 1966. I can remember several times when girls would sneak in to watch.
I was wearing speedo’s for my senior year in high school at swim meets but during track and cross country, a scheduling conflict and budget cuts resulted in me being seen naked in the boy’s shower after school due to budget cuts that made my access to the showers after several team sports practices and classes overlap with the girl’s family planning and domestic maintenance education classes after school. Home economics and female health classes were cut, boy’s athletic practices in some areas cut during school hours and rescheduled after 6th period class ended, and my embarrassment of being smelled by girl’s was far more humiliating than the awkwardness of female lower and some upper classman students walking past me while naked in the shower room and next to my locker. They haia right to be there, and so did I. I wasn’t embarrassed about it when I was mostly ignored by girl’s passing by and glancing iny direction for a second before returning to their conversation with a friend who was walking next to them on their way to the conference room in back by the boy’s bathroom and coach’s office. The indifferent attitude of most of the girl’s that did bother to look reassured me that I was not the center of attention or the focus of any female scrutiny until their teacher decided to have a word with me while I was in the shower room informing me of some complaints that some girl’s had made that I was making inappropriate advances on them and was exposing my sex organs to them.
I was appalled, and confused by that last statement. I was a boy, aale athlete taking a shower and changing out of my track uniform in the boy’s locker room and shower room. How am I the perp. hear? They are not scheduled to be here at all, according to the posted schedule for boy’s access to the facilities hanging on the wall by the entrance of the gymnasium next to the drinking fountain. Her response says drinking bottle is disgusting and no one had taken drink out of it in years. To schedule cuz I forgotten remnant of the 1960s that had never been changed because few people even really existed. I counted this PTA new in the principal now and the head of the death life department you at least he should have known but appeared in different too the fact of. Didn’t you know? It turned out she did know but didn’t think anyone else did so she just ignored it until now. She approved with my commitment to hygiene stating that she had helped her brother with his hygiene growing up when it became known to her parents that she saw the career in medical field is an RN or in educational physical education instructor. Her acceptance into a accelerated learning program for physical education at the community college got hurt a lot of support from her parents to help her brother with maintaining his personal hygiene and monitoring his physical development on a daily basis, so she could have some practice examining and supervising boys physicals and sometimes necessary for her to do a physical examination and cataloging of the day to day development of the male reproductive system from monitoring her older brother’s brother’s physical development, giving her a baseline subjective example to compare and familiarize herself with, and recognized the growth patterns of her brother’s development both emotionally, and physically. I reminded her a lot of her brother’s growing up to maturity before her eyes because I didn’t have a problem with her seeing me like this, and from what she could see, I didn’t fit the description of a sexually depraved pervert in need of corrective disciplinary actions to rectify my attitude problem. I wasn’t expecting that I had to get looked at by her and her students to eliminate any doubt that I was doing inappropriate things like masterbation in front of her students and exposing my rectum when they came around the corner in the front entrance. I denied doing any of those things, and asked her if she was talking about a younger or older girl, since the girl’s my age seemed to show me respect and not gawk and start pointing at my private parts the way a couple freshman girl’s did when walking in on me getting dressed next to my locker. This made sense to her, and she recalled that a student had accused me of lewd and sexually depraved behavior when she tried to get past me while walking to the conference room. She said that she wanted to check my story with her and the other girls for a minute and asked me to be patient for a few minutes and wait for her to get some information before I get dressed and leave for the day. She said that she could already seen discrepancies in a couple of the girls statements and asked if I would permit her to confirm or suspicions that she might have been given some sleeping information about my activities by me rinsing off the soap residue on my body and letting her have a good look at my private parts for a few seconds and she would be right back with her decision on how to handle this situation.
