Posted on 08/21/2024 8:10:54 AM PDT by Red Badger
I was catching up with my uncle recently, and he dropped a story that had me questioning everything. It was so wild, I thought he was pulling my leg. When he kept insisting it was true, I even wondered if Uncle Toby had a touch of dementia. But nope, Uncle Toby’s sharp as ever, and his story was 100 percent real.
So, what had me so floored? We were talking about schools and sports, and Uncle Toby casually mentioned that when he was in high school back in the 1950s, all the boys had to swim nude.
Uh, excuse me, what?
Yup, you heard that right. Uncle Toby said during gym class, the boys and girls were separated. The girls swam in bathing suits, but the boys? They swam totally naked. I was like, “Uncle Toby, what kind of crazy school did you go to?” And he swore it was a regular public school, adding that most schools in the US did the same thing until the 1970s.
I mean, come on, right? You can see why I thought old Uncle Toby was off his rocker. This sounded completely insane. So, naturally, I had to do some digging. And guess what? Uncle Toby was spot on. Up until the 1970s, American schoolboys were swimming in the buff at public schools across the nation.
Now, the burning question is, “Why?” Let’s dive in, shall we?
I stumbled upon this fascinating article titled “When boys swam nude in gym class” from the Democrat and Chronicle:
“When you got into high school, and you used the pool for gym, they had these rules and everybody had to follow them,” Reeves recalled of his days at Charlotte High School.
No running on the deck. No horseplay. No diving in the shallow end. Take a shower before swimming. Swim naked. No chewing gum…
It may be inconceivable to anyone under 50, but nude swimming was standard for high school boys in Rochester and in many American cities and states until at least 1970.
Yes, to a Millennial like me, this concept sounds completely whacko.
But that still didn’t answer the burning question: Why were young boys forced to swim in the buff around each other and, more importantly, around their adult male teachers? I had to get some insight from Uncle Toby. So, I asked him, “Why were schools enforcing naked swimming?” He dug into his dusty memory archives and tentatively suggested it might have been about maintaining cleanliness.
“Cleanliness?” I shot back. “Then why were the girls wearing swimsuits? If it was about hygiene, shouldn’t everyone have been suitless?” I felt like Jessica B. Fletcher, ready to crack open a “Murder She Wrote” mystery. But I could sense Uncle Toby’s growing frustration. He flatly said, “Bella, don’t ask me to make sense of this nonsense. When the government tells me to wear a seatbelt, I just do it without questioning.”
“Fair enough, Uncle Toby,” I replied, “but if they ever ask you to wear a seatbelt without your clothes on, I hope you ask why.” With that, I ended the call and dived into my investigation, determined to uncover the “why” behind this peculiar practice.
It turns out I wasn’t the only one baffled by the naked swimming. Just like Uncle Toby, the boys forced to swim naked were also totally confused. The Democrat and Chronicle piece took a deeper dive into this bizarre chapter of school history.
“It was the weirdest thing in the world,” recalled Chuck Napieralski, 67, who graduated with Reeves from Charlotte in 1968. “You can just imagine standing there in a line with your hands across the front hiding yourself. Once you got to the pool you just jumped in.”
Well, upon closer inspection, I was starting to realize that once again, old Uncle Toby might have been onto something.
It turns out that this rather bizarre tradition of boys doing the breast stroke in their birthday suits can be traced all the way back to 1885, when it began at an all-male indoor pool in Brooklyn’s YMCA. The kicker is that this decision to introduce nude swimming was driven by concerns surrounding the wool swimsuits and how the fibers collected dirt and bacteria, posing a potential threat to health and the pool’s filtration system. After that, the rest is basically “history,” as the Democrat and Chronicle piece explains:
In 1926, the American Public Health Association published the first guide for swimming pool management. It recommended men swim nude and women wear suits “of the simplest type.” Those guidelines remained until 1962.After that, it was a matter of custom. Andrew Saul, a nutritionist and author from Rochester, wrote of swimming nude at Charlotte High School as late as 1970.“Back dives were especially revealing,” Saul wrote in his 2003 book, Doctor Yourself.Perhaps school administrators thought nude swimming built cohesion between young men. Maybe it did. Few activities foster solidarity like man-to-man defense in a naked water polo game.
