Just to add to the mix illustrating social attitudes toward nudity, my apartment here in Stockholm looks out towards the schoolyard of the preschool where my stepsons go. Yesterday was a scorcher of a gorgeous day so the teachers broke out the hose and sprinklers to let the kids run around. I heard the usual hubbub of delighted shouts and screams so I went to look… and saw some thirty to forty naked toddlers and children of both sexes running around the yard. It’s not a secluded area either; on the other side of the fence the yard was bounded by public footpaths and there are apartment houses running the length of one of them.
Blew my mind. First thing I thought of was “How fast would every last relevant law enforcement and social work organization be screeching into the driveway back home in the States?” Here it’s no big deal. In fact my wife was telling me that a couple companies had tried to introduce two-piece bikinis for girls that age here and failed miserably because Swedes were all “What’s wrong with letting 'em run around topless? Jeez.”
Back in the late 60’s, early 70’s the Boy’s Club I went to allowed nude swimming. It was only boys there and, I think, the concept was that a lot of the inner-city boys didn’t have swim suits, maybe not even any shorts that would work. Creeped me out then and creeps me out now that thay made a point of says “it’s OK to swim naked if you want” but that was probably for a real, non-creepy purpose. Really, if you are poor and you’ve never been to a pool before, what’s the likelyhood that you own a bathing suit? Still - you wouldn’t have caught me doing it.
Well, for me, it’s not liking my body, which I hear is rampant these days. If I thought I was hot, I’d gladly go naked and enjoy being seen. I definitely don’t, though, and am therefore ashamed of my naked body. Given how we’re (in the US, at least) inundated with images of the perfect (genetically-lucky, surgically altered and airbrushed) female and male body and that pretty much all nudity is associated with sexuality and that it’s normal (especially in such a culture) to wish to be sexually attractive and consider it important, it doesn’t surprise me that I and many others would not want to be seen naked by just anyone. Maybe that’s the definition of prudishness to you, but I think dismissing it as just that is overly simplistic and entirely overlooking the cultural context. Which is where the idea that you’re out of touch comes from (probably - I don’t claim to speak for anyone else).
Plus, we’re also taught from a young age to cover our “private parts” and not let anyone, and I mean anyone, aside from maybe your Mom and Dad and the doctor, take such abusive liberties as to insist to see them. Basically, it’s the OMG-PEDOPHILE!!! effect. Which then causes us to even see little kid nudity through a sexual context, which we wish to protect them from, so we insist that they be covered up too, and round we go. And since we’ve grown up with it, it’s by default normal, so anything else is seen as weird and possibly threatening, which is pretty much just the human nature response to anything different.
At the spa at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas, if you’re getting a massage or something you have free admission to the spa facilities, which are like the world’s most awesome Roman baths. It’s all clothing optional, and I didn’t know going in (like most people) so I certainly didn’t have a swimsuit or anything. It was weird at first, but everybody else was doing it and in the end I decided it was awesome.
To be clear, “back in the day” was a LOT farther back than around 1980 when this song was recorded. I do recall, though, the Y making you wear one of their Speedo style suits when you used their pool. This would have been back around 1966 when I was eight. Nobody really thought anything of it then anyway; male swim attire was a lot more revealing generally.
What I find funny about the manpri trunks that most men wear today is that after swimming they often hike them way up so they can tan the upper thighs. If these guys want to tan, then why do they have to swim in elephant tarps?
A similar incident happened at our school, but with a not-so-funny outcome. If a kid had a doctor’s note excusing him from swimming, he had to spend the period walking around the pool, nude. There was a guy who was VERY well-endowed and very self-conscious about it, and while he was walking around the pool the other kids started teasing him, and he ran into the locker room. From there, nobody ever found out what happened to him. There were rumors that he had taken his own life, but I don’t know if they were true. I think he just ran away.
What in god’s name was the logic in wasting people’s time, at a school of that academic caliber, with a mandatory swimming test? I can kind of sort of understand offering PE (though I think that’s crazy too), but requiring you to swim? “Well, I’ve finished all the requirements of my architecture degree - all the design classes, the mechanics and engineering requirements - but I can’t get my degree yet because I don’t know how to swim.” Is that really how it worked?
I must admit that the thought of nude swimming classes for students seems odd and I’m 42, never heard of it. I guess thats the way they did it then and was accepted as the norm, somewhat like wearing a suit today is the norm. Times change and that leads me to this:
I have always played alot of hockey and it’s was always the norm for people to be naked in the dressing room waiting for a shower after hockey, just standing aroud having a beer and chatting. This past year I witnessed something I have never seen before…some 16-17 year olds were playing a rental with us and when they got in the shower afterwards they wore their underwear the whole time. The times they are a changin’…Again.
My college, while not an Ivy, is a top tier college and also required a swim test (I graduated in 1989, so it isn’t some archaic rule). Many colleges do this. I don’t quite understand why it would be linked to the caliber of the college anyway… if you go to a “lesser” college, you need to know how to swim, but not if you go to an Ivy?
Chicago doesn’t let you graduate without passing the swim test either. During orientation, you take the test. If you don’t pass, you take swimming in your first year. I’ve never heard of anyone failing the swim test.
I don’t think including a fitness component is particularly misguided. And swimming is probably just as useful as some of the other stuff in the Core. I would say knowing how to swim, and more generally, inculcating a habit of regular, moderate physical exercise, is as important to leading the good life (the aim of classical education since Socrates) as reading snippets of medieval Italian correspondence (as I did in Western Civ, second quarter, with J. Kirshner).
Outside edit window: I’ve never heard of anyone failing the swim class. One of my friends showed up drunk to his swim test and quite naturally failed the test.
I want to offer an appreciation of supergoose’s very thoughtful post.
Those of us over 50 really did grow up when nudity was not the problem that it is today, and it is clear that young people *have *become more prudish, cultural context notwithstanding. Somehow, despite the freewheeling attitudes that me and my peers grew up with, we also spawned a generation of play-dated, pedophile-fearing, hyper-sexualized children.
I’m surprised that we haven’t heard more from the naked ladies. My school (UC Berkeley) had a women’s pool which, back in my day at least, was always nude. Those of us working at odd hours in the architecture tower found the view most inspiring.
I’ll just offer this: I have to fight to not consider the use of the word “prude” as being bigoted. My experience is that it is a word used to belittle others who have a different moral standing than your own.* So it doesn’t surprise me that, if you ask someone if they are being prudish, they are going to say no.
*For example:
“Why won’t you come to this party and drink and smoke with us? Are you a PRUDE?” No. I just don’t like consuming foreign substances that override my self control, causing me to do things I may regret later. YMMV.