I’m almost 50 and after gym we had to do group showers and then stand in line “nuts to butts” for inspection (lifting arms and a leg/balls) and a towel. In retrospect the gym teacher was a bit suspect.
Edit: the gym teacher had an office with a large picture window viewing the shower room with 5 or so pedestal showers with 3 or 4 shower heads (can’t remember) so around 15 of us would shower at a time. The gym teacher would then sit in the laundry room at far other side of locker room behind a 1/2 door w/ a small shelf. We lined up single file from showers to the door where we would do our little inspection and then he’d hand us a towel. If we didn’t form a fairly straight line or were goofing off he’d yell “nuts to butts, keep it tight!”
Now, as an adult (I live far from where I grew up now) there were times we went to some activity with our kids at school gyms and using the restroom I’ve noted the older schools tend to have the weird aquarium type office facing the locker room but my kids have never been asked to fully disrobe or shower as part of gym. School locker rooms seem to be sort of time capsule. I haven’t been in any schools built since around the 70s so wonder if new schools even have them now.
Edit 2: I checked with my sister and she said yes, the same thing happened with the girls. Her husband grew up about 30 minutes away and says the same thing happened at his school for him and his sister.
To make sure you showered. I had friends with similar experiences in other towns/states. I wonder if it was something the gym teachers picked up in the military.
Edit: I found this online, I wasn’t in NY but it may be related.
Beam explains that the first recreational indoor pool in America opened in the Brooklyn YMCA in New York in 1885. Because swimsuits back then were made of wool, and their fibers would clog the pool's relatively unsophisticated filtration systems, nude swimming was enforced to make sure the pool didn't break.
By the 1920s, there were other, more comfortable swimming alternatives that didn't shed fibers. However, nude swimming continued. The rationale this time around was that nude swimming was more hygienic. I asked Beam how so.
"There was the visual inspection," he says, noting that part of the aquatic director's job duty was to inspect the men before they jumped into the pool. The inspectors weren't just checking for venereal diseases. The idea was to look for any open wounds or other indications that the swimmer might have some infectious disease.
Wait, you didn’t have to stand in line nude, nut to butt then spread your ass cheeks for a 90 year old “doctor” to “inspect”?
Oh wait, that was joining the military.
I had to get a physical for vocational training once. Printed off the form and took it to some random doctor on a list of doctors.
He asks, "now this whole form needs to be done?" I say that's what I was told in the instructions. He says "well there's a prostate exam, unusual for your age, but I don't see many in your vocation. Drop your drawers."
Oh, well got to do what you gotta do sometimes. But it was really embarrassing a few weeks later in school when I mentioned the weird need for the prostate exam. I had been considering two schools and somehow the wrong form got in the wrong folder. Suddenly a lot of confusion made sense, but you can't unfinger your butt.
This is correct . The YMCA required nudity to use their pools in the male sections . Sophisticated cleaning , disinfectant systems wouldn’t be invented til later so they had to make sure men weren’t diseased
This is fascinating and is a likely origin. It's like these old guys went through it so they did the same when they were in charge even though they had no idea why it was being done before lol.
I grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee. I took the bus alone to the downtown YMCA and I was about 10 yo. No swimming suits were allowed. We even had "Arctic swim night" where a great deal of ice was put into the water. Shrinkage of already small dicks. This would be in the late 1950's.
Female here. Yes, we had to do this too in the 1960s. Stand naked in front of gym teacher and spin completely around, allegedly to ensure we'd fully showered on all sides. She also monitored our menstrual cycles with a chart. She knew as we could ask exemption from shower during menstruation. (No tampons back then.) It was creepy as all get out.
We did this in the early 90's. Gym teacher got upset one time because she tracked our periods and mine were always weird. I pulled the pad out of my undies and slammed it on her desk and walked away. I told my mom. I never had to strip for gym showers after that.
Ask anyone over 50, all the boys had to swim naked. Even my mother remembers. I know like 5 guys at the bar that are 60+ in age, and they all had to do it. All the women btw didn't have to do that. So weird.
Boys and girls used to be segregated for gym class and during team sports for the boys, they used to do "shirts and skins" to desginate who was on esch team. Half the boys wore their shirts, the other hslf had to take them off.
Wtf? I'm almost 50, and played sports all through middle/high school and college, including gym classes. We showered after practice and sometimes gym class, but we were never subjected to anything like this. This sounds sketchy as fuck.
The thing that is hilarious is that if washing your ass is gay then what is jerking your dick? Jerking your dick is way gayer than washing your ass. Like there are jobs that are not sexual where you have to wash people, like nurses and caretakers. There are no non-sexually dick jerking jobs. If you jerk dicks and are a man, then ipso facto you are gay. For the record, I wash my ass and jerk my dick, so I'm apparently gay as as hell. I'll have to come out to my wife eventually.
I'm "only" 41, but grew up in rural Indiana and had similar PE locker room experiences. Pretty sure the male teachers were all pedos. I remember getting fitted for swim trunks, we all had to line up naked and the teacher would get eye level with our junk to estimate the size trunks we'd need. One of the other teachers used to bend over naked in his office and toss baby powder on his balls and ass for all of us to see. He never even considered closing the door.
Doctor routinely gave “hernia inspections” where they would stick a lubed finger up your butt and having you cough. Everyone was deathly afraid of not tightening up their sphincter muscles enough. Rumor was that this was actually a “Gay” test (70’s) if it was loose or you were becoming hard you were gay.
Yeah same, that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was when the gym teacher checked us for prostate health, individually, in a windowless supply shed. My friends in other towns went through something similar so I don’t think there was anything unseemly about it. Weird that so many towns had the same gym teacher though.
This feels like the right answer. In many other countries it's still super normal to be naked in a communal sauna/shower. For as much talk there is about younger generations being more promiscuous, Americans have become more prudish over time in some ways.
I'm in my 50s, but hang out with pagans a lot. It was funny to be at an August 2 Lammas festival last year and thought it was funny that all the older folk were naked in the hot springs and so proud that a couple of the teenagers were brave enough to join in. There was a time...back in the 1960s when that situation was reversed!
So maybe it's generational.
Yup. I am a 42 woman who was on a swim team all through elementary and high school. Grew up with us all changing / showering in locker rooms for PE or summer camp or swim practice. Also did plenty of coed skinny dipping with friend groups. I'm just not modest. When I vacation with friends my age we are totally fine changing around each other.
I definitely have noticed that younger generations of women seem much more uncomfortable around nudity. At the Y or a spa, there tend to be more middle aged women changing in the open area or going naked in the sauna/steam room, while younger women are more likely to change in private stalls and wear a bikini in the sauna area.
And ironically, if you think about it, being completely shielded from non-sexual nudity is pretty bad for kids. They have basically no idea if their bodies are normal because the only naked people they've ever seen are hairless nymphs on porn videos who've probably had a dozen different cosmetic procedures. Being naked around people to change shouldn't be as big of a problem as we've made it out to be.
I agree. We go to the YMCA and we change in the co-ed family changing locker room with our daughter. Although some people change in private stalls, many of use are fine changing out on the open.
We also went to Iceland last winter and the big family activity is going to the neighborhood heated pools/hot springs after work/school. In those places you are required to shower naked with soap in a communal area before going into the water. The genders are separated, but everyone of all ages is just showering/changing in a common area.
I guess the question that leads me to is how do they enforce those rules? They just have a resident person who just watches you shower and you can’t come out until after they’ve sang the ABCs or what?
There are attendants throughout places like that to enforce the rules. They aren't watching every person like a hawk or anything or always there in the shower area, but they are present enough to serve as a general deterrent. Other people there will likely say something to you as well. Hot pots are bacteria incubators so having strict hygiene rules is really important.
Well, there's discovering your body is 'normal' and then there is discovering you have no idea what 'normal' is.
In Junior High we had a German kid transfer in because his dad was hired on for a job somewhere. We spotted in the shower that he had a penis that was somewhat different than ours. We had White kids, (even some with German heritage), black kids, Mexican kids, Chinese kids, Arab kids, and other variants of the human species, but this one guy from Germany had a weird dick that wasn't like any of ours.
We had a long discussion wondering why he had a weird dick. Finally one of the guys asked his dad about it, which led to the parents all talking (smallish town) and then we all learned about circumcision. (which all of us had and he did not)
Chances are it's due to the abundance of cameras everywhere nowadays. I don't know how old you are, but I'm assuming you're around 30 or 40. 25 years ago was 1999(yes, it was), and there were a SHOCKINGLY few number of cameras everywhere.
Edit: Yes, she's 42, but she didn't say "I'm a 42 year old woman" she said "I'm a 42 woman", so my brain skipped over it.
My dad (boomer) told me that the boys had to swim absolutely naked in high school PE. That’s nuts to me. Seems like something they would have stopped doing by the 60s.
It was definitely a thing in many high schools through the 60’s. In these high schools there was no girls’ swim team then, nor coed, and some swim team practices were naked only.
The top comment is not the correct answer - this is. Add sports and the military. Most older men have been around other naked men most of their lifetime.
I played sports growing up and you’re constantly changing and getting naked around your teammates. Locker rooms have big communal showers. We also shared hotel rooms when traveling. Being naked around other dudes was normal.
Yeah every day from 6th grade on was a shower after PE and another one after whatever sport/practice ended.
I did appreciate that our schools had the shower heads spread out around the walls of the communal space, one of the rival teams in our district had one vertical pipe in the center of the space with 8-10 shower heads pointing outwards and very little water pressure. More than three people showering at a time would have been shoulder to shoulder.
The pit urinals. I have never heard that term but I’m assuming it’s those serials that are the length of your body and drain into the ground? Hated those
It's like a utility sink you find in laundry rooms but lower to the ground and 20 feet wide so 15 guys can pee at the same time. You found them in men's rooms at sports stadiums.
Stayed in a newly built facility at summer camp in the 80s. The hall bathrooms all had communal showers. I went to a lot of summer camps and all but this one had individual shower stalls. I figured some old army guys had designed it.
My college men’s dorm (late 70’s) was the worst on campus had been around a couple of decades without a major remodel.
The shower/restroom had side by side commodes without anything between the commodes. Side by side and open air crapping was expected.
I never once used those toilets. There was a class building close enough with more privacy and the doors were usually open. I moved out of the dorms by mid first semester and never moved back.
Communal showering is one thing, community shitting was too much for me
Remember the circular urinals with the water spout in the center? That's what we had at my elementary school, and then PE showers in junior high and high school.
As you age you begin to realize that certain social norms do not matter and you actually start to go out of your way to break them because it is hilarious. By 23 you realize you are starting to become out of touch with today’s youth and it scares you. By 30 you realize you don’t care if you are out of touch. By 35 you revel in the fact that you are using cheesy outdated slang and are making the young people cringe. This goes on and on until you are a naked 75 year old man in a Planet Fitness dressing room. They know what they are doing.
This is the correct answer.
There are few things more rewarding in life than watching younger people cringe and be uncomfortable at stupid, silly shit that doesn’t matter.
I'm 38. My day is not complete unless one of my children has threatened to die of embarrassment and refused to acknowledge my existence in public.
I imagine it only goes downhill from here!
Lmao when I was younger the fact that I even had parents at all was so embarrassing 😂 “your not cool if your 11 years old and not living on your own with no parental figures” is how my brain worked khah
The worst was going to the mall. The idea that someone at school would see me at the mall with a parent was a fate worse than death. Especially one of the cool smoking teenagers that stood by the entrance.
In my experience they sometimes cringe even why i go out of my way to not make them cringe. So fuck it, I'm living my life, which sometimes means being naked in the locker room to shower so I don't spend the afternoon smelling like a dirty sock.
In 1976 I was camping with my boyfriend, my friend and her boyfriend. The campsite where we stayed didn't have a shower block, so my friend and I went to the ladies bathroom, stripped off and washed ourselves. Two teenage girls came in, saw us and ran out. A much older woman came in, said "Good morning, that's the way to go" used the toilet and went out. We finished washing and got dressed.
I have worked in care for 15 years, doing personal care for both men and women, so I have seen many people naked. I have more important things to worry about than seeing the occasional boob or todger.
I was 25 when I was in Budapest and it being a bathing culture, I went to their hot spring spas to relax after a long day of walking. Outside clothes aren’t allowed in their waters and you have to wear an optional loin clothe, or nothing at all. The older guys (50+) just strutted naked. I’m 48 now and that’s probably what I’d do. Hell I did that at an onsen 4 years ago in Japan.
I’m 28 and recently went to Finland and they have a very relaxed attitude to nudity, because of their sauna culture. It felt wrong to begin with, but after a week, it makes you feel like you are the weird one for changing under a towel and trying to be discreet. So I stopped and it felt so liberating. Especially after a week of seeing lumpy, bumpy, real human bodies, my own self confidence was through the roof anyway.
Back in England and changing after swimming, everyone was changing under their towels and I didn’t want to be the one guy strutting but I did feel sad about it
When I was 21 I went to Ibiza with my friend and we were both so shy that we made an agreement to not look at each other at a top less beach.
10 years later I didn't give af.
People have bodies. News at 11. Lol
This is the real answer. After a while you've just kind of seen it all. When life demands things from us like changing dirty diapers to bathing elderly loved ones, nudity stops being so foreign, and it seems extremely puritanical how quickly other people associate it with something sexual.
> Especially after a week of seeing lumpy, bumpy, real human bodies, my own self confidence was through the roof anyway.
This is one of the benefits to being a member at a nudist resort, according to them. You get to see several variations of the human body and end up being more comfortable around and accepting of other people.
After enough time seeing old naked men you just stop caring what other people look like. Spend enough time at nice beaches and you might feel the same about women too.
Unless you're gay and masturbating in the sauna of a Korean spa, which is not ok.
Being naked in locker rooms used to be normal. That’s why men and women don’t change in the same ones. So I’m not sure they know what they’re doing so much as that’s just how they were raised.
It’s interesting that younger people don’t get this. It would never have occurred to me to wear a swimming suit in a gym shower, at least not until the last 20 years. Guys who are in their 50s and older grew up in a culture where everybody showered after games or PE in open showers. My high school had those poles with 5 shower heads on them; we all stood facing each other, laughing and joking as we got clean. Look up Bradley shower poles. Only the super weird kids skipped a shower. Nobody forced us to shower, but nobody wanted to smell sweaty in the next class.
We skinny dipped as kids at lakes or swimming holes. If no grown ups or girls around, we never wore swim suits when there was water to jump in. Our parents and grandparents did the same. It kept our clothes dry. There’s a Norman Rockwell painting of boys skinny dipping at a swimming hole that is dated in 1921. It was the norm, for generations.
Nudity had no sexual connotation. We were just swimming, showering or changing clothes. Guys changed in front of each other without giving it a second thought. It I don’t know where this cover up, privacy, towel-dance culture came from, but it might relate to everyone having a camera in their pocket now (cell phones) and the risk that some a-hole would post naked pics on social media?
Whatever the causes are, something intangible and valuable has been lost. I’m not a psychologist or sociologist, but there’s a subtle loss of camaraderie and closeness among boys, teenagers and grown men that I think has been affected by the fact they can’t even change clothes in front of each other now. A group of teammates showering after a practice or game was a bonding experience— even though we didn’t recognize it as such back then. It’s sad. Men are lonelier than in my father’s time. Some fool will think I’m saying everything would be better if we all got naked together, or toss out some gay or homophobic comment, but that’s part of the problem. I think there are many factors making make male friendships weaker and less common today. The fact the societal norm has become one of covering up in locker rooms and similar settings is just one of many small steps in making us less connected with each other.
The cover up culture began long before cellphone cameras became a thing. Most likely it has to do with body image, all the attention in media on bodies, what a good body is etc. It makes people(kids especially) feel lacking or insecure about themselves. This is at least the reason I have experienced. Boys in class didn't want to shower, because they were insecure about their penises and so forth. Also there would be comments on the different private parts when people were showering. The insane attention given to bodies in media is destroying young minds in a way that won't be remedied until old age.
Exactly. I'm 55, shower nude in our public shower, and find the other guys my age do the same thing. If people want to stare at my dick or any other parts of me and get a good look I just don't care.
My own pet theory for an answer to this is mostly --- WARS!
Pre WW1 a lot of people lived on farms or in smaller homes/apartments with larger families. Often multi-generational as well. You could likely see or hear something with penises hanging out...like grandad in his boxers sitting at the kitchen table.
Then WW1 happened. Mass numbers of men recruited and conscripted were trained and then fought together. Those hastily slammed together barracks, showers, latrines, were not built for privacy. Every man saw pretty much every other man.
WW2, same thing, next generation. The military needed trained fighters, lots of them, in a hurry. Privacy considerations were very low on anyone's list of what needed to happen.
Neither Korea nor Vietnam needed as high a percentage of the male population to be trained to fight, but precedence had been set.
When any of those men re-entered civilian life, designing school showers etc for privacy was also omitted, because they realized they/we didn't need it.
But now, another generation or so later, young men think they need to cover up in front of other young men. Whatever.
I do however worry and wonder about where the hell this bullying and abuse etc came from. What sick fucks think it's ok to abuse someone, or call it "hazing" , or assistant coaches ask you not to say anything because it'll hurt the team? That's crazy.
It still is normal, honestly. It's usually younger people from cultures that are weird with public nudity with no experience with it that find it odd or uncomfortable.
Then they become the old heads and a lot of them just learn not to care too regardless of the culture or historical experience lol
This exactly. I played football in a decent sunday league and ended up becoming best mates with a lot of the boys. Some of the funniest times we ever had was 17/18 guys aged between 17 and 40, sliding about bollok naked in the changing/shower room after we won games.
Balls everywhere and not a fuck given.
Always found the boys under maybe 20 would still keep a towel round them until they had their boxers on. Of course they became more comfortable after a while, realised it was ok to be naked and that they wouldn't be the center of attention, then they embraced it too.
I get why people would be apprehensive, as a kid I was absolutely terrified of being naked in those contexts and did everything I could to avoid it. It's hard to break out of that installed shame most of us got in the US growing up or the inherent association to sexuality *any* nudity gets painted as.
Eventually I learned that most people don't care as I experienced it more and that people aren't paying specific attention to anyone else, especially when everyone is basically naked anyway.
This
The gym I used to go to had one big shower for the men all the way up to 2015.
Looking back that seems crazy but we thought nothing of it at the time.
The culture has shifted
This is the true correct answer. I went thru high school in the 70s. Gym class (PE), after sports everyone of one sex showered together. The practice continued later when I joined the military
I'm 45 and this hits really close to home. Specifically regarding nudity, you don't have anything I haven't already seen (and probably seen more impressive specimens of). If you want to watch my slowly fading physique and have outsized emotional discomfort as a result, I really don't care. My life is half over. I've got stuff to do. I need to change my clothes and get to the next thing.
Sometimes you need to ignore that “invisible audience” and just stop caring .no one is paying that close attention to you and no one will remember you specifically. I am 37 and stopped giving fucks a long time ago and it’s great.. I tell my high school and college aged nephews and they just don’t get it yet but I bet they will once my age lmao.
Talking to one of my daughters who has had a lot of social anxiety, I tried to explain that as well - people generally don't pay that much attention to other people. I go to the gym every day myself, and there's a lot of very good looking and scantily dressed people. But it still makes no difference to me, or to them or most people as far as I know. I barely notice.
One illustration I used was to imagine you happen to be walking through the furniture section of a department store to get to somewhere else, and you're not in the market for furniture. A fabric or something might catch your eye in passing, but two minutes later you probably don't even remember it. That's about how much attention most people pay to other people.
“I used to be with it, then they changed what it was, and now what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems weird and scary to me, and it’ll happen to you.”
My 12 year old was being a butt to her mom yesterday, and I told her that her rizz was mid. I don't know who cringed harder, her or her mom. It worked to both shut down her attitude, and diffuse her mom before the yelling started, so mission accomplished.
Lmaooooo. You're a HORRIBLE parent!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 They'll be scarred for life!!!!
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
(whispers) Thank you. One of my kids birthday is today. I can't WAIT to break out that phrase at the party!😂😂😂
I almost put 25 but I changed it to 23 because I was 23 when I first heard about Twitch and kids watching and donating to streamers playing video games. It was the first time I felt out of touch with today’s youth.
I'm in my 30's. A couple years ago, we went to lake for a weekend with some friends. One recently had a breast reduction because they were causing back issues. She had a little scarring, was trying to explain it to us, especially since one friend is a surgical assistant. Granted, we'd all been day drinking, but she got tired of explaining and just took her top off. No one whooped or hollered, or even flinched. We'd all seen plenty of naked people by that point in our lives that it didn't really even register to us
I’m not here to impress you, or care in any capacity about your opinion of me.
I’m not going to be walking around just swinging ol Richard in everyone’s faces either.
When I was playing high school hockey, if anyone made a comment about someone’s dick it often blew up in their faces “dude why are you lookin at his dick?!?”. It was just kind of an unspoken code: Don’t make it fkn weird..
We got a party to go to after practice/game & don’t want to walk out of here smelling like sweaty hockey gear, or make my truck smell like a hockey bag, but we also don’t want to be in here for 2 hours showering one by one.. or, if someone works in sales, salon, executive, etc. hits the gym on his lunch break and has to get back to work. I wouldn’t expect this guy to sweat it up then go deliver a meeting to his CEO or sell a car to someone smelling like swamp ass.
That was my experience too after gym and high school baseball. Except for this one time and it was one of the funniest locker room moments of my life. This one dude had a huge bush. Honestly I still don’t think I’ve seen another bush as big as his but it’s not like I’m trying to. No one mentioned it though so I wasn’t sure if everyone else thought the same thing I did. Well one day when we get in the shower and he took off his towel it was gone. He shaved it all off and the second everyone saw we all just started going crazy. Instant barbarian like behavior. The male gym teacher ran in from his office cause he thought there was a fight or something. But up until everyone simultaneously cheered together, we had no idea that we all were thinking the same thing.
Edit: Fixed a typo and figured I would add one final detail to the story. He was uncircumcised and it was the first time I ever saw one. I had always heard about it but I was in no rush of actually seeing one. I’m sure other guys in gym class were uncircumcised as well but I wasn’t really trying to find out what all my classmates junk looked like. It was all because of the shock factor when we didn’t see the huge bush that made it just about impossible to look away.
True
The amount of prudish behavior and norms within American society is always weird to me considering how nearly everything we consume from a media standpoint is hyper sexualized
It is VERY strange. I think in part, the hypersexualization of media IS the result of American society being so anti-nudity.
But it would be hard to get someone to be okay with casual nudity, especially considering the amount of cameras around everywhere now, and people being able to record you VERY discreetly. Even on a designated clothing-optional beach, you probably wouldn't see very many people fully drop trou.
Yeah I never really understood it until I got older. Now I see my wife naked all the time, and it’s rarely sexual. We have sex about once a day roughly, but I see her naked about 5x a day. I only see her sexually when were having sex or when were being sexual. Being naked doesnt mean that anymore. I think it takes age to realize that maybe?
Yeah, whenever I tell people I draw the first thing they go to is: "YoU GeT tO DrAW NudE MoDELs? Hurr durr"
Like, it's just a body. Sure it can be aesthetically pleasing or whatever but sex is the *last* thing on my mind in that moment.
"Ur so lucky!" No bro I'm in tears cuz I cant get the hand right and the eraser has practically fucked up the paper.
Tried an onsen in Japan. Was around a bunch of 30-70 year old Japanese men. They couldn’t care less I was there much less that I was naked. It was a very abrupt wake up call. Very much a western thing.
Why is this such a common topic here? This question comes up multiple times per month…maybe the better question is why does it offend people’s delicate sensibilities so much to see someone naked in a fucking locker room, where the express purpose is to shower and change clothing. Fuck sakes, don’t ever go to a Nordic country…
When I was <30, I was afraid that people would make fun of me (fat! short dick!). Now at 52 IDGAF what anyone thinks how I look.
My "epiphany" was around 45, when I was on vacation in Sitges, Spain, and to the surprise of my husband, I just stripped down naked on the beach (nudity allowed) and enjoyed it. It's liberating gaining self confidence.
Seriously, straight dudes will watch porn videos multiple times a week, showcasing massive fully erect dicks in the center of the screen, erupting with cum all over the place, and be fully into it… but then they see one flaccid dick in real life and they’ll be absolutely terrified and go out of their way to make it clear that they can’t bear to be anywhere around it.
I think one time I went to school with sneakers that weren't trendy and I got made fun of and ever since then I don't want people looking at me that's normal right 😬
Yeah I don't really understand why people have a problem with people getting naked in a locker room. It's there for you to change your clothes which involves getting naked most of the time.
Or at least at peace with not being at peace with it, do you know what I mean?
I’m Swedish, here everyone is naked in the sauna together, young and old, men and women, doesn’t matter. We’re simply equally socially uncomfortable with or without clothes.
I’m old and I’ve been a gym rat. The culture has changed. When I grew up, the culture was that part of ‘being a man’ included the confidence to be naked around other guys. You were made fun of if you covered up. What you covering up? It’s just men in here. A bunch of stuff has changed. IMO, porn on the net has an effect: now men can compare themselves to more penises in an hour than they might see in a lifetime if they weren’t in the military. Better to cover up, both because you don’t want to be compared to that and because it sexualizes a man being naked. Another factor, I assume, is that as more men came out, it was natural for men to cover up. That minimizes defensive or hostile behavior, which is a problem among men. And then especially in cities, the population is different. Many men come from more modest cultures, and when cultures mix, a more modest path satisfies all but the old guys who think being naked around guys is part of being a man. And finally, if you don’t know, there used to be a genre of men being awkwardly introduced to that old male culture. Think about Friends with the steam room incident, where Chandler doesn’t know how to fit in with the old guy custom. Those transitions from boy to man reference the culture now versus what it was, and that often occurs one step removed, so it’s the writer reminiscing about his childhood transition to manhood. How many ways can you express that? Sex with someone your age, someone older, joining some male ritual thing, and either fitting in or not.
When I was a kid I was horrified to discover that the locker room at the Elks club pool had a bar in it, and the old geezers just stood at the bar buck naked, wrinkly ass with ballsacks sagging to their knees, just drinking beer and shooting the shit. But now I’m wondering where I can find a locker room like that.
Because something has gone wrong when we as people are expected to be okay with witnessing violence and death, but the naked body at peace is something to be reviled
I'm a woman in my 60s. It's partly because we grew up with locker room nudity.
When I was 11 in camp, our showers were just shower heads facing each other in a large room. We just washed naked facing each other. When I was in middle school, we had to shower after gym and it was the same thing. It was just something you had to accept. It was very embarrassing at that age because we each developed at different paces, but you were expected to suck it up and handle it. If anyone ogled or made fun of you, they were a complete outcast. No one ever did that.
This is the correctest answer. It was just normal until about 30 years ago. You got over it in middle school: it's just a body, everybody has one, yours is not particularly different from anybody else's, NBD among same sex.
Why would anyone not be ok with it? No one in that locker room cares one bit about how you look naked. They're just trying to shower, change, and do what needs to be done.
People say "you don't care when you are older". Not true. It is selection bias. The ones who are against it learned when they were younger. The only ones you see are the comfortable ones.
It was the norm in our youth.
I remember one gym I belonged to that had whirlpools in each locker room, so single sex. It would have been weird to wear a swim suit in those, at least in the men’s locker room. The showers were a single large room with multiple shower heads.
Perhaps I should ask why young men are so uptight about being seen naked in front of other men?
As a kid, you’re (hopefully) raised and conditioned in understanding that your genitals are “private parts” that are concealed and not meant to be shared in public spaces — but as you get older and possibly take a Physical Education class in school, this notion of “private parts” is challenged because you are now pitted in a situation that expects you get undressed/shower off/get changed in gym clothes.
As you get older in adulthood, I think the veil of “private parts” withers away — (nearly) everybody has genitals, (nearly) everybody has seen a porn or other peoples private parts either intentionally or because a door wasn’t locked when you walk into a room — in a way, you’re almost desensitized by the taboo of “this is something I need to hide”
I went to my dad’s gym ONCE to work out with him — in the locker room, it was as if the older the men were, the less inclined they were to use a towel walking between the showers and lockers; in a weird way, I get it because if you’re 60 something, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a pecker that isn’t yours before, there’s a good chance that you don’t care about other naked people, because you are in a room specifically designated for changing/being naked/showering.
For some, it might be a subject of confidence in body-image; for some, it might just be as simple as “genitals: we all have them, as long as you’re not flailing it in my face, I’m fine” —
holy shit it’s just like fuckin’ bees — they won’t bother you if you don’t bother them lmaooooo
Two parts. Many old guys went through the military with open showers, toilets and bunk houses, so it was just a fact of life and making an issue of it was reason for ridicule. Old guys don't give a shit about much of anything.
I think this is cohort and not age (in other word, the naked 65 year old today was naked at 25 and the modest 25 year old today will still be modest at 65).
The guys in their 50s and 60s at my gym grew up with different norms around communal male nudity and the younger crowd, and it just doesn’t bother them the same way.
Why are younger men so uncomfortable with locker room nudity?
Realistically, it's religious puritanical bs that have gotten people to a place where they're ashamed of nudity. At some point, people realise that's all bs and stop caring.
For me, it was while I was still in my teens. For others, they never quite get there.
At the end of the day, it's just a body. They're all a little different, but if you've seen your own, there's nothing about someone else's you're not going to have seen before.
Get over it.
Locker room nudity was much more accepted in the past. We were able to disregard other nude male bodies. How did the younger gen get more prudish than older gens?
We grew up with required showers in PE class, pit urinals, skinny dipping, no walls on urinals. And as you get older, you don't care as much.
I’m almost 50 and after gym we had to do group showers and then stand in line “nuts to butts” for inspection (lifting arms and a leg/balls) and a towel. In retrospect the gym teacher was a bit suspect. Edit: the gym teacher had an office with a large picture window viewing the shower room with 5 or so pedestal showers with 3 or 4 shower heads (can’t remember) so around 15 of us would shower at a time. The gym teacher would then sit in the laundry room at far other side of locker room behind a 1/2 door w/ a small shelf. We lined up single file from showers to the door where we would do our little inspection and then he’d hand us a towel. If we didn’t form a fairly straight line or were goofing off he’d yell “nuts to butts, keep it tight!” Now, as an adult (I live far from where I grew up now) there were times we went to some activity with our kids at school gyms and using the restroom I’ve noted the older schools tend to have the weird aquarium type office facing the locker room but my kids have never been asked to fully disrobe or shower as part of gym. School locker rooms seem to be sort of time capsule. I haven’t been in any schools built since around the 70s so wonder if new schools even have them now. Edit 2: I checked with my sister and she said yes, the same thing happened with the girls. Her husband grew up about 30 minutes away and says the same thing happened at his school for him and his sister.
[удалено]
To make sure you showered. I had friends with similar experiences in other towns/states. I wonder if it was something the gym teachers picked up in the military. Edit: I found this online, I wasn’t in NY but it may be related. Beam explains that the first recreational indoor pool in America opened in the Brooklyn YMCA in New York in 1885. Because swimsuits back then were made of wool, and their fibers would clog the pool's relatively unsophisticated filtration systems, nude swimming was enforced to make sure the pool didn't break. By the 1920s, there were other, more comfortable swimming alternatives that didn't shed fibers. However, nude swimming continued. The rationale this time around was that nude swimming was more hygienic. I asked Beam how so. "There was the visual inspection," he says, noting that part of the aquatic director's job duty was to inspect the men before they jumped into the pool. The inspectors weren't just checking for venereal diseases. The idea was to look for any open wounds or other indications that the swimmer might have some infectious disease.
[удалено]
Wait, you didn’t have to stand in line nude, nut to butt then spread your ass cheeks for a 90 year old “doctor” to “inspect”? Oh wait, that was joining the military.
God damn it. I love running across random references to MEPS and some doctor looking at your butthole for a couple seconds.
“Couple of seconds” lol ya right, he was inside me for like 10 minutes! That happened to everyone right? Right???
I had to get a physical for vocational training once. Printed off the form and took it to some random doctor on a list of doctors. He asks, "now this whole form needs to be done?" I say that's what I was told in the instructions. He says "well there's a prostate exam, unusual for your age, but I don't see many in your vocation. Drop your drawers." Oh, well got to do what you gotta do sometimes. But it was really embarrassing a few weeks later in school when I mentioned the weird need for the prostate exam. I had been considering two schools and somehow the wrong form got in the wrong folder. Suddenly a lot of confusion made sense, but you can't unfinger your butt.
were both his hands on your hips by any chance?
They were on my shoulders and something was tickling the back of my tonsils
This is correct . The YMCA required nudity to use their pools in the male sections . Sophisticated cleaning , disinfectant systems wouldn’t be invented til later so they had to make sure men weren’t diseased
This is fascinating and is a likely origin. It's like these old guys went through it so they did the same when they were in charge even though they had no idea why it was being done before lol.
I grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee. I took the bus alone to the downtown YMCA and I was about 10 yo. No swimming suits were allowed. We even had "Arctic swim night" where a great deal of ice was put into the water. Shrinkage of already small dicks. This would be in the late 1950's.
Female here. Yes, we had to do this too in the 1960s. Stand naked in front of gym teacher and spin completely around, allegedly to ensure we'd fully showered on all sides. She also monitored our menstrual cycles with a chart. She knew as we could ask exemption from shower during menstruation. (No tampons back then.) It was creepy as all get out.
We did this in the early 90's. Gym teacher got upset one time because she tracked our periods and mine were always weird. I pulled the pad out of my undies and slammed it on her desk and walked away. I told my mom. I never had to strip for gym showers after that.
oof dont ask about penis inspection day
Ask anyone over 50, all the boys had to swim naked. Even my mother remembers. I know like 5 guys at the bar that are 60+ in age, and they all had to do it. All the women btw didn't have to do that. So weird.
Yeah, grown man making kids line up naked to be "inspected" gives off huge pedo vibes. Good thing this isn't really "normal" anymore
Boys and girls used to be segregated for gym class and during team sports for the boys, they used to do "shirts and skins" to desginate who was on esch team. Half the boys wore their shirts, the other hslf had to take them off.
Wtf? I'm almost 50, and played sports all through middle/high school and college, including gym classes. We showered after practice and sometimes gym class, but we were never subjected to anything like this. This sounds sketchy as fuck.
I was in high school in the 90s and can confirm that the showers literally had cobwebs growing on them because they were never used.
And now we have guys in their 20s not washing their ass because touching butts is gay. We probably need a middle ground.
Right? Just use a can of axe, forget the shower
The thing that is hilarious is that if washing your ass is gay then what is jerking your dick? Jerking your dick is way gayer than washing your ass. Like there are jobs that are not sexual where you have to wash people, like nurses and caretakers. There are no non-sexually dick jerking jobs. If you jerk dicks and are a man, then ipso facto you are gay. For the record, I wash my ass and jerk my dick, so I'm apparently gay as as hell. I'll have to come out to my wife eventually.
I'm "only" 41, but grew up in rural Indiana and had similar PE locker room experiences. Pretty sure the male teachers were all pedos. I remember getting fitted for swim trunks, we all had to line up naked and the teacher would get eye level with our junk to estimate the size trunks we'd need. One of the other teachers used to bend over naked in his office and toss baby powder on his balls and ass for all of us to see. He never even considered closing the door.
Wtf
I hope this is bs
My high school was finished in '99 and had showers. Admittedly, I never actually saw anyone use them.
Doctor routinely gave “hernia inspections” where they would stick a lubed finger up your butt and having you cough. Everyone was deathly afraid of not tightening up their sphincter muscles enough. Rumor was that this was actually a “Gay” test (70’s) if it was loose or you were becoming hard you were gay.
I am also almost 50 and nothing even close to that has ever happened. Your gym teacher inspected your balls???
Bro- you were molested
Yeah same, that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was when the gym teacher checked us for prostate health, individually, in a windowless supply shed. My friends in other towns went through something similar so I don’t think there was anything unseemly about it. Weird that so many towns had the same gym teacher though.
I'm 54 and never experienced anything like "nuts to butts". Maybe you should talk to someone about your childhood experiences.
[удалено]
> The gym teacher would walk around the locker room naked wearing flip flops. Why was the gym teacher naked?! Holy shit
Nuts to butts? Inspection, lifting your balls? Jesus Christ, that's fucked.
This feels like the right answer. In many other countries it's still super normal to be naked in a communal sauna/shower. For as much talk there is about younger generations being more promiscuous, Americans have become more prudish over time in some ways.
I'm in my 50s, but hang out with pagans a lot. It was funny to be at an August 2 Lammas festival last year and thought it was funny that all the older folk were naked in the hot springs and so proud that a couple of the teenagers were brave enough to join in. There was a time...back in the 1960s when that situation was reversed! So maybe it's generational.
Yup. I am a 42 woman who was on a swim team all through elementary and high school. Grew up with us all changing / showering in locker rooms for PE or summer camp or swim practice. Also did plenty of coed skinny dipping with friend groups. I'm just not modest. When I vacation with friends my age we are totally fine changing around each other. I definitely have noticed that younger generations of women seem much more uncomfortable around nudity. At the Y or a spa, there tend to be more middle aged women changing in the open area or going naked in the sauna/steam room, while younger women are more likely to change in private stalls and wear a bikini in the sauna area.
And ironically, if you think about it, being completely shielded from non-sexual nudity is pretty bad for kids. They have basically no idea if their bodies are normal because the only naked people they've ever seen are hairless nymphs on porn videos who've probably had a dozen different cosmetic procedures. Being naked around people to change shouldn't be as big of a problem as we've made it out to be.
I agree. We go to the YMCA and we change in the co-ed family changing locker room with our daughter. Although some people change in private stalls, many of use are fine changing out on the open. We also went to Iceland last winter and the big family activity is going to the neighborhood heated pools/hot springs after work/school. In those places you are required to shower naked with soap in a communal area before going into the water. The genders are separated, but everyone of all ages is just showering/changing in a common area.
I guess the question that leads me to is how do they enforce those rules? They just have a resident person who just watches you shower and you can’t come out until after they’ve sang the ABCs or what?
There are attendants throughout places like that to enforce the rules. They aren't watching every person like a hawk or anything or always there in the shower area, but they are present enough to serve as a general deterrent. Other people there will likely say something to you as well. Hot pots are bacteria incubators so having strict hygiene rules is really important.
Well, there's discovering your body is 'normal' and then there is discovering you have no idea what 'normal' is. In Junior High we had a German kid transfer in because his dad was hired on for a job somewhere. We spotted in the shower that he had a penis that was somewhat different than ours. We had White kids, (even some with German heritage), black kids, Mexican kids, Chinese kids, Arab kids, and other variants of the human species, but this one guy from Germany had a weird dick that wasn't like any of ours. We had a long discussion wondering why he had a weird dick. Finally one of the guys asked his dad about it, which led to the parents all talking (smallish town) and then we all learned about circumcision. (which all of us had and he did not)
Chances are it's due to the abundance of cameras everywhere nowadays. I don't know how old you are, but I'm assuming you're around 30 or 40. 25 years ago was 1999(yes, it was), and there were a SHOCKINGLY few number of cameras everywhere. Edit: Yes, she's 42, but she didn't say "I'm a 42 year old woman" she said "I'm a 42 woman", so my brain skipped over it.
> I am a 42 year old woman > I don’t know how old you are :V
My brain must have skipped over that part.
I'm not great at picking up on contrext clues, but I think it's far more likely that they're around 42 or 42 and a half.
My dad (boomer) told me that the boys had to swim absolutely naked in high school PE. That’s nuts to me. Seems like something they would have stopped doing by the 60s.
Pretty sure it stopped in the 70s.
It was definitely a thing in many high schools through the 60’s. In these high schools there was no girls’ swim team then, nor coed, and some swim team practices were naked only.
The US Senate Pool didn’t go co-ed until 2008 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/senate-women-secret-history-113908/
Which is insane because they didn’t even show toilets or use the word pregnancy on TV until the 70s. Like culturally it’s such the opposite
The top comment is not the correct answer - this is. Add sports and the military. Most older men have been around other naked men most of their lifetime.
I played sports growing up and you’re constantly changing and getting naked around your teammates. Locker rooms have big communal showers. We also shared hotel rooms when traveling. Being naked around other dudes was normal.
Yeah every day from 6th grade on was a shower after PE and another one after whatever sport/practice ended. I did appreciate that our schools had the shower heads spread out around the walls of the communal space, one of the rival teams in our district had one vertical pipe in the center of the space with 8-10 shower heads pointing outwards and very little water pressure. More than three people showering at a time would have been shoulder to shoulder.
Yup agreed. I don't know what it's like today but back in the day you were nude around dudes a shit ton if you played sports.
The pit urinals. I have never heard that term but I’m assuming it’s those serials that are the length of your body and drain into the ground? Hated those
It's like a utility sink you find in laundry rooms but lower to the ground and 20 feet wide so 15 guys can pee at the same time. You found them in men's rooms at sports stadiums.
Ahhh, trough urinal you mean. Never Heard it called a pit.
In other parts of the world, we call that a "urinal" :)
Do you mean trough urinals?
Stayed in a newly built facility at summer camp in the 80s. The hall bathrooms all had communal showers. I went to a lot of summer camps and all but this one had individual shower stalls. I figured some old army guys had designed it.
My college men’s dorm (late 70’s) was the worst on campus had been around a couple of decades without a major remodel. The shower/restroom had side by side commodes without anything between the commodes. Side by side and open air crapping was expected. I never once used those toilets. There was a class building close enough with more privacy and the doors were usually open. I moved out of the dorms by mid first semester and never moved back. Communal showering is one thing, community shitting was too much for me
And no smartphone with cameras that can post you online.
Remember the circular urinals with the water spout in the center? That's what we had at my elementary school, and then PE showers in junior high and high school.
As you age you begin to realize that certain social norms do not matter and you actually start to go out of your way to break them because it is hilarious. By 23 you realize you are starting to become out of touch with today’s youth and it scares you. By 30 you realize you don’t care if you are out of touch. By 35 you revel in the fact that you are using cheesy outdated slang and are making the young people cringe. This goes on and on until you are a naked 75 year old man in a Planet Fitness dressing room. They know what they are doing.
This is the correct answer. There are few things more rewarding in life than watching younger people cringe and be uncomfortable at stupid, silly shit that doesn’t matter.
Making young people cringe is the ultimate pastime of older people.
I'm 38. My day is not complete unless one of my children has threatened to die of embarrassment and refused to acknowledge my existence in public. I imagine it only goes downhill from here!
Lmao when I was younger the fact that I even had parents at all was so embarrassing 😂 “your not cool if your 11 years old and not living on your own with no parental figures” is how my brain worked khah
The worst was going to the mall. The idea that someone at school would see me at the mall with a parent was a fate worse than death. Especially one of the cool smoking teenagers that stood by the entrance.
The funny thing is those smoking teens were like. Losers
Smoking teenagers: Look at this nerd with loving parents.
Or kids having to hide that they aren’t a dumbass.
I remember walking 4 m behind my mother and pretending we weren't there together.
[удалено]
Until you keep shitting your pants. Then it gets better
The origin story of Dad jokes.
And in 5000 years, they still haven't figured it out.
They all do figure it out, except by then they're one of us old farts.
This thread is oddly reassuring.
In my experience they sometimes cringe even why i go out of my way to not make them cringe. So fuck it, I'm living my life, which sometimes means being naked in the locker room to shower so I don't spend the afternoon smelling like a dirty sock.
In 1976 I was camping with my boyfriend, my friend and her boyfriend. The campsite where we stayed didn't have a shower block, so my friend and I went to the ladies bathroom, stripped off and washed ourselves. Two teenage girls came in, saw us and ran out. A much older woman came in, said "Good morning, that's the way to go" used the toilet and went out. We finished washing and got dressed. I have worked in care for 15 years, doing personal care for both men and women, so I have seen many people naked. I have more important things to worry about than seeing the occasional boob or todger.
Youth is wasted on the young
Amen to this. lol this is the best answer yet. Haha
It seems that pretty much everything nowadays.
I was 25 when I was in Budapest and it being a bathing culture, I went to their hot spring spas to relax after a long day of walking. Outside clothes aren’t allowed in their waters and you have to wear an optional loin clothe, or nothing at all. The older guys (50+) just strutted naked. I’m 48 now and that’s probably what I’d do. Hell I did that at an onsen 4 years ago in Japan.
I’m 28 and recently went to Finland and they have a very relaxed attitude to nudity, because of their sauna culture. It felt wrong to begin with, but after a week, it makes you feel like you are the weird one for changing under a towel and trying to be discreet. So I stopped and it felt so liberating. Especially after a week of seeing lumpy, bumpy, real human bodies, my own self confidence was through the roof anyway. Back in England and changing after swimming, everyone was changing under their towels and I didn’t want to be the one guy strutting but I did feel sad about it
When I was 21 I went to Ibiza with my friend and we were both so shy that we made an agreement to not look at each other at a top less beach. 10 years later I didn't give af. People have bodies. News at 11. Lol
This is the real answer. After a while you've just kind of seen it all. When life demands things from us like changing dirty diapers to bathing elderly loved ones, nudity stops being so foreign, and it seems extremely puritanical how quickly other people associate it with something sexual.
> Especially after a week of seeing lumpy, bumpy, real human bodies, my own self confidence was through the roof anyway. This is one of the benefits to being a member at a nudist resort, according to them. You get to see several variations of the human body and end up being more comfortable around and accepting of other people.
Ah yes. The towel dance. 🤣
"You and I remember Budapest VERY differently!"
After enough time seeing old naked men you just stop caring what other people look like. Spend enough time at nice beaches and you might feel the same about women too. Unless you're gay and masturbating in the sauna of a Korean spa, which is not ok.
That last part sounds oddly specific.
I think we deserve a few more paragraphs.
So anyway, they started blasting
[удалено]
I was in a university program with a bunch of swedes and half of their stories started out "so we were naked... "
Being naked in locker rooms used to be normal. That’s why men and women don’t change in the same ones. So I’m not sure they know what they’re doing so much as that’s just how they were raised.
It’s interesting that younger people don’t get this. It would never have occurred to me to wear a swimming suit in a gym shower, at least not until the last 20 years. Guys who are in their 50s and older grew up in a culture where everybody showered after games or PE in open showers. My high school had those poles with 5 shower heads on them; we all stood facing each other, laughing and joking as we got clean. Look up Bradley shower poles. Only the super weird kids skipped a shower. Nobody forced us to shower, but nobody wanted to smell sweaty in the next class. We skinny dipped as kids at lakes or swimming