I knew she was within her rights to do this inspection without my consent or have an available male faculty member do it for her but she seemed to have a better understanding of my reproductive system and how it functioned than I did, so I was not able to find fault with her lifting my privates and inspecting them from different angles and checking the eurethral opening and paying close attention to a mole on the right side of my shaft, asking me how long I had this and if it would wash off with a bit of effort and soap, my response being no, I was born with it and confirming that the ring around my penis was pronounce anda lighter brown than what would be expected for a who gets direct sunlight on a regular basis. She looked underneath and between my scrotal sack and my inner thighs and perennial regions and then asked me to turn and bend over and grab my ankles for a momentarily inspection of my rectal opening and nutsack to determine if I had to go with her to the bathroom and get a better look at my situation to determine if I had any reason to ask her to verify that I was not able to get it up and out there the way the girl’s described in her original statement. She understands that I don’t have to be in that situation with anyone else but her if I don’t want to, but she can call the girl’s bluff and instruct the girl to show her something she described seeing when she has the two girl’s show her where they saw something she wasn’t seeing at that moment. I didn’t know what that something was, and she said that it was easier for me to remain ignorant of that specific detail so as to not influence the situation in a way that might incriminate me in a self fulfilling prophecy. I shrugged my shoulders and she said to lather up and get cleaned up and she would be back in a few minutes to check on my progress. She noticed that I was looking up between my legs at a couple of her students looking at my private parts from behind me as their teacher let go of my buttcheeks and asked the two girl’s to stay with me for a few minutes and wait for her to come back to ask if they witnessed the encounter with the girl who had made a scene in the locker room the day before last. She winked at me and said that I would be in good hands while she was in the office with the kids mentioned in the report as witnessed to the event in question. She handed the bar of soap to one of the girl’s and asked them to be sure that I was squeaky clean between my cheeks and inner thighs for the inspection I was going to get if she found that the girl’s had seen anything that was not mentioned in the statement that she had just seen with her own eyes, and that I was likely to find it to be very comforting to be receiving the assistance of two physical therapy students who would benefit from some experience with male anatomical makeup in preparation for the procedure to assist in a surgical procedure performed by a friend of her’s who specializes in urology so that they will be aware of what they can expect to find themselves assisting with, her assurance that I needed no assurance from her to be honest with me, seeing nothing about my physical appearance and function that I should feel embarrassed about them seeing.
She came back a few minutes later and informed me that the girl’s rescinded their statement after they had been given the choice between admitting that I was not able to do anything else with my foreskin since I didn’t have one in the first place, and that my butthole did not have hemorrhoids in between my cheeks and inner thighs did not have vericloose veins in them but that I was willing to be inspected by their mom and dad if they insisted on holding up the issue with the idea that I was a bit perverse in my behavior towards girls who were going to be expelled from school if they put me through any more grief for the audacity of my daring to take a shower and then go to the bathroom and get dressed in the boy’s locker room and shower room before leaving school in a ripe state of hygienic neglect because of the time and energy expenditure of my body being cleaned and dried off the way that their father’s were at the close of class in a much more open learning environment than my own had become over the two decades that have elapsed since this picture was taken — she actually had an original copy of a school newspaper showing a row of boy’s in front of the swimming pool being inspected by their swim team coach with a girl holding a clipboard and checking off names or something as the faceless rectum’s and scrotal sacks were exposed as each one got checked and documented when bent over in view of people sitting in the bleachers, and I don’t know if the girl’s father’s or uncle’s were attached to any of them cheeks being parted and testes being pulled aside from left to right, or whatever direction and context of examination involved a ladie’s index finger touching the right testicle in the image shown, but it was implied by the coach and her male counterpart that I was in their situation when they were my age, and that I was going through the process of changing and washing in view of their daughters that they have been through with female classmates and relatives when they went to school there. Their daughters had been denied positive exposure to natural male athleticism in the past the way their father’s were exposed