Guys who grew up in the 70's, did you have to swim in the nude at school?

[devilgrrl]

If so, can you explain wtf that was all about? To this day it mystifies me that guys had to swim in the nude. I know who are still scratching their heads over it. What was up with that?

[mark414]

1. my dad went to notre dame from 69-71

before women were allowed in and he remembers any swimming portion of phy ed was in the buff...i will have to ask him what the was all about

[WindRavenX]

2. wtf?

really? :wtf:

[devilgrrl]

4. Oh yeah...

You never heard anything like that?

[L A Woman]

3. didn't anyone care about shrinkage???? n/t

[struggle4progress]

5. Not that I remember. & I think I'd remember. But it's all a purply haze

[WCGreen]

6. Only at the Y.....

It was tradition...

But at the high school, we all wore trunks...

Except Stinky Ed who lost his trunks when he tried to dive off the high board...

[mainegreen]

13. Stinky Ed?

:spray:

[Gormy Cuss]

22. The boys swam in the buff at the Y pool and the Boy's Club.

As I recall the justification was that it kept the pool filters cleaner (weren't trunks then made of woven cloth then, not synthetics like nylon?) Since my high school used the Boy's Club for swimming and diving events, there were no girl's teams until the YWCA opened a pool.

[Dave Reynolds]

7. No,

but we had to soap up our privates and walk up to the gym teacher to prove that we were "clean".

I thought he was just a sick bastid.

[noonwitch]

17. I had a female gym teacher with a similar rule

I just thought she was a sick bitch. She wouldn't give us towels to cover up until after we took a shower, and then she would look each of us over to make sure we were "clean".

[Dave Reynolds]

18. Kinda creepy, ain't it?

I was never so happy to be out of any class.

[TheBaldyMan]

8. Quite common in catholic schools !

sounds like there was some seriously closeted PE teachers back then.

[6000eliot]

9. No, but we had a "jock check," during which we had to drop our gym shorts.

[Skittles]

10. OK I HAVE TO ASK

WTF WERE THEY CHECKING

[6000eliot]

11. To see if we were wearing them?

You know the kinds of reputations gym teachers get.

[devilgrrl]

12. kick...

surely there's someone out there that had to deal with this creepy tradition.

[kwassa]

14. We only swam in the nude recreationally, and co-ed.

The sixties, you know.

[XNASA]

15. I didn't have to.......but I did anyway.

:thumbsup:

[HughBeaumont]

16. I've heard of this, back in the 70s when I was a kid . . .

. . . but I didn't think it was TRUE.

Right, because it's not completely creepy to swim with 30 other nude dudes in a pool supervised by adults. Jesus, that's just fucked up beyond hope.

[bullwinkle428]

19. Yes - we were forced to do it in middle school, which would have

been around '75-'77 for me...they never had a reasonable explanation for why we had to be naked! Now I'm curious as to why you thought of this to begin with! :evilgrin:

[devilgrrl]

27. Well with all the Foley stuff in the news and institutionalized homophobia

it made me wonder what was up with that. :shrug:

[ThomCat]

20. I wish we had to do this.

But none of the schools I attended ever had pools. In fact, even though they had showers we never used them for PE. Only the after-schools sports teams were allowed to use them.

After PE we were expected to just put on some deodorant, change clothes and go to our next class. :smelly:

[NewWaveChick1981]

21. OK, I started first grade in 1969, and I have NEVER heard of

anyone having to swim in the nude at school in the 1970s. :yoiks: Granted, I never went to a school that had a pool, and I'm female, so I didn't know a lot about what went on in guys' gym classes. However, my brother (three years younger than I am) never said anything about a "jock check" or having to do anything in the buff. I went to public schools the whole time too. Sounds like some of those private Catholic schools were kinda screwed up... :yoiks:

[FarLeftRage]

23. Nope

The high school I attended didn't have a pool.

Come to think about, nothing out of the ordinary ever happened... quite boring!

[GOPisEvil]

24. What?! WHAT?!?!? No, no!!!

Never! :wtf:

[Rabrrrrrr]

25. We swam nude. And no, no one ever explained why.

Even the gym teachers never told us, really - we'd ask why, and they'd say "I don't know. That's just how we do it."

And my high school was still swimming nude into the 90s.

[devilgrrl]

28. Surely, you must have thought it was a little weird didn't you?

With society being so uptight about nudity and all.

[TrogL]

26. We swam nude at camp

Outdoors....within binocular sight of the girls' camp.

[begin_within]

29. The YMCA required nudity for boys in the 1950s to 1960s, but by the

1970s I think that was over with. At the YMCA, even the lifeguards had to be totally nude. The argument was that the fibers from clothing would clog up the filter systems at the Y pools. This is all according to articles I have read about it on the web. At my high school in the 1970s, nudity in the pool was forbidden. The only nudity allowed was in the showers and locker room.

[idgiehkt]

30. roflmao

"fibers".

what will they think of next... clever.

:rofl: