Nude Swimming at the Y

[beachboy]

You just described my gym!! I think it may have something to do with many of us "older" guys having been in the military and gotten use to the lack of privacy.

I didn't swim naked @ school, but living near the sea a bunch of friends regularly went skinny dipping. There was a dare element to it but it became the norm-in fact anyone who wouldn't strip naked was called a wimp which usually lead to shorts hitting the deck & tallywackers waving in the breeze. There was usually no sexual element but as a young gay guy I had to be careful not to show the inevitable boner produced by seeing all those cocks!

[Rod Hagen]

I'm here to report on the state of American youth, and it's very nice, indeed.

 

My experience in the locker room at the West Hollywood gym, and those locker rooms of different climbing gyms and pools I go to, is entirely different. Gen xers like me and baby boomers can't be bothered to cover up, but the millennials are almost islamic in their need to keep covered and so they trip and hop while attempting to dress and undress inside their towels.

 

Regarding swimming naked in public pools, my dad says their high school gym instructor insisted on it. The chicken hawk

 

Swimming naked is one of life's great pleasures. I was so pissed when they closed the unsanctioned nude beach at San Onofre; Black's beach is too far and it doesn't have a gay nude beach like San Onofre did, just mixed.

[beachboy]

My experience at the West Hollywood gym, and different climbing gyms and pools I go to, is entirely different. Gen xers like me and baby boomers can't be bothered to cover up, but the millennials are almost islamic in their need to keep covered and so they trip and hop while they attempt to dress and undress inside their towels.

True. At my local pool in the changing room the older guys let it all hang out but the younger guys tend to be much more shy, except for 1 or 2 exhibitionists one of whom is beautifully hung- thank heaven for that!

[bobchitown]

I remember my Y had a separate family locker room and in the regular men's lockers everyone just let it all hang out. I specifically remember the whirlpool being naked and the massages were done in an alcove with the guy naked but the masseur clothed.

[+ Gar1eth]

At my gym and pool younger guys act like nervous Victorian ladies, reluctant to show their ankles. They either don't shower or do so very quickly, and some wrap towels around themselves just to change underwear. Guys my age shower and change fairly efficiently, modest but not neurotic about it. And older men act like it's a nudist camp, casually hanging out and walking around buck naked.

 

You just described my gym!! I think it may have something to do with many of us "older" guys having been in the military and gotten use to the lack of privacy.

 

My experience in the locker room at the West Hollywood gym, and those locker rooms of different climbing gyms and pools I go to, is entirely different. Gen xers like me and baby boomers can't be bothered to cover up, but the millennials are almost islamic in their need to keep covered and so they trip and hop while attempting to dress and undress inside their towels.

 

Regarding swimming naked in public pools, my dad says their high school gym instructor insisted on it. The chicken hawk

 

Swimming naked is one of life's great pleasures. I was so pissed when they closed the unsanctioned nude beach at San Onofre; Black's beach is too far and it doesn't have a gay nude beach like San Onofre did, just mixed.

 

True. At my local pool in the changing room the older guys let it all hang out but the younger guys tend to be much more shy, except for 1 or 2 exhibitionists one of whom is beautifully hung- thank heaven for that!

 

Aside from the military experience which had occurred to me also, I was thinking that it was probably with the Gen X'ers where the notion of child predators whether real or driven by false memories began to impact the public. I'm sure most of us middle-aged members on here remember the McMartin Preschool Case and the hysteria it caused (which would have been the right thing to have happen if the accusations had been true). But a generation of mid to late BabyBoomer parents stressing to their Gen X children that their bodies are private and you need to report if anyone touches you (obviously I'm all for reporting child abuse), and the Gen X parents passing it on to their Millennial Children. This combined with the increasing shift from rural to city (I'm sure it's a lot easier to find a place to skinny dip in the countryside), the decrease in military experience, more mixed sexes (m-f) childhood play, and a host of other factors like the fact that children in many cases spend a lot more of their playtime around adults than they used to (harder to strip off clothes with your friends when there is an adult always within easy reach) has led to more body shyness in certain situations.

 

Gman

[marylander1940]

It might be something like this:

 

[+ glennnn]

I sense a general "anti-worship" or denigration of the male genitalia amongst younger straight men. Super baggy, concealing clothes, calling one's cock and balls "junk", hypersensitivity to being nude with other males, etc. Could be a reaction against the greater acceptance of m/m physical displays of affection in both the Gay and straight worlds, fear of being hit on by other men, community acceptance of LGBT people, denial of sexual identity, or .....? I just know I see many handsome young men working hard to be unattractive.

