Female, graduated in 92 and we didn’t shower by the end-- so many girls faked having their periods (the one excuse that would get you out of a shower) that they just gave up on enforcing it when I was in 10th grade. Instead we got a damp towel to wipe off with.
We had daily PE from grades 6-12 (ages 12-18). 3 days a week, we ran for at least 20-30 minutes solid. One day a week was weight training. The other day was “sports” like softball where 25 people would be on the field and you got ONE pitch, if you missed you were out. Oh yes, fun. If it was “too cold” to go outside (read – below 20F) we did aerobics in the gym.
The only way you could get out of taking PE was to have a medical excuse and I think about 3 kids a year managed that. The rest of the kids at my high school of about 1200 suffered.
This is my experience, absolutely (down to the last sentence). Class of '88, California - No, like, WAY that the girls would ruin their HAIR??? for something as stupiiiid as a shower? at school? And anyway, any girl who would get naked in front of other girls was a lezzie anyway? Cause why else would she, like, show off her body to other girls like that?
We were supposed shower, and the teacher frequently reminded us of this, but all we did was make our towels wet and spray loads of deodorant over ourselves. There was one girl who insisted on having a full shower. Bit odd to have her standing there naked and soaping herself up when everyone else was fully dressed.
That would the most embarrassing thing ever! Did you ever live it down?
JHS was in suburban Chicago, late 70s. Required and taken. No big deal but I only transferred into the district mid-year so I don’t know how awkward the first time for everyone was.
High School, NYC early 80’s. There were shower facilities but I never learned if they worked or not. I was a late maturer so hopefully that applied to sweat odor too.
Yes. I think the current school I teach probably does give the kids time to shower, because they never smell. One other boys’ school I taught at definitely didn’t enforce showers - some days the kids would smell so much that you were still retching after opening all the windows.
Thiswas the sort of skirt we had to wear, but what that photo doesn’t show is tyhat the skirt was only just long enough to cover [url=]these PE knickers underneath. We also had to wear an ugly polo shirt, and were never allowed tracksuit bottoms, even in Winter. Standing outside in a skirt that only just covers your bum, a thin polo shirt, and a pair of baggy knickers, was not fun.
Yes. No damp bathing suits in the lockers that way. The towels were taken care of by a towel service.
BTW, once you get used to swimming in the nude, wearing a bathing suit while swimming feels odd. Try showering with your underwear on – same sort of feeling. It’s really just a matter of what you are used to.
My experience was similar to most of the other women here. This was all in various places in the US in the '90s. In two middle schools we had shower stalls, but most girls never used them. There wasn’t time and it wasn’t really necessary. Most girls kept baby wipes in their lockers to do a little freshening up while changing. The few girls who did shower would stick to the stalls that still had curtains. (Some had apparently been ripped down and never replaced.) In another school we had a locker room without showers.
No one walked around nude, ever. Heck, changing your shirt without having a bra on was enough to get some flack from others girls – and believe me, I know, because I was totally flat-chested at that age and didn’t even OWN a bra. I soon learned the put one shirt on over the other and remove the bottom layer through the neck hole trick.
At one high school I went to there was a big group shower, but we only used it after swimming and we kept our bathing suits on. The other high school I went to was very small and we didn’t even have a locker room, we just played volleyball or whatever in our street clothes.
Things were different where I grew up when I was in grade and high school in the 60s and 70s than they are now. Obesity wasn’t a common problem, especially with children, fast food wasn’t prevalent, and there were no video games and no internet and we played in the streets and got exercise that way. Poorer people in cities didn’t have cars and things weren’t so far apart so kids walked everywhere. PE was a state mandated thing so schools did it but it wasn’t always taken seriously. We spent an entire semester learning to dance the polka once, and another one learning to play croquet with plastic balls and mallets.
Heh - this Scandinavian had the same experience as WormTheRed, ie., open-plan showers, in the nude, all the way through school & high school. In my experience, not showering was slightly skeevy.
If you’re going to a public pool in Denmark, you’re still expected to use the open-plan shower, and I, too, recall the plaque marking the spots you should take extra care to clean with your disposable pre-soaped sponge. Just the way it’s done.
I think they’re all lying. It’s just a cover up for what really goes on
As for time? Gym/PE was usually right before either lunch, recess or the last thing scheduled, so there was always time to shower.
And a shower doesn’t really have to take many minutes either (as my regular morning routine proves).
To fulfill state requirements. Anyone who wants to break a sweat will do so on their own outside of school; anyone who doesn’t just can’t be bothered. The teacher is too busy trying to herd 30 students around, keep them from sneaking off campus en route to the track, keep the makeout sessions from happening, and even in all-female groups, playing peacemaker in whatever inevitable bitchfest that occurs.
Always. Starting in junior high, coaches noted who didn’t and ordered them to do so. Other males noted those who didn’t and ridiculed them. Male, HS class of 1981.
It might not have to, but I take forever to shower, especially if I want to actually clean myself instead of just get wet, but my hair does tend to get very oily, so YMMV. And there’s nothing I hate more than having to rush my morning routine.
Class of 1985, California. Two years of required PE. Mandatory showers after swimming ( and the coaches would indeed make some effort to enforce this ), otherwise technically required but usually skipped, except for a few jocks who did get very sweaty every day and were pretty consistent about it. Have no idea on the girl’s side, but I don’t seem to recall many of them walking around with wet hair on non-swim days.
The showers themselves were prison-style, four nozzles per open stall.
You can increase your heart rate, work your muscles, learn learn physical skills, improve your hand-eye coordination, work as a team, and so on (all those things PE is supposed to be for I don’t think sweat is one of the aims :D) without necessarily sweating a lot. It varies from person to person, of course, and maybe men sweat more than women (I don’t know), but I know that I certainly don’t sweat much even when taking really vigorous exercise.
