There’s been a joke since public locker rooms were first invented about how old people are always the first ones naked in them.
I was curious why that exactly is? Is it a weird sexual thrill? Is it because they’re so old they don’t care anymore? Or because it used to be common to exercise naked back in the day?
I think it was in “Iron John” or maybe some essay related to it that Bly related that back in the day, fathers often returned home from work and bathed in the kitchen. In other words, a man and his penis, nothing remarkable to see here.
I doubt there is a 100% factual answer to this question, but some quick googling turned up this -
Which includes interviews with people who were part of the statistic. One theory -
Another leading theory, at leaston Reddit, it that experience — typically manifested in old guys — leads guys to just flat-out stop caring. Lucio Buffalmano, a sociologist and social skills coach, subscribes to this theory, telling MEL experience “indeed plays a role.”
“After one has seen more in life, or even more of the same, the bar raises on what’s ‘embarrassing’ and what’s ‘whatever,’” he says. “And nudity is one of those aspects that just becomes more of a ‘whatever, it’s just a body.’”
Reddit user u/rapiertwit personifies this, as he explains in a thread asking why old guys are always naked in locker rooms:
You young hard-ons like to boast, “I’m all out if fucks to give,” but you can’t deal with a glimpse of my wrinkly ball sack. Laughable, man. Bury a few friends and watch a few dreams sail over the horizon forever and then see if you care about who’s wrapping a towel around their ass in a changing room.
But the article would indicate it’s far less common as people have a higher expectation of privacy and the consequences of the smartphone age.
ISTR various boomers here and on other boards reminiscing that nude swimming, at least for men and boys, was common and unexceptional in their youths. Less stigma attached to men being nude together and less fear of catching Teh Ghey, maybe?
I tend to think that a lot of men above a certain age were conditioned to the idea of male nudity in places like locker rooms by stuff like their school experiences, military service, etc… in ways that most younger men have not been.
Back pre-pandemic, it was always kind of funny. The elderly guys would wander around, sack-a-swinging, and just chat with people while doing anything and everything, including using a hair dryer on their balls. Meanwhile some of the younger guys were just as absurdly modest in the other direction- changing out of their swimsuits in the bathroom stalls, and other silly stuff like that.
Most gen-x type guys fell in the middle- we don’t wander around balls-out, but nor do we go hide to change out of our swimsuits either.
Anecdote: I went to college in Milwaukee and my school didn’t have a gym at the time. Instead, there were a few passes to Bally’s (a membership-based gym company at the time) that you could check out like a library book for a few hours. This Bally’s was known for being a cruise spot for gay men and some of the locker room nudity was clearly being exhibited for intentional display.
There were benches bolted to the floor in the locker room and it was common so see groups of nude men chatting with one leg up on the bench, Captain Morgan style, junk dangling and drip drying for all to see. You’d occasionally catch unrequited eye contact but I don’t recall anyone being aggressive or otherwise inappropriate.
I also saw a guy bent over and using the typical “Push button, rub hands under warm air” hand dryer to dry his ass. It was pretty funny, he was wagging his ass back and forth in front of the hand dryer and using more movement than seemed needed. Maybe he was getting off on the warm air? Shrug, at least he was easy to walk past.
The sauna and hot tub were risky if you didn’t want to see naked men. The hot tub was sunk into the floor of the main pool room so they’d usually cover up by the time but the sauna was, of course, a room of it’s own. It was best to fidget with the door handle for a moment or two before entering to let anyone inside cover up.
I wonder where that divide in age might be. I’m 45, and I’ve never been bothered in the least by stripping down and showering in front of a bunch of other dudes at the gym. I take that back. The only place it’s ever concerned me was at the gym at work. I don’t want to get naked in front of other employees.
After an elementary school career in which I didn’t have to do any gym classes, our family moved and in junior high I had to go there and be there. I was very body-shy and did not much like being naked in front of strangers, especially hostile strangers, and other boys my age were definitely hostile strangers (didn’t take long in 8th grade).