[LivingnLA]

This is a great topic. I spend quite a bit of time with some clients dealing with issues around body shaming, extreme shyness, and more. There are many reasons why millennials tend to be extreme compared to their baby boomer parents. GenX isn't to blame for them, they're the middle-child generation in this whole dynamic.

 

American millennials have been raised in a time of financial instability and transformation. They've also seen the rise of objectification of the male form and the visibility of homosexuality. Sadly, their parents, baby boomers, were hyper -sensitized to the dangers of child predators, molesters and kidnappers. All of these issues and several others have combined to create a generation of people who are very body conscious at all times and worried about judgement, objectification, and vulnerability. Unless they've been socialized in old-school sports teams or the military, they tend to be averse to full nudity. Many gyms are slowing converting to millennial-friendly layouts. As with all generational trends, this one will likely shift back in a couple generations as youngsters try to rebel against their millennial parent's body shyness. I look forward to being an elderly man at the gym surrounded by built relaxed naked 20-somethings.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/fashion/mens-style/mens-locker-room-designers-take-pity-on-naked-millennials.html?_r=0

[+ Gar1eth]

This is a great topic. I spend quite a bit of time with some clients dealing with issues around body shaming, extreme shyness, and more. There are many reasons why millennials tend to be extreme compared to their baby boomer parents. GenX isn't to blame for them, they're the middle-child generation in this whole dynamic.

 

American millennials have been raised in a time of financial instability and transformation. They've also seen the rise of objectification of the male form and the visibility of homosexuality. Sadly, their parents, baby boomers, were hyper -sensitized to the dangers of child predators, molesters and kidnappers. All of these issues and several others have combined to create a generation of people who are very body conscious at all times and worried about judgement, objectification, and vulnerability. Unless they've been socialized in old-school sports teams or the military, they tend to be averse to full nudity. Many gyms are slowing converting to millennial-friendly layouts. As with all generational trends, this one will likely shift back in a couple generations as youngsters try to rebel against their millennial parent's body shyness. I look forward to being an elderly man at the gym surrounded by built relaxed naked 20-somethings.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/fashion/mens-style/mens-locker-room-designers-take-pity-on-naked-millennials.html?_r=0

 

I think you validated a lot of what I said in two previous posts. But, of course, body shyness isn't new. I was terribly embarrassed by my chubby non-athletic body in junior high and high school. I hated taking showers. It was especially bad in 7th grade. The athletes had to take regular PE as well as after school athletics. After 7th grade the athletes all had 'athletic' PE as the last class of the day which then continued into the after school hours. So from 8th grade to 10th grade you only had the non athletes in PE. And I was still one of the chubbiest even among the non athletes.

 

I think there was a NYT article fairly recently on locker rooms/changing areas at (straight) NY athletic clubs. The article was about how the millennials wanted more privacy in the locker rooms. They didn't like the large changing areas where they could see all the naked guys. I think I've also heard comedians talk about how older patrons don't mind walking around nude to visit with others or to shave while younger guys are much more body shy.

 

Gman

 

Aside from the military experience which had occurred to me also, I was thinking that it was probably with the Gen X'ers where the notion of child predators whether real or driven by false memories began to impact the public. I'm sure most of us middle-aged members on here remember the McMartin Preschool Case and the hysteria it caused (which would have been the right thing to have happen if the accusations had been true). But a generation of mid to late BabyBoomer parents stressing to their Gen X children that their bodies are private and you need to report if anyone touches you (obviously I'm all for reporting child abuse), and the Gen X parents passing it on to their Millennial Children. This combined with the increasing shift from rural to city (I'm sure it's a lot easier to find a place to skinny dip in the countryside), the decrease in military experience, more mixed sexes (m-f) childhood play, and a host of other factors like the fact that children in many cases spend a lot more of their playtime around adults than they used to (harder to strip off clothes with your friends when there is an adult always within easy reach) has led to more body shyness in certain situations.

 

Gman

 

Gman

[LivingnLA]

I think you validated a lot of what I said in two previous posts. But, of course, body shyness isn't new. I was terribly embarrassed by my chubby non-athletic body in junior high and high school. I hated taking showers. It was especially bad in 7th grade. The athletes had to take regular PE as well as after school athletics. After 7th grade the athletes all had 'athletic' PE as the last class of the day which then continued into the after school hours. So from 8th grade to 10th grade you only had the non athletes in PE. And I was still one of the chubbiest even among the non athletes.

 

Gman

 

Absolutely, body shyness has always been around to some degree and likely will be in the future too. What's changed is how baby boomer parents conveyed a combination of lessons to their kids that resulted in teens and young adults who, even if they're shredded, are very conscious of their body as an object and thus frequently uncomfortable when it's fully on display.