to the view of girl’s they grew up with, and I had a girlfriend now that would be happy to show them the whole situation as she sees’s it, indicating that I was not able to get aroused in the presence of such young, socially immature girls when I was visibly more comfortable with me being seen in the shower room in my birthday suit in the presence of female counterparts of my age group and social status as an upper classman who’s modesty was not a reality in the shower room before the start of the girl’s family planning course supplement education curriculum now covering materials that used to be covered in home economics and female health and gym classes. Since I was involved in the extra credit and suppliant student resource review as a temporary student aid getting my credits for military placement and desensitization (outdoor showerheads and latrine-pit activities not that embarrassing after having my unmentionables mentioned and wiped, checked and studied for RN, housewife and mother, gym teaching certification for Jr. College placement of girl’s that practiced on me, using that learning experience for job placement in teaching and administrative positions three short years later. I have a lot of time to do some maintenance on my neighbor’s apartments and houses and after an accidental slip down the roof of a house prompted an immediate inspection of the damages I have to my male dignity due to the unwise use of shorts with nothing underneath or above and below, It was high school all over again with my being examined naked in a room full of girl’s concerned about my physical health and safety, having just as much experience with boy’s they grew up with in this situation as the girl’s that I grew up with. We are old enough to understand that it is o.k. to enjoy male nudity in a safe platonic relationship setting in a sexual -non romantic or erotic exchange of naughty middle aged banter and appreciation of our ability to still be sexual aware of our own bodies without being sexually active with the friends that see us exposed and vulnerable in a safe social environment where trust and mutual acceptance are not as antiquated a concept as our older, more mature generations may have thought they were before these ladies started making a habit of seeing me in my birthday suit when they came around and visited while I had to get checked by the retired Doctor and her next door neighbor and maybe my personal voyuer. I am still not sure how too start classifying a relationship with a woman 20 years older than me who enjoys looking at my private parts for the most part, without appearing to be sexually attracted to me and vice versa. Examined and admired, but not desired or lusted after, by her or for her. I wasn’t attracted to that lady gym teacher either, but my experience with being examined by her did boost my confidence and self esteem a bit, while letting me know how I was percieved in the nude from a female perspective. Finding out that girl’s and woman don’t always think about boy’s as disgusting little perverts with no sexual appeal to be acknowledged from the feminine way of thinking. Woman can appreciate masculine attributes in my physical and psychological makeup that I wouldn’t recognize in myself, giving me an awareness of my masculinity from their perspective filter be letting me see myself through their eyes and perceptions. I think it takes a kind and sexually confident woman to reveal the masculine nature present in a man, just like man can reveal the primal nature of a woman by the way he treats the woman he loves and respects.
I only swam nude in a college pool in Massachusetts. That was in 1965. I’ve never set foot inside a YMCA. By no means was swimming nude a universal practice, except at the Y. I don’t imagine most high schools even had a pool. In college, you probably would not even used the pool. But it was certainly the case in some places. The problem is that with the ease that photos can be altered, which everyone knows, the existence of altered photos makes the existence of nude swimming suspect, when in fact, it’s only the photos that are suspect. I have seen a single photo of a nude swimmer in a college yearbook, though, but not of a swim team.
30 years ago from 2000 will be 1970, so it checks out with the story that nude swimming was practices between 1960-1970.
Times do change indeed. The practice might still resurface with the trend of naturists and nudism on going in western countries although Easterners differ on the subject of nudism.
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[…] ymca Revisiting my ongoing study of nudity in America… as well as my recent post on “Swimming Nude Was the Norm 30 Years Ago” […]
[…] Swimming nude was the norm 30 years ago. | SANDBLOG – Aug 03, 2008 · I swam nude for my freshman year. No gym at all, all academics soph. year, and for jr and sr. years we had suits. I really liked nude swimming…. […]
[…] Swimming nude was the norm 30 years ago. | SANDBLOG – Aug 03, 2008 · I swam nude for my freshman year. No gym at all, all academics soph. year, and for jr and sr. years we had suits. I really liked nude swimming…. […]
[…] Swimming nude was the norm 30 years ago. | SANDBLOG – Aug 03, 2008 · I swam nude for my freshman year. No gym at all, all academics soph. year, and for jr and sr. years we had suits. I really liked nude swimming…. […]