Why do some guys face the showerhead in shower?

[Guest]

I walked into the shower at the gym today, and I saw this gorgeous guy taking a shower. Unfortunately, he faced the showerhead the whole time! x( I mean, this guy had shampoo in his hair and soap on his back. I thought, "He's going to have to turn around sometime!" but he managed to get the shampoo and soap off by moving up to the wall and practically fucking the wall! ;( At first I thought that maybe straight guys shower facing the showerhead, wheareas gay guys shower with the showerhead behind us. However, he soon went up to the sink/mirror (wearing a towel, so I could behold his gorgeous chest), and took out a bag of preening products, using Q-tips to put something on his teeth, and some kind of gloss on his lips.

So what's up with guys who do all their showering while facing the showerhead? Are they ashamed of their dicks or something? (I must confess, however, that his ass was as hard and smooth as marble )?

}(

[Guest fukamarine]

>So what's up with guys who do all their showering while

>facing the showerhead? Are they ashamed of their dicks or

>something? (I must confess, however, that his ass was as hard

>and smooth as marble )?

 

 

I wouldn't complain - you saw the best side!

 

fukamarine

[Rick Munroe]

>At first I thought that maybe straight

>guys shower facing the showerhead, wheareas gay guys shower

>with the showerhead behind us. However, he soon went up to

>the sink/mirror (wearing a towel, so I could behold his

>gorgeous chest), and took out a bag of preening products,

>using Q-tips to put something on his teeth, and some kind of

>gloss on his lips.

 

Yes, by all means, let's continue to perpetuate the stereotype that gay men "preen" and groom, but straight men don't. After all, most straight guys have rotten, stained teeth and chapped lips, right? By the way, you don't think that perhaps, straight or gay, he noticed you staring at him all that time & just didn't want an audience? Nah, couldn't be.

[FrancoDiSantisxxx]

Q-Tips

 

>> However, he soon went up

>>to the sink/mirror (wearing a towel, so I could behold his

>>gorgeous chest), and took out a bag of preening products,

>>using Q-tips to put something on his teeth, and some kind

>>of gloss on his lips.

>

>After all, most straight guys have rotten, stained

>teeth and chapped lips, right? By the way, you don't think

>that perhaps, straight or gay, he noticed you staring at him

>all that time & just didn't want an audience? Nah, couldn't

>be.

 

Well, Q-Tips would be the big clue here, Rick. Straight men have their teeth cleaned and bleached in the office, just like they have their hair dyed in a salon. They would never do it themselves. They just pay for it.

[EXPAT]

RE: Q-Tips

 

I like it when hot guys face the showerhead. Because inevitably they drop their soap and then view gets even better ;-)

[Guest Dan]

>

>Yes, by all means, let's continue to perpetuate the

>stereotype that gay men "preen" and groom, but straight men

>don't. After all, most straight guys have rotten, stained

>teeth and chapped lips, right? By the way, you don't think

>that perhaps, straight or gay, he noticed you staring at him

>all that time & just didn't want an audience? Nah, couldn't

>be.

 

That's why I wear board (or is it broad?) short trunks in the shower!!!!

 

Dan Dare

http://gaydar.co.uk/dandarela

 

[Guest]

Oh God! Shorts in the shower!:o That's a whole other subject. Even worse than facing the showerhead! Very disturbed, indeed. As to the question about the guy noticing my stares, he was actually facing the showerhead before I walked in. But maybe when I walked in he developed a hard-on! }( Nevertheless, I mainly wanted to see his chest, not his dick, so I got to see it when he came back to do his preening. If he didn't want me to see his chest, he'd have put a shirt on. Maybe the hard-on idea was true! :7

[quiet storm]

At least you saw the back of somebody attractive in the shower. Here at the Hollywood Bally's it seems like the cute guys out on the floor never make it into the shower area! They come in grab their clothes and run home!!! Enjoy the cute backside view and consider yourself lucky!!!

[Will]

1. Some men are naturally modest. They just don't like to be naked in front of other people. I don't think it's a "straight" thing or a "gay" thing, and I also don't see anything wrong with physical modesty.

 

2. Some men are shy about their dick size. It's not that it's too big and will attract stares; it's that it's too little and will attract stares.

 

3. Some men may not want other men to look at them for any reason whatsoever. Some men may not want gay men to look at them naked. I don't blame them: I would rather stink that shower with women, not because I am repulsed by the sight of naked women (I'm not), but because I would feel very, very uncomfortable being naked in front of women, period.

 

4. Some gay men do not want other gay men to see them naked. Believe it or not, there are a few gay men out there who do not believe that the mere sight of their naked bodies will cause all the other men in the shower to get instant hard-ons. Some gay men are really shy about being naked with other men, even gay ones.

 

EVEN gay ones? Who, pray tell, is more critical of another man's looks: a straight man or a gay man?

