Nude swimming was the norm for men and boys for thousands of years. The men’s swimsuit wasn’t invented until the 19th century, but even then was used only when swimming in mixed company. It has only been since the 1960s that swimsuit wearing has predominated in even all-male settings.
Yeah I’ve heard of it into the 70s. We didn’t have a pool at our school but others did this.
But then again we had to take showers at school (that’s another thread)
I think it was somewhat more common to swim naked in outdoor areas, like lakes, so this was seen as an extention. You always here jokes on TV shows from the 50s and 60s where guys swim with no suits. So it was there.
I think part of it is also guys will dare each other. I recall when I was the night manager at a hotel, we had a pool outside and I got there at 10:30pm and I pick up the phone and a near hysterical woman is yelling “AH, there’s naked men in the pool.” I’m like “great way to start my shift.”
So I go down to the pool and there are 4 BOYS about 10 years old and I they’re in the water and I’m like “Are you naked in there.” They’re half smiling and say “No,” I reply, “then why are you’re swimsuits on the chairs.”
I smiled at them and told them to put their trunks on if they want to swim at the pool.
Now you just know one of the boys dared the others to swim naked. So you know guys even young ones will do this.
For the record: our swimming teacher was not nude, just the kids. Except once, when he had trouble explaining how to do something, so he just stripped and dove in.
Only swimming lessons were in the nude. It’s not schools used to have boys playing basketball or wrestling naked (now that’s homoerotic).
My dad said they did the nekkid swimming at Lane Tech high school back in the 40s. That’s just how it was done.
Well, is it prudish to think it’s weird for women to also be nude for swimming? if so, what’s the difference, now that we’re culturally enlightened enough to know that the whole women are more modest thing is bunk?
If the ladies want to swim naked, more power to them, I say.
To the poster who asked me to “dial back the crazy”: I’m sorry, but I just don’t think that nude swimming classes, or naked people in general, are that wacky or potentially harmful … no matter how many ominous italics and ellipses you use.
Howabout if you got an erection? (You know everyone here is wondering about that, but afraid to ask)
I think the unheated pool would at least reduce that problem.
Okay. I guess I don’t think swimming nude is awful. Just…odd, I s’pose.
Or…SHRINKAGE?!
I went to an English State School (all boys) from 1964-1972.
We wore swimming trunks (and would have been astonished and embarrassed if it were otherwise).
Men didn’t look at other men’s penises. To do so would get you called a faggot. You were supposed to look elsewhere.
See post #13 above.
In sailing, it’s called a Keel.
Very common. And absurd. At MIT my friend, who was on the fencing team and far more athletic than I am, had big problems with the swimming test.
This goes way back also. My mother-in-law, who went to college in the mid '30s, never did learn how to swim. To let her pass the test they eventually let her do the laps holding on to a stick, to let the coach drag her across the pool.
In a rare “post is my cite” I swam nude at the Y in 1958 or 1959. I certainly don’t remember the instructor being nude. The last day the parents were supposed to show up to watch us - I got conveniently sick. I don’t know if we’d have been allowed to wear swimming suits then.
My parents went to the same high school that I did, (not at the same time as I did, you wags!)
Both of them tell of nude male swimming in the mid 50’s. I never thought to ask about the teacher. My Mom said the girls dance studio windows were painted black because they overlooked the pool and in the mid 70’s they still were. Both black and overlooking the pool.
So it lends a certain reasonableness, since why else would you paint out perfectly good windows?
Do you really not understand why someone born in the last 40 years would think nude high school swimming is weird? And why it doesn’t have anything to do with homophobia or prudishness?
Read for comprehension, JB: No, I don’t.
Then calling you out of touch is an understatement.
But nothing else is done naked. Why swimming?