I am 44 y.o. and a regular gym goer. I have noticed recently that men in locker rooms seem more modest than they used to be. They are less likely to face the common area of the locker room when they change and guys that shower seem to try pretty hard to avoid exposing themselves on the way to and on the way back from the showers. Thing is, it’s mostly younger guys. Older guys (especially older than 50) seem to care less. Also, guys with better bodies are more self-conscious. WTF?
Am I imagining things? And why would this be so? A lesbian acquaintance I mentioned this to suggested homophobia, but I’m not convinced by any means. :dubious: And the better looking guys: better looking because they’re self-conscious, and thus highly motivated to look better? Guys?
FWIW, I am in pretty good shape but a little heavy (205, 5’ 10 3/4"). I’m a let it all hang out kinda guy.
I’ve noticed this too, and I can’t explain it. We had group showers at my high school, group showers at my college, group showers at my college fraternity, group showers in the locker rooms when I was working as a journalist, and group showers at my old health club. It was no big deal. But the health club’s new building has individual showers, and I don’t know if it’s sad or funny to see these younger guys carefully trying to pull their underwear on underneath the towel wrapped around their waist.
“In my day, we used to streak, you know, run around naked!” :eek:
It’s funny. I was going to ask the question from the opposite direction.
I am one of those guys (30 years old now) who puts his underwear on under his towel. No reason for it, really. I think people my age and younger were never in locker rooms all naked together.
I’ve had this talk with friends about what it is about you old folks that makes you so comfortable walking around naked in locker rooms!
I’ve noticed it too. In my work locker room, there was only ever one guy who would strip down completely, and the others complained about it.
I have had gay friends who were really fussy about it, to the point of using the stalls in preference to the urinals. One of them even told me that outside of a sexual context, he found nudity offensive.
One of my friends noted that (much to his irritation) many of the swimmers at the Athens Olympics were wearing body suits instead of speedos, or otherwise covering up excessively.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Most of my peers (I am 22) never had to shower for gym in school so people in my generation really are not used to getting naked in front of people. Between swimming when I was younger and track in college, I have grown accustomed to changing in front of people so to me it is a non-factor.
In my district showering was required for neither. In fact, the showers were only really on if there was a dance after school or such, something which prevented people from going home to shower and dress. It’s probably for the best, since it was so unusual that when it did happen, some jokers would invariably strike up conversations with whoever walked by, approaching them completely normal with a kind “are you freaked out yet?” grin on their face. :dubious:
We didn’t shower after my high school gym class (I’m class of '03, for perspective), just changed clothes and (maybe) swiped some deodorant on. In retrospect, kind of gross. But I would have been terrified of showering in front of other guys in high school (I was overweight and terribly self-conscious. Changing my shorts and shirt was hard enough for me. I always did it in the corner if I could).
Nowadays, I don’t go to the gym but if I did, I wouldn’t mind stripping completely and taking a nice shower at all (in fact, I would prefer to. I hate leaving any sweat on me).
I’m in the gym fairly often, 2 to 3 times a week ,and I’ve noticed the same thing. I remember seeing a younger guy actually showering in his underwear and doing a WTF?
Personally, I had any kind of locker room modesty burned out of me at the academy. I don’t know how it is now, but when I was there the locker room down on the practice fields had toilet stalls with no doors on them. And…there were two rows of them facing each other. There’s nothing quite like wiping your ass in front of a row of people to slap the whole modesty thing down the drain.
I think you’re right – it’s a function of not having ever had to do group showers at school. When I was growing up (I’m 26) I never once had to shower in school: the most we ever had to do in gym class was change our shirts and put on gym shorts over our underwear. I was worried we’d have to shower, but it wasn’t even an option: the shower room hadn’t been used so long, the school was using it as a storage room. I don’t remember worrying about being sweaty and smelling – I guess we just used deodorant and dealt with it. No open showers in college either.
If I can expostulate for a minute, I think there’s another, larger reason at work here: a lot of younger people have never had to share much, period. In the past couple decades, birth rates have fallen, and average size of houses has grown larger. My impression is that in the “old days” you’d often have pretty big families (3+ kids) living in small-ish houses: everyone would have to share one bathroom, a couple siblings might have to share a bedroom, everyone would have to fight over one TV and wait their turn to use one telephone. People were, in general, bumping into one another a lot more. Nowadays, you have much smaller families living in much bigger houses. Most kids have never had to share a bedroom. Many of them have their own TV, and even their own private bathroom. Virtually all of them seem to have their own phones. I’ve read a couple articles where colleges are rushing to build individual dorm rooms, because incoming students don’t want to have roommates – they’ve never had to live in close quarters with anyone, and they don’t want to. (My first roommate in college fit this profile – he very clearly had never had to adjust to living with someone else before.) I’d guess somewhere in that transition it became unthinkable to have open showers.
Boy, most of y’all would have a real problem here…Some places I go to here will give people the key to the opposite sex locker room if your’s is full. I’ve had to say “Pardon me ladies, this won’t take but a 'sec.” and had to change there. And no, I didn’t put my underwear on underneath a towel.
I wonder if there is a connection to rising childhood obesity levels and the fact that kids don’t play sports hard enough to require showers? I went to high school in the mid-late 80’s and showering was a requirement because we sweated our butts off.
If you’re looking for naked men you’ll have to find a swim team. There are only a couple of guys on the team that don’t strip down naked after swimming. We even take nude showers together. Guess it comes from seeing damn near everything anyway.
A lesbian acquaintance I mentioned this to suggested homophobia, but I’m not convinced by any means. :dubious: And the better looking guys: better looking because they’re self-conscious, and thus highly motivated to look better? Guys?