[Guest Callipygean]

Speaking as a shameless connoisseur of the male posterior, I'm never more content than in a showerful of hot guys displaying those incomparable butts for my secret admiration. It's a decided perc of gym membership for me. And those poor straight boys (or those uptight gay boys) who are too shy or too fearful to show their cocks -- little do they suspect they are turning me on far more potently by flashing those sexy bums than ever they could by sporting a stiffy for my benefit. So, keep facing the showerhead boys, the scenery is just spectacular from here!

[Rick Munroe]

>So, keep facing the showerhead boys, the scenery is just

>spectacular from here!

 

I can handle that.

[taylorky]

maybe...............just maybe some of us don't like being stared at!!!!!!!!!it's at the point now that i don't even use public showers anymore.....and i have NO problem with being bare ass naked,i just don't like being a piece of meat for some stranger.............taylor@22:48-12/01/02

[Guest]

I must confess--being able to see gorgeous men in the gym shower is one of the most wonderful benefits of being gay. And I do feel sorry for anyone who's so homophobic or uncomfortable with his body that he'll go home stinky rather than shower in front of other guys. On the other hand, I remember the terror of being forced to shower in junior high school and high school. I couldn't control my erections. :-( I had to run in, staring at the floor, then turn the water on cold. By the time I got to college, not only was it easier to control, but I didn't care if someone saw me with a hard-on. A guy could get in trouble for having a hard-on in high school, but I've seen plenty of guys with hard-ons in college and private gyms without anyone commenting. Is this just because I live in California? Or will a guy with a hard-on in a gym in America's heartland get into trouble?

[Guest Love Bubble Butt]

I absolutely refuse to even get dressed/undressed in front of strangers, let alone shower. And it's not that I'm ashamed of how I look; quite to the contrary. I just don't feel comfortable being naked in front of strangers. It's very personal.

 

And I can only imagine how straight guys feel knowing that when they shower, gay men are gawking at them. I can't blame them for being uncomfortable. It has amazed me how forward and obvious SOME gay men can be when checking out straight guys. A little subtlety goes a long way.

[trilingual]

Interesting. However, I don't think American guys were always so body-shy. (And as discussed in an earlier thread on this topic, it seems to be a strictly American thing.) I went to big junior and senior high schools in the Midwest in the early '60s. We all had to get undressed for phys ed class in a big locker room, we all showered naked together, and we all got in the pool naked in swimming class. Nobody thought anything about it (and G-d knows, we talked about sex stuff all the time, obsessed with the subject as we all were during those hormone-laden teen age years). Same was true in college. I don't recall legions of squeamishly modest guys at the bath houses or gay gyms through the seventies and early eighties (after which the baths in San Francisco were closed down).

 

So what changed? When did American guys get so self-conscious and uncomfortable with their own bodies? When did they start getting so paranoid about the idea of someone "looking at them"? Did this coincide with the rise of AIDS in the eighties? Or is it an even more recent phenomenon? And what gives rise to it? Anybody need a research topic for a cultural anthropology paper? This sounds like a great one!

[duke37]

While climbing in the shower this morning the answer to why guys face the showerhead came to me. They do it that way at the gym because they do it that way at home. Of course a shower at home is usually a private moment and by facing the wall you can get a facsimile of privacy as well. I think it very likely that most guys aren't thinking (or worrying) about anybody staring at them. Rather by staring at the wall they know they aren't looking at or offending anyone else. You know the same obliviousness necessary to use a public bathroom. We all know the guy next to you is taking a crap but we act like nothing is happening.

 

I think taylor et. al. reminded us again why a lot of guys are uncomfortable being naked around other people not of their choosing. For whatever reason that barrier of privacy and control has become more important. My personal half-potted belief is that its a reaction to the objectification of the ideal male body in our culture. Most of can't live up to the ideal (or think we can't) of the cute guy in his boxers at the A&F store. It's not unreasonable to not want to be reminded of your own (self-perceived) physical shortcomings.

 

Or maybe the immense increase of sexualized images projected at us by todays culture causes people to react by erecting more personal defenses. Frankly despite the experience of trilingual I think a pretty modest view of nudity is traditional in America. I think only the socializing experiments of public education that he experienced make it seem guys were less modest. Or when large percentages of men are serving in the military the basic American reticence to be naked is overcome. Otherwise to the extent I can tell it was pretty rare to see another man naked. Am I mistaken here?

 

Jeff

[guyinsf]

I know that in high school gym class I was forced to take off all of my clothes and shower. Was I comfortable? No. I was shy then, too. I'm assuming that while some guys were very comfortable with this, there were others like me who -- for whatever reason -- were not.

 

If there has been a radical change in US men's attitude towards public nudity, I too think that it could be related to the increased objectification of a certain type of male physique. Even if I had a body like that, I think I'd still retain most of my modesty.

 

It also may have something to do with gay men being more visible and open than 30 years ago.

