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.
We went to the river many times with our German friends behind her back. We just did what they did, no big deal.
It absolutely was a threat then but it wasn't talked about.
It is in reference to a Newspaper account he researched:
“The Democrat and Chronicle piece.....” dated September 22, 2017...........
Never happened to me ... I attended HS in the early 60s in West Texas. Of course that was when young’ns used ‘Yes maam’ and ‘Yes sir’ and people’s privacy was far more important that it is to today’s leftists.
My father took me to the Tacoma Elks circa 1954. The Elks was all male and the indoor basement pool was decorated in a Greek style. All the swimmers were sans swimsuits. No one seemed to mind so neither did I. The wet sauna was all nude too. Men did carry towels.
I figured it had to do with the material then used for swimming trunks. Even now pools have rules forbidding swimming in clothes of certain fabric. For example, “No cutoffs.”
Did you read the article? By the way in 1885 it really was the “Young Man’s CHRISTIAN Association”.
Hysterical show!
“Urban legend?”
That’s my guess.
I swam in the ‘60s in school and we all wore swimsuits. In fact I got a new speedo every year.
Gym teachers...some of the dumbest people on the planet.
Jocks who tried to cling onto their past.
In England you were starkers.
US public schools were the best in the world overall in the 50s to late 60s. Then, as with most other things in this country, the rot set in.
so as in the days of Noah.....
perversion of all kinds has been all around the earth a really long time.
Detroit Public Schools 1966. All boys swim in the nude. They had a barrier between the pool so girls swam on other side with suits. Detroit Denby Class of 67.
Born in 1950 and had swim and gym class. Never heard of stuff like that. Must have been a homo-school.
Did you read the article? By the way in 1885 it really was the “Young Man’s CHRISTIAN Association”.
Note this has an identified start, so it was most likely an individual, a pervert. After the fact they justify it. Even if well intentioned it was very much NOT part of Christian culture at that time.
Be wary of wolves and well intentioned so called Christians, or so we are warned.
What is the agenda of the article? To normalize Biden and other current perverts.
My 11th grade history teacher was giving our class a tour of the “catacombs” of our school. All of sudden, he said, “Back up! Back up!” We had reached the corridor that surrounded the school pool, and it had little windows in the pool’s walls. We asked him why we had to back up? “There’s a boy’s swim class in there, and they swim naked”, he explained. I don’t remember if I already knew that or not, but yeah, it’s true. He said it was for cleanliness.
This was 1968, btw.
Dearborn Public Schools. 1966-1971. Boys swam nude.
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