[Phlmuscle]

I swam nude at the Y when I was in my teens. In college at the University of Pennsylvania were were required to swim nude in the pool.

[MikeBiDude]

http://65.media.tumblr.com/7f63defeb790658f25fcc05f7b564f93/tumblr_mu3i6nLeDY1s2ogjho1_500.jpg

[Zapped]

I did a bunch of research on this and at some point will write an article.

 

Nude swimming in YMCAs and schools was indeed a common practice, especially for boys and men. Indoor pools of old did not have the same filtration systems nor was there the same ability to monitor chemical levels in a pool, add more or less chlorine, etc. Nude swimming with through showers with soap before was important for keeping the water clean and safe. When I was a kid in the 1960s, we wore swim suits, but there was a big sign in the YMCA shower room that a nude shower with soap was required before using the pool.

 

And supposedly fibers from pre-nylon and other synthetic-fabric swim suits could cause clogging or other issues with the filters.

 

More importantly, there was little acknowledgment of homosexuality, so it was assumed that a same-sex group could be nude. And really, if you look at the photos like the one above with the nude guys at the pool, is it any more sexual than if they were wearing speedos? Once you are used to seeing genitalia, it's not a big deal. (Personally, I've always been more turned on by chests and arms than dicks.)

 

Nowadays, we know that some kids were traumatized by being naked with others, if they were fat of skinny, and that there have been sexual predators among coaching and teaching staffs. So the group nudity that was so comfortable once we got used to when we older guys were young just isn't part of the culture now.

[nycguy]

My older brother was sent to military school in the mid 60s for disciplinary reasons. I remember the brochure for the very well known school had a picture of a few students swimming in the lake nude. It was only some butt shots taken at quite a distance. If that happened today, the entire administration of the school would be in prison for child pornography.

 

Recently, a picture of a father nude in the shower with his infant son went viral. It was not erotic in any way. The situation was the wife is a professional photographer. The infant had salmonella poisoning and a very high fever that infants get. The little boy had projectile vomiting and diarrhea every few minutes. The father took him into the tub, sat in the back corner of it cradling him as the cool shower water washed away the constantly flowing mess and lowered the boy's fever. He sat there for hours with him. People went nuts shouting that they should not be naked together. In my book, that guy is one hell of a father.

 

https://mic.com/articles/143575/a-dad-took-a-a-shower-with-his-infant-son-and-the-internet-promptly-freaked-out-about-it#.U3giLMI3P

[+ Gar1eth]

I did a bunch of research on this and at some point will write an article.

 

Nude swimming in YMCAs and schools was indeed a common practice, especially for boys and men. Indoor pools of old did not have the same filtration systems nor was there the same ability to monitor chemical levels in a pool, add more or less chlorine, etc. Nude swimming with through showers with soap before was important for keeping the water clean and safe. When I was a kid in the 1960s, we wore swim suits, but there was a big sign in the YMCA shower room that a nude shower with soap was required before using the pool.

 

And supposedly fibers from pre-nylon and other synthetic-fabric swim suits could cause clogging or other issues with the filters.

 

 

Aside from the fiber issue, I'm not sure how swimming naked kept the chlorine level safe unless it was to prevent guys from obviously peeing in the pool. If it was for another more universally applicable reason, did the girls/women also swim nekkid at the YWCA?

 

I still wonder if it also didn't hark back to the fact that the majority of Americans were much closer to the land back then with rural backgrounds not so distant in a majority of the population. I imagine guys skinny dipping together nekkid as jay birds in a country pond or stream was a much more common experience for many. Personally I've never been skinny dipping. I was in a coed group in college that some members occasionally did. I don't know if the girls actually got completely naked or not as I was only a member for a short time. And there were no opportunities during my time in the group.

 

Gman

[Rudynate]

Yes, as a little boy, swimming lessons and recreational swimming at the 'Y' were nude. In high school, swimming in PE class was also nude. After-school practice for the men's swim team was also nude. Nobody liked it, we would have all been more comfortable in suits, but we never questioned it, figured it was just another of the things about being a kid that sucked. Of course, as an older man who just loves men, I would see it differently now.

[+ ursalex]

I joined a gym two years ago. I was talking to my personal trainer about the locker room. "Wait 'til you see someone blow-drying their balls and ass with the hair dryer."

 

I thought, "That would never happen. That's too gross."

 

Then I saw it. Guy with his foot on the counter, hair drying in hand, blowing off his balls and asshole [perineum].

 

I thought about that comment about three hours ago, at the Y, when I was showering after my workout and did, indeed, use the blow dryers on the wall to dry my balls. Better than jock itch.