[trilingual]

Thanks to duke37 and guyinsf for the thoughtful responses. I'm certain there are some grains of truth in them. However, they don't seem to contain a complete answer. Men in other countries (at least Western/industrialized ones) are bombarded by the same kind of visual images American men see. They see much the same Hollywood films and TV shows, the same porn, and their advertising is often much more "daring" and risqué than ours (A&F and Calvin Klein being the principal "shocking" exceptions in mainstream American retailing). Considering that, why are their feelings about public nudity different than those of American men? Outside of the U.S., men don't seem to have reacted to these stimuli by developing overwhelming body shyness. They shower in the nude at the saunas and gyms without seeming to fear being "looked at," sunbathe naked in public parks and beaches in many parts of Europe, wear skimpy/revealing speedos instead of enormous baggy swimsuits, prefer similarly skimpy underwear to boxers (although that may be a changing taste in some other countries), etc.

 

I also find it interesting that even some American guys who escort (and who presumably should be extremely comfortable with their bodies and exhibiting them) demonstrate this squeamishness. So something more seems to be afoot, and it's something intrinsic to American culture. (By the way, I don't think my Midwestern high school experience was unique, or limited to the '60s. The nude swimming had been going on since the 20s; the original excuse was supposedly to keep the pool filters from getting clogged with fibers from the old-fashioned woolen bathing suits! But pool nudity continued long after nylon/spandex entered the scene. I don't think the locker rooms or showers had been changed substantially since the schools were built in the 20s, so those scenes had to have been going since that time, also.)

 

Any more ideas, guys, as to what's going on that's generated this cultural shift? And why it affects even buffed gay men, who you'd think would WANT to show off after putting in all the time and effort to get that way, and not just "straight" guys?

[Guest Love Bubble Butt]

I do have some other ideas, but I don't think there is a single explanation for everything here. I remember watching this really good-looking actor from Italy on Jay Leno several years ago. And he was talking about how he's noticed how American guys are so uptight about male friends putting their arms around or hugging each other. He said Italian guys think nothing of it, but that if you do that to an American guy, they say, "hey, hey, what are you doing!?" (while he mimicked the facial expression of a horrified guy). I also had a friend from Greece some years ago who said the same thing.

 

I think American men define masculinity differently and are more uptight about it than either their European or South American counterparts. Maybe too many John Wayne movies? But that could only explain straight men.

 

With gay men, who knows. Maybe it's genuine shyness or more likely attitude. For me, I know that even in Junior High and High School I WAS NOT comfortable undressing or being naked in front of strangers. I was not ashamed of my body at all. I just feel it's a violation of some sort. Of course, I don't even care for guys watching me get a blow job! I'd never, never make it as a porn star. x(

[taylorky]

damn i just don't understand W T F is so difficult 2 understand.....it's my body i do with it what i want.i share it with people i want to share it with.......i don't like strangers staring at me........no deep hidding dark reason..........just my choice..a public shower should not be a place for people to get a cheap thrill at the expence of others..i have no problem being naked with people i know or even with strangers..........i do have a problem when strangers think i'm there for their entertainment...........taylor@21:21-12/02/02

[guyinsf]

I'm not so sure that what has happened is a radical cultural shift. I think that despite media images, the U.S. has a history born in the Puritans. The U.S. is more uncomfortable with sexuality and nudity than Europe. There is also a difference in terms of "personal space." On the other hand, the U.S. is more comfortable with violence. When is the last time you heard a conservative group in the U.S. get really uncomfortable with violence on television? The focus is on sex, particularly anything non-hetero or graphic.

 

I know it isn't as black-and-white as this, and there are certainly regional differences as well as socio-economic and racial differences. I think that generally speaking, however, "Americans" have been and continue to be more "uptight" about sexuality than Europeans.

 

Don't forget that gay men were socialized as boys/men, not GAY men. We all grew up with the same social mores as everyone else around us. Some people hold onto some of those mores while shedding others. Some gay men remain actively involved in religions whose hierarchy oppresses them. Some gay men hide their sexuality for the sake of their careers. Some gay men remain uncomfortable with public displays of affection. One could argue that these are all signs of some level of internalized homophobia. My guess is that each one of us has some level of this going on. How can one be completely free of this when the culture is so steeped in it? I think the same thing applies to race.

[jackhammer91406]

This is a fascinating thread. Since I am in the process of going through therapy for depression and dealing with repressed sexuality and celebacy for the last 18 or so years, this topic has brought back many memories from adolescence. I remember after gym class in grade school and high school having to take showers . Some of the guys used to make fun of my penis because although I am cut, I have a large amount of foreskin and the guys used to tease that it looked like a propeller on a plane. Of course as I grew older, I was very glad to have so much extra skin because 'lil Jack gets VERY thick when he is excited and I can't imagine how much pain might be involved if I didn't have that extra skin. As I got older and grew into my body size, I was very buff. During those 20 or so years when my body was very pumped and proportionate, the few times I went to the bath houses here in L.A. I found my self preferring to use the private showers in the clubs rather than the public ones. I can't explain the preference unless it was some left over fear from childhood. Today of course, middle age and how everything goes "south" as you grow older , I probably wouldn't shower openly for a whole different set of reasons, but all of it adds up to fear of ridicule, whether when I was younger, or later when I was buff, or now. Wonder what Dr. Duncan will make of all of that?

jack