At one time it was common for YMCAs, schools, and colleges to require males to swim nude unless women were present. What/when was the last YMCA to require it? Last school? Is the pratice still common in other countries?
There was an earlier thread on this topic. The latest high school reference was from the 1960s.
“I say, ‘young man, there’s a place you can go…’” 
?? Can someone explain why the requirement was deemed necessary?
I graduated from a Catholic high school for boys in Maryland in 1972. We had to swim nude as part of gym class, but the swimming team wore trunks for their practices. There was speculation among the students about the reasons for this, but I never heard an official explanation. The speculation was that they didn’t want us carrying around wet bathing suits all day. Seemed like BS to me at the time.
Was’t the Y at one time supposed to be a place for underprivledged youth? If so, then it makes sense that wearing a swim suit (which costs money to buy) would be seen as the unnecessary requirement. It may have been viewed as an enormous locker room with a pool in the middle.
This all sounds pretty weird to me. I attended YMCA activities throughout the 1960s, and never saw or heard anything like this. Our pool, though, was often co-ed, and the women had a separate locker room. But even when things were all-male I neither saw nor heard of nude swimming.
I went to Catholic school, but we didn’t have any swimming. Our all-male Boy Scout camp required bathing suits.
As for the cosdt of bathing suits, I’d think that a non-issue. They weren’t that expensive, especially for kids. And my first college had a tank-suit requirement (no outside bathing suits). You wore their suits, which they had in all sizes, and they were washed after each use.
Following along this line of reasoning, pool operators never seem to be pleased by the idea of people swimming in cutoff jeans or pants, which is what a kid might otherwise wear if he couldn’t afford trunks. So maybe the nude swimming rule was in response to this.
At one of the gyms I go to, where they have gender-separated jacuzzis immediately off their respective bathrooms, people use the jacuzzis nude, though the swimming pool proper is between the locker rooms and co-ed, so of course people wear suits there.
Numerous recollections of nude swimming in high school in 1950s-1970s.
From Life magazine issue of October 16, 1950: Photo of nude water volleyball at New Trier Township High School in the Chicago suburbs.
Circa 1980, nude swimming was optional at the all-male YMCA in my town. Although I am not adverse to casual nudity in the locker room, I was and am far too modest to swim naked.
A decade prior, when I was in the 10th grade, we had pool once a week. We stripped naked in the locker room and then stood in line to be handed a raggedy pair of trunks, often lacking drawstrings. It was not uncommon to lose one’s trunks upon diving into the water.
I think the old swimming pools had filters that could not handle the lint shed from swimsuits-hence no swimsuits. of course, the nylon suits don’t have any lint. Anyway, it must have been interesting when “boys swim” and "girls swim’ times got mixed up!
I was an undergraduate at Cornell University from 1969-1973. My all-male freshman swimming class was held in the nude, although as I recall the instructor wore trunks. I don’t believe it was required to swim nude, but it was customary and I don’t remember anyone else who wore trunks besides the instructor. (You would have been considered to be a complete nerd if you had done so.) There were all-male and co-ed swimming hours at the Men’s Gym pool; suits were optional during the men’s hours.
I am sure this policy continued until at least 1972. That year, in the spirit of the times my girlfriend and some of her friends decided to “liberate” the Women’s Gym pool from their oppressive sexist policy of requiring women to wear frumpy tank suits at all times, even during women’s hours, while men were allowed to swim nude. She tipped me off to when they planned to storm the pool naked, so I was able to position myself strategically at a large picture window that overlooked the pool from the second floor. (The Women’s Gym had certain classes that were open to men, so there wasn’t any problem getting in. The presence of this window probably had something to do with the suit requirement.) Disappointingly, when they tried to leave the locker room one of the supervisors saw them and blocked them from entering the pool area. All I saw was a lot of commotion as the other women ran over to the locker room door to see what was going on.
One more victory for the oppressor pigs! 
To clarify, while men were allowed to swim nude in their own gym.
Some of the reasons I’ve heard; “lint from suits will clog the filters”, “so boys who can’t afford suits don’t feel left out”, “so the school doesn’t have to launder suits”, “boys can’t be trusted not to leave wet suits in their lockers”, and finally “it’s just us guys”. Keep in mind that in that ere every male could expect a couple mass nude physicals courtesy of Uncle Sam and boys would have been required to show nude after gym class.
Skinny dipping, IMO, is the second most fun thing you can do without having any clothes on. I’ve done it at a clothing optional club that used to exist in Topanga Canyon.
In some other contexts though, I would undoubtedly be uncomfortable.
I remember a friend of my parents who was a gym instructor in the 1960’s mentioning that the main reason for this was hygiene. They were worried that boys would leave wet suits hanging in their lockers, which would grow mold and other nasties, which then spread in the pool the next time the suits were worn.
I can see where there might be some reason for this. I remember in high school some guys who were proud of the fact that their jockstrap was only laundered once per quarter, when the school made us clean out out lockers.
I was in high school in the early '60s. We had separate pools, and the boys had to swim nude, but not the girls. The strange thing was that when a boy was excused from gym class for medical reasons, he had to spend the period walking around the pool, nude.
I think it’s safe to say that no school in the US still does it, but is it still practiced in other countries?
/q Did anyone else have the same experience at the Y when they were kids? Did naked swimming serve some health purpose, or was advantage being taken of us? q/
I grew up in San Francisco and went to the YMCA in Chinatown (Sacramento St?) for organized weekly activities in the mid-50s. My recollection is we were not allowed to wear swimming trunks, and do not recall seeing anyone other than the lifeguard wearing trunks in the pool area.
Don’t remember seeing anyone other than the other boys in my group in the pool, though we did run into some WWII vets in the other parts of the Y.
Don’t remember anything untoward happening, but what does a 12-year old kid know?
In case anyone is wondering where this quote came from, I removed a spam post that this post is quoting.
Colibri
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