[Rudynate]

 

Then I saw it. Guy with his foot on the counter, hair drying in hand, blowing off his balls and asshole [perineum].

 

That was my something new every day moment.

 

 

I guess you haven't spent much time in gyms. What is weird about locker rooms, is that guys feel perfectly comfortable, in that setting, doing things that, at home, they wouldn't let anyone else see. The one I find most gross is old guys shaving their callouses and letting the shavings just drop to the floor and not cleaning it up after. They figure it's OK to leave for somebody else to clean up.

[BasketBaller]

I thought of this thread over the weekend when I went to a public pool for a swim. The locker room was crowded and the showers full. Older men and guys my age just dealt with it. And a bunch of young guys were lined up to change in the toilet stalls!

[+ poolboy48220]

yeah, I see ball-shaving and toenail-clipping in the steam room. The gym put up a sign that prohibits any shaving in the steamroom, and members feel free to point it out to violators now.

[Zapped]

Aside from the fiber issue, I'm not sure how swimming naked kept the chlorine level safe unless it was to prevent guys from obviously peeing in the pool. If it was for another more universally applicable reason, did the girls/women also swim nekkid at the YWCA?

 

I still wonder if it also didn't hark back to the fact that the majority of Americans were much closer to the land back then with rural backgrounds not so distant in a majority of the population. I imagine guys skinny dipping together nekkid as jay birds in a country pond or stream was a much more common experience for many. Personally I've never been skinny dipping. I was in a coed group in college that some members occasionally did. I don't know if the girls actually got completely naked or not as I was only a member for a short time. And there were no opportunities during my time in the group.

 

Gman

 

I don't know about chlorine levels and monitoring say, 100 years ago or more when traditions were established. The swimming-hole tradition has occurred to me as well.

 

They used to drain and replace the water in school and college and Y pools as often as once a week to keep the water as clean and safe as possible. From what I've read, the idea was to get as much dirt, bacteria, fecal matter, and sweat off of the guys as possible (by having them shower) to keep the water as clean as long as possible. There are a number of reports of the showering/washing being monitored by coaches or older students. And before modern filtration systems and artificial fabrics, the swimsuits themselves were hard to keep clean, thus seen as a public health risk, and many kids and families couldn't afford them when they were relatively new on the market. Plus the suits (I think the first ones were wool) were uncomfortable and, supposedly, the fibers could clog the drains.

 

There are suits now that help people swim faster than if they were naked; the long body suits were even banned. Now competitive swimmers wear Speedos that are as small as possible and are made of material designed to reduce drag. It's pretty easy for me to imagine that in an era in which same-sex nudity was seen as non-sexual, swim suits, of bulky material and/or expensive, just seemed to be superfluous.

 

As far as what girls wore, back before Title IX, girls and women didn't have access to as many athletic opportunities as men. Swimsuits were introduced for girls, or at least were used more often, before they were for guys, but my sense is there were many fewer swimming opportunities for girls for quite a while--just as football has remained a men's sport. There are a number of accounts of men swimming nude in their swim classes while girls were given swim suits they found uncomfortable.

 

Quite amazing to me, there are photos of actual public swim meets, with coed spectators, with guys swimming naked.

 

I'm sure some doctoral candidate in sociology is writing a dissertation on this if one hasn't been written already!

[Rudynate]

 

As far as what girls wore, back before Title IX, girls and women didn't have access to as many athletic opportunities as men. Swimsuits were introduced for girls, or at least were used more often, before they were for guys, but my sense is there were many fewer swimming opportunities for girls for quite a while--just as football has remained a men's sport. There are a number of accounts of men swimming nude in their swim classes while girls were given swim suits they found uncomfortable.

 

 

The high school I went to had a pool and swimming was a required part of the PE curriculum both for men and women. Guys swam nude, girls wore suits provided by the school. I asked a girl what they looked like and she told me they were sort of like stretched-out T-shirts.

[BasketBaller]

This is an article from 2005, about the few surviving places in NYC where nude swimming was done- basically WASPy private clubs. Interesting that one guy explains comfort with it as a result of boarding schools where everybody showered together.

 

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2005/04/28/fashion/thursdaystyles/the-tao-of-skinnydipping.html

[+ Oliver]

...Swimming naked is one of life's great pleasures...

Then come for a visit next Spring at my rented home in Palm Springs. It has a VERY private pool!

[DDad4ynger]

The Detroit Athletic Club in Downtown had lots of Men only hours in the pool even in the late 70's early 80's. It was quite the place, very Old money, well healed business men and lots of hot young professionals.

Us younger guys were never without an invitation....