Well, the way it was back then (1973) if you were shy about being naked in front other guys, THAT meant you were probably gay.
So everyone was going all out nonchalant and being absolutely at ease to be unclothed in the locker room, to walk to and from the shower with towel draped over the shoulder, not wrapped to cover your boy-parts.
See also: being able to pee at the urinal in a boys’ bathroom full of other people, and that it meant something was wrong with you if you desired to close a door between you and them before doing so.
Sometimes the urinals would all be in use and the only obvious place to pee would be the stall toilets. The Certified Manly Behavior was to go in there to pee but leave the damn door open so everyone would know you weren’t going in there because you were too shy to pee in front of other male people. This, of course, meant that someone else was likely to go in there thinking it was an unoccupied stall.
Men are batshit weird people.
I don’t know if everything is all healthier and less weird in the current era where being a bit body-shy seems to be more the norm.
We had mandatory group showers and nude swimming in high school. If you had any self-consciousness about your body, that experience cured you of that. Plus, by then I’d already caught The Ghey, so all I had to worry about was getting an erection (never happened).
I’m with the don’t care camp. I used to when I was younger. Don’t anymore.
That said, I’m not gonna strut around naked. Towel will stay on til I get to my locker. But once I get to my locker, I’m not going to make it a speed race to get dressed like I use to. I’ll take my time.
I can attest to this from a female point of view. Showering in high school gym class was mortifying, but required. I’d make as short a task of it as I could. Similarly when I was in the Navy back before everyone had their own room/bathroom setup. But as I got older, I just didn’t care - whether in the locker room or in locker-room-type bathrooms at marinas when we used to sail.
I’m not going to dance nekkid on my front lawn, but, criminy, it’s just skin. Saggy skin, but still…
IME it’s a combination of old people being out of fucks to give, but also needing a lot more time to get changed.
For me, I dry myself in the cubicle and then I only need about a minute to moisturize my face and then I put my underwear on. (Moisturize goes first because my skin gets dry quickly after a shower. I guess I could moisturize in the cubicle if I cared that much about letting people see Mijin Jr for 60 seconds).
For old dudes, maybe they need to moisturize their whole body, plus their movements are slower, so even just putting pants on might be more than a minute. And they often dry off in the public area; perhaps drying in the cubicle is too awkward for them?
I won’t hijack the thread by ranting about some of the personal hygiene habits of old guys here in China.
This is more if an issue for me and not just with old people , I hate when people come back to the locker area dripping wet and drying off there. Dry off in the shower area douchbag, I’m standing here in socks getting dressed dumb fuck.
That was my sentiment too, and still is, for young people. But for old people, maybe they have difficulty drying off within the limited space and (usually) slippery walls?
In the early 2000s Mrs. A and I joined the local YMCA. (No jokes.) There was a lounge off the men’s locker room with sofas, a recliner, tables and chairs and a big TV. Older men hung out there completely naked – not for sex (AFAICT) but just because they liked hanging out, watching TV and playing cards nude.
I wonder if that kind of behavior goes back to when there was a bathhouse every few blocks in old European immigrant neighborhoods.
If someone has trouble drying off in the shower and needed to do it in front of their locker, it would be nice if they brought an extra towel to stand on so they don’t leave a puddle on the floor.
Quite often, the “don’t care” attitude that enables comfortable nudity also seems to enable many other questionable locker room behaviors. Quite often, in addition to nudity, I often see older men engaging in things like nude shaving and pressing their genitals against the counter, clipping their toe nails at locker room benches, trimming their nose hairs at the sink, dumping foot powder all over the floor, sitting in chairs nude and watching TV, using hair drier on their genitals, etc. It seems like they treat the locker room as if it was their private bathroom at home and they feel free to do whatever they want. And if that’s rubbing jock itch cream all over their testicles, then that’s what they’ll do while sitting on the bench surrounded by other people.