Getting naked in gym’s lockers?!

[borgerback]

This topic fascinates me.  I was the more modest one back in my day (HS 80s, College 90s) and now I pretty much don't care; in fact, I'm a little irked at the guys who nearly fall over doing the surfer-change (e.g., under the towel) in the locker room.

Also, I was introduced in the last decade to the Korean spa, where the nudity in the wet area is required by protocol (no fabric in any of the pools).  I find myself VERY irritated at any guys who try to use it as a gay bathhouse (e.g., attempting to make physical contact and/or play with themselves openly) and of course policy is that any such behavior will get you kicked out . . . not that the policy is enforced - and this is where environment plays a huge role; some of the K-spas in LA are basically bathhouses; others are not.  

I think I said something like this in the other thread, but I enjoy being naked with my friends, gay or straight, without having anything consciously sexualized about it; and I don't want that experience intruded on with sex; go to the bathhouse for that.  But it's the rare young guy who's comfortable in the K-spa, for all the reasons you guys have listed, I suppose.  Having said that, most of them that I take for the first time are like, "It was uncomfortable for about 10 min, then I got over myself and it's no big deal."

[+ bashful]

Being in my 60's, and Nordic decent, swam nude HS gym class, took sauna's nude.  Never bothered me, and trust me, others had no reason to be envious.  

[+ sniper]

I think the real nail in the coffin was the internet...where way too many creeps took hidden camera videos of way too many locker rooms and then posted them way too publicly. That and suddenly everyone having cell phone cameras, including teenagers...so they were always aware someone could be not just looking at them, but recording them. 

[kyleham]

Although I haven't been to a paid gym in years as I have one in my building when I did belong I don't remember men being shy. I remember the opposite. Early morning guys shaving butt naked before going to work. Walking around naked using the scale, bathroom etc. Yea, guys wore towels but not putting underwear on and this was mostly a "straight" gym. Not that I've been recently, but years ago when I used to go to the Russian and Turkish baths guys young and old would walk around naked or just holding a towel over the privates. Is this new generation who seem to be go liberal really prudish?

[Zapped]

It is very much a generational thing, as others have said. I'm 64. Group showers and being naked in the locker room were normalized from the time I would go swimming at the Y in grade school.

At the college  where I teach, when I arrived in the late 1980s students shared a locker room with staff and faculty, including a sauna in which we'd all sit naked, and open showers with posts with several shower heads on each. Students often showered and changed after P.E. classes or working out in the evening. It was normal to see students from a class I was teaching in the showers, sauna and locker room--something that would be almost unthinkable now, except for guys from the swim team walking from their locker room through the main locker room to the pool.

By the time of the covid shutdown, the sauna had died of old age and was not replaced. Someone donated a lot of money to create a new showplace of a fitness center. New student locker rooms were built with individual curtained showers, and my sense is few students change or shower unless they are using the pool. Faculty and staff use the old locker room as there is no private-shower option, everyone uses the open showers. There us much less use than before covid. 

It seems to me that the it's a combination of increased awareness that being forced to be naked in front of others is traumatizing for some kids, an awareness that there are indeed gay or lesbian people in the locker room, some of us being inappropriate with staring, the ubiquity of cell phone cameras and spy cams and photos that have been leaked/spread (imagine being in middle or high school and someone shares a photo of you naked in the locker room or shower), and the highly publicized cases of sexually predatory coaches (like Jerry Sandusky) that has led to the demise of mandatory group showers in middle and high school. And then people never get comfortable with being naked around others in a locker room the way most of us did. 

[Whippoorwill]

Growing up in the late 1940s and 1950s, bathing suits were wool, with cotton belts. They shed a lot of lint in the water, and jammed up the filters in swimming pools. Thus naked swimming was required at the YMCA and other athletic clubs. Even in college in the '60s there were gang showers and the WCs cubicles were doorless. And as others have commented, Europeans are much more casual about the human body than Americans...here the right-wing conservative religious fundamentalists have seized the day. My local Y put up shower curtains on the shower stalls around five years ago...I complained and they said people were requesting it. What a crazy society.  

[Jamie21]

I always walk around naked in the locker room. It’s just more convenient than trying to keep a towel around my waist.

Also I admit I like to annoy the muscle guys who show off how much they can lift in the gym. They’re surprisingly reluctant to be naked near me in the locker room if indeed they even drop their pants 😂