And if young boys were looking for some comfort and support from advice gurus like Ann Landers, they were outta luck. Back in 1974, a 15-year-old boy wrote to Ann about how uncomfortable he was taking showers in front of others, and her advice was not exactly “comforting.”
“You need to talk to a school counselor and learn why you are so uptight about being seen naked. If you look around you’ll find the vast majority of the guys who are showering are not in the least bit self-conscious.”
Apparently, Ann was into tough love and some other weird stuff. However, based on his age and the time frame, this kid probably didn’t have to swim in his birthday suit, but if Ann’s response was at all symbolic of the time, clearly, there was not a lot of sympathy or concern about these kids being forced to swim around like “Free Willy.” It might make for some rather strange dinner conversation, but if the topic comes up, find out if anybody in your family had to swim around like a frat boy after a wild kegger.
Needless to say, this was a very strange time in US public schools.
Till next time, be wickedly wonderful.
I don’t mean for this to sound smart assish, but you swim in a natatorium not a gymnasium.
I was in Houston.
Never heard of such a thing.
Here’s the reason:
“In 1885 ... all-male indoor pool in Brooklyn’s YMCA ... the fibers in the all-wool swim suits collected dirt and bacteria threatening swimmers’ health and the pool’s filtration system.”
That was a more innocent time.
Pedophilia and homosexuality barely existed as a public threat to nude boys.
As they are today.
Going into the military in the early 1970's we had open showers and latrines. There simply was no privacy and no one cared. That's the way it was, nothing sinister about it.
BTW I think girls wore swimsuits because of the variety of feminine hygiene options used at the time. Some were primitive by today's standards.
> I don’t mean for this to sound smart assish, but you swim
> in a natatorium not a gymnasium.
Right, but it was done in Gym class run by the Gym teachers.
Lane Technical High School in Chicago. Guys had to swim in the nude. Graduated 1978. Way too much chlorine in the swimming pool.
ISWYDT...................
My school did not admit female undergraduates until 1971, so there was no disparate impact of the no-suits rule.
Nope. We were required to swim nude in college, back in the 50's. Had to pass swimming test in order to graduate.
I was in the Marines.................
That was the way it was when I went to high school on the south side of Chicago in the 50’s...Calumet high to be specific. They did require soap showers and checked you on the way to the pool by painfully rubbing your wrist. If any dirt or grime showed up then back to the showers you went. Same at the indoor park district pools. Of course polio and iron lungs were a HUGE deal then and swimming pools were feared as places of exposure. So the story is true.
Back in the 90s, there was a high profile realtor in Fort Worth that coached a boys swim team. He was busted for screwing young boys.
This may help explain how that came to happen.
Silver bells hanging on a string,
My grandma said it was my ding-a-ling-a-ling.
How gay.
No urban legend. The YMCA in my small town in the 50’s and 60’s required nude swimming, and according to my dad, in the 40’s as well. The YWCA on the other hand did not. The YMCA used the flimsy excuse that bathing suit lint clogged up the filters, even though the girls wore much larger bathing suits. As a little kid, I figured the YWCA had some kind of an advanced super filter. When I grew up I remembered all the older and middle aged naked men who always hung around the pool and on the balcony when it was the night for the Boy Scouts to swim. Now I realize they were a bunch of pedophiles. I was never a member of the YMCA but was made to go there for swimming lessons and later when the scouts went there. It seemed as though my fathers generation didn’t seem to find anything wrong with it.
I learned to swim in the early ‘60s at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland. Everyone wore swimsuits. Later, from 1968 to 1972, I went to THSFKAW (The High School Formerly Known as Wilson), which had a pool. Everyone wore swimsuits.
I never heard about boys’ nude swimming at any school in the Portland area when I was growing up.
I graduated high school in 1968.
My boys’ high school was on a college campus (it was actually one of the founding schools of the university) and, when I started in 1964, the college was also all-male.
We and the college men used the college pool, swam naked, and had to shower before and after swimming.
Soon after women began to be admitted to the undergraduate college, the rules were changed and swim suits were required for both the college men and high school boys.
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