Dude, I go to clothing optional festivals - I love being naked, and I STILL hate being naked in a locker room. It’s just not a naturally conducive spot for nekkidness. It’s all about power and athleticism and domination and hard metal and echoes and loud slamming noises and mirrors and ucky stuff that I don’t want to be naked around. And yeah, probably some of that stems from memories of Tanya Powers and her posse of prissy bitches in high school.
Our school had a “shower or fail”, but we were allowed to wear bathing suits in the shower. Most of us’d wear bikinis instead of bra and panties under our gym uniform and shower in those. There was still a moment of strippage to get the wet suit off, but we became pretty skilled in changing under a towel. This was late eighties to early nineties. I think that was a good compromise. Being the parent of a teenaged boy, I am well familiar with Da Teenaged Funk and would not wish a classroom full of unwashed bodies on any teacher at all. I’m not so worried about the gym teachers, who have nice big open rooms or outdoors to dilute DTF, but the teachers of all your classes *after *gym.
You are subscribing motives to Mr. Ayers that may or may not be rooted in truth. To indict him on something like this, using his real name and naming your high school and years attended, is unfair. If he ever touched you, if he took pictures of you, if he ever did anything remotely out of line, then I’d say he deserved this pitting.
But to heap this sort of accusation on him, offering no evidence other than a hypersensitive pre-teen’s impression that he was enjoying himself, is unwarranted.
As others have said, it was a general policy at the time to have ALL kids “strip or fail.” Having the gym teacher be present is understandable and hardly evidence of pedophilia. (If he were the janitor, then you’d have something.)
My husband was a wrestler. He had to strip naked and step on a scale before each match, in front of his coach and an official. I’m sure it never ceased to be embarrassing for him, especially since he was a late bloomer. But he did it because that’s what you did if you wanted to wrestle.
Mr. Ayers didn’t stop you from playing football. You did.
And, as others have also said, if you are STILL thinking about it, then I’d say you have some real issues with your body/sexuality that have nothing to do with Mr. Ayers.
The reason for the “shower or fail” policies of the past was that they didn’t have any other means of assessment in PE. You’ll be glad to know that Physical Education is (a bit too slowly for me) changing in this regard.
PE has historically been poorly taught in the U.S., and very slow to change. They had to come up with some way to grade, so it became “dressing out” and taking showers.
Nowadays good PE programs are actual classes with goals, meaningful activities, and sometimes even written tests.
I remember it, too, and it was actually the first thing I thought of when I was reading the OP (though I didn’t remember that it was you who had posted it).
The showers in my high school were almost never used–certainly not after gym (they didn’t give us enough time to change before the next class, let alone shower). We used them occasionally in cross country, when we had morning practice, but everyone wore a swimsuit. I remember in one middle school I went to, showering was an issue, but we somehow got around it by standing fully clothed so that just your hair got wet but your body stayed dry. (Let it be known that I was in this middle school in 1997, and high school 1999-2003, so this is how things are now.)
Some may remember that a while back (over two years, I think) I posted a thread about never having seen my own body naked. I wonder if I would be less prude (for lack of a better word) had I been forced to shower in gym class.
I remember having the psychologist asking about 4 of us girls to play strip poker with him on a “troubled girls” camp out. I cut out, but some others went with him. He was the resident psychologist for the group home I was living in at the time. I was 15 and the ages were 12-16.
We had the shower or fail rule too and it was pretty creepy. I can’t pit the gym teacher, because she shot herself. That was pretty creepy too for a kid.
I think “shower or fail” is pretty normal. Its a hygenie thing - particularly for kids.
I have a friend who teaches middle school and says its amazing how many kids don’t have basic hygenie skills by middle school. Public showering may be humiliating, but so is stinking.
Our school had (at least for the girls) a small number of curtained showers you could use.
It’s weird, because I feel pefectly comfortable being nude in a locker room.
Maybe it’s because I work out alone and was never a part of organized sports, so I don’t have any connection to the people around me. I’m not trying to talk to them, I don’t have much to do with them later. I’m just showering off my sweat and changing clothes.
We also fear stench. If you don’t shower after your 2nd or 3rd period gym class, you are kinda ripe by the end of the school day.
I had to shower in gym class. I wasn’t traumatized. It was little embarassing at first, but became much less so over time.
No I have no trouble at all disrobing or showering in a gym locker room. I think we all know it’s just about changing into proper clothes and getting clean afterwards. Nobody cares what the hell you look like in the locker room.
The only guys I ever notice are the ones who wear their underwear into the shower, and only because I think it’s very, very sad.
First, it was on participation and knowing the rules of whatever that unit’s sport or game was, if it had any to take a test on (basketball or tennis, yes; dodgeball, not so much).
By the time I was in high school, they had the fitness tests (how many laps you could run in 12 minutes, how long you could hang with you chin above the pull-up bar, etc.) and you got graded on improvement from quarter to quarter.
We never got graded on taking showers. Some kids didn’t. Hell, I didn’t the semester I had PE last period; i went home and showered there (I was within walking distance, so I wasn’t offending people on the bus).
“Shower or fail” was especially bad for those of us who were attracted to our fellow guys. Take, as a base, the realization that you are (to your knowledge…remember this was back in the 70s/80s) the only gay person ever. Then add the fact that you know that if your classmates ever found out you’d be, at best, ostracized, at worst, in physical danger. Then add the fact that, while being naked in a locker room full of naked male peers is the thing you fear most, it’s also the thing you want most! No emotional conflict there… Then add the fact that it’s almost a guarantee that, being a teenage boy, you have absolutely no chance whatsoever of hiding a raging erection when you have to be naked for at least ten minutes (disrobe, shower, dry, dress).
The post-gym class locker room was possibly the single most emotionally charged situation I’ve ever had to endure.
Have you read David Sedaris’ “Dress Your Family in Cordoroy and Denim”? He writes about a strip poker game that is similar to your nekkid locker room situation.
We never had to shower after gym class, and I’m glad for that, because being naked with a bunch of people is just not a comfortable situation for me. I seem to remember there being showers somewhere in the locker room, but I don’t think anyone ever used them. Maybe the sports teams did, after games, but I wasn’t on any of those.
Then again, our gym classes were pretty pathetic and we never really worked up much of a sweat anyway. It didn’t seem like a huge deal to just wait till we got home to shower.
While I haven’t read the book, I recall hearing that story told (or read) on This American Life with Ira Glass. I thought about it when reading jayjay’s post, but was too lazy to figure out any more identifying details.
Never once had to shower in all my years of public school. I think there were showers in high school, but they were never ever used. Not know if they even had water. The locker room also had curtained areas like a store’s changing room for the clothes stuff. In theory, the teachers checked to see if we actually did change, but no one really cared that much.
Seems common sense to me to provide privacy when you’re dealing with that age, but hey, I’m from uptight New England. (I do change freely in the gym locker room now, for the record.)
God, is there anything worse than gym class for the underdeveloped, non-athletic kids? It traumatizes kids for years afterward. Our gym teacher had the charming tradition of dumping a bucket of cold water over the last kid out of the shower, while the jocks stood around making fun of whomever the poor bastard was.
shudder Showering after gym was never anything other than heinously embarassing.
I avoided it by arranging my schedule to stick gym class last - and then going out for sports. This meant that I had gym last period, immediately followed by practice. Hence, it was pointless and silly for me to shower in between. I just saved up all the sweat and showered at home after practice.
Showering after gym is even more fun when you’re the first girl in your class to get breasts. Then you had an entire room full of people staring at your chest (about which you are already self-conscious, thankyouverymuch) with expressions ranging from mild interest to rabidly vicious hate and envy.