Told ya!
I learned to swim at the Y in Ohio at age 10 - suits were banned, and shower-before-swimming rule was enforced. The Y was sparkling clean and well-managed. I was shy at first but that passed quickly. I loved swimming nude, especially on a hot summer day. I would often spend Saturday afternoons at the Y keeping cool in the pool. The men’s clubs also had private gyms and nude swimming and were kept clean also. Everything changed when the clubs went co-ed the in early 1970s, alas. Nowadays the Ys are little more than day-care centers, and the men’s clubs have gone out of business. Modern men are being raised in a female-dominated environment, unfortunately. No wonder they are so uptight and passive!
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Moderator Note
Laurence Almand, welcome to the Straight Dope. The General Questions forum is intended for factual answers to questions. Please restrict opinionating like this to other forums such as IMHO or perhaps the Pit.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
It’s a little disturbing to ponder what search terms lead so many people to this thread. Nude swimming at the YMCA? Nude high schoolers? :eek:
I never imagined this thread would be so popular & long lasting when I started it 8.5 years ago.
all I can say is I’m damn glad I wasn’t alive back then. making it mandatory for kids to swim naked? dafuq kind of shit was that? I’d have failed PE for refusing to do so.
ah, the MRAs have arrived.
With 83,200 views! (A record?)
I experienced compulsory male nudity both at the YMCA as a young child (1960-62) when learning to swim, and in College (1975) when I took a year of advanced swimming. In college the classes were segregated by male and female. The women all had to purchase school monogramed Jantzen suits. My classes were every Tuesday and Thursday from 8 to 10:30. The College had only one pool and it was a massive double Olympic, with a single changing room and shower room. @ all male classes met that at 10:30 the women had 2 all female classes.
Not the same but related.
I watched a series about the training and selection of Royal Marine recruits recently, filmed in 2014 I think. The new recruits were put in a dormitory and were required to sleep naked and shower in full view of their new friends. It seems that this was partly to remove their inhibitions about being naked with other men, and partly to engender team spirit and trust. Once through the initial part of the course, the rules were relaxed. About a third of them had dropped out by then.
I did speculate that it might be a subtle method of weeding out gays, but that was just a passing thought.
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Weed out the gays? This is the setting of at a dozen gay porns I’ve seen.
This thread has been running a long time, but today is the first day I ever saw it. And I must disagree with what Colibri posted in 2006. He says that female students at Cornell were prevented from protesting the boys-nude/girls-bathing suits policy by being blocked at the locker room door from entering the pool at the women’s phys.ed building (Helen Newman Hall). But I was present on an occasion when that protest did take place successfully. I know; I covered the story for WVBR-FM. About 17 (out of maybe 50) college girls were in the pool, in suits, when upon some signal, they took 'em off and tossed them up on the tiles. I had been tipped off, so I went into the locker room and got my cassette recorder (not an ordinary swimming accessory) and got great audio of the Pool Manager (a young male guy) excitedly phoning the Cornell Campus Police. I got some interview material from an unclad young protester as I knelt at poolside. Then I went and got dressed–in street clothes, I had not taken off my bathing suit–and was unsuccessful at getting even one campus cop to comment. Surprising, since ALL of them were there. Up in the balcony.
The protest ended when all 17 girls got out at the same time and re-entered the locker room. An interesting fact is that when everybody’s pubic hair is dark (because wet) and everyone is wearing a regulation bathing cap, it’s really impossible to pick out any distinguishing characteristics sufficient to allow for an after-the-fact arrest. Nobody was arrested. (Imagine the police bursting into the locker room. “Nobody move! Did you just walk in naked, or are you naked because you took a shower after you got out the pool in a bathing suit?!?” Imagine attempting to arrest 17 wet, naked co-eds…)
I’m pretty sure this happened in fall of 1972. I had moved back to Cornell after graduating in 1971 and doing most of six months in Baltimore.
That’s what happened on that occasion, which as far as I know was the first time the women tried to protest the policy. I know because I was there and my girlfriend was one of the thwarted protesters.
I believe the event I mentioned must have been in the spring of 1972. My girlfriend took the 1972-1973 school year off and I sadly was no longer in the loop concerning nude protests at the women’s swimming pool. 
Glad to hear they finally succeeded with the protest, but did they ever get nude hours for women at the women’s pool?
In summer camp we had a sleepover, just for girls, and it featured a night time nude swim. It was the first time I’d gone swimming nude, and I loved it. I still love swimming nude, but now only do it when I am alone, or just with my husband.
I am surprised the question is “why did the boys swim nude?” I think the more interesting question is why girls needed to wear suits. Prudery about female bodies, I assume.
In Japan they still have public baths where nudity is the norm. I wonder if that’s true anywhere else.
The head of Women’s Physical Education said that the problem was that the night manager was male. The women protesting argued that was a specious argument; any number of fully qualified certified Water Safety Instructors/ Lifesavers who were female were also employed by Cornell and could have handled the manager job. The underlying issue, they insisted, was that “Cornell Thinks Women’s Bodies are Shameful/Dangerous/Lust-inciting.” That attitude was the Real Problem.
My recollection is that some months later, Thursday Evening ladies-only swim was designated as clothing-optional. You didn’t have to wear a suit, unless you wanted to. But let’s be fair…this is 44 years ago. I could be wrong.
Of course, the best place to swim nude and co-ed in Ithaca was the old quarry. Not good for nine months out of the year, however…
I recall hearing that on one occasion, a fellow of an advanced age arrived on summer’s day with a lovely Nikon, and stood at the top of the cliff with the rope swing, leering, drooling, and clicking off photos.
“Gosh,” said a college-age guy standing next to him. “What a great camera! Can I see it?” Mr. Photo-Op handed it over to be admired, then goggled as the recipient turned away, launched himself out over the pool on the rope, let go, and went deep. He surfaced without the camera, waved a cheery bye-bye and swam over to his girlfriend.
Oh, I have.
Waiting for the obligatory “swimming zombies” joke.
We used to go skinny dipping in the gorges in September. There was usually a gawking gallery of a few older guys from town at the top of the cliff.
Wow, a quintuple zombie nude swimming thread. Amazing.
When I was 5 and 6 my sister and I took swimming lessons at the local pool. It was a small town indoor pool. We lived in a few miles out in the country and mom and dad wanted us to know how to swim. The boys were expected to swim nude the girls could wear suits if they wanted to but were not required to. My mom says most of the girls from the country went nude where as the girls from town wore suits. I do not remember as I was not concerned about it at that age. At home we kids and out friends played in the creek and pond nude.
In 5 or 6 grade I was staying at a friends over night and we went skinning dipping in his pool. When his sister wanted to join us his mother said she had to skinning dip also. She undressed and hopped in the pool. Then when the girl next door came over and asked to join in, and his mother said the same thing and she went back and to permission and came back nude and joined us. What was interesting was that she was in Joe and my class at school.
The swimming pool at Western Hill H. S. in Cincinnati OH was nude for boys gym class but the girls had to wore school issued tank suits. That was in the late 60’s early 70’s. In 74 all gym classes became coed and swimsuits were required for every one. The girls did not like the swimsuits. They were nylon and did not hide anything. When the classes became coed most of the girls would wear two of different colors and that would hide there bodies.
The school year 71-72 I spent in Paris France. The school I want to rented an indoor pool for the whole school 3 or 4 times through the year. To keep the younger kids from having to deal with wet swimsuits the kids up to the 4th grade swam nude. The older kids were permitted to wear what they wanted. Some of the older girls and boys swam nude. Some swam with swimsuits. Many of the girls that wore something but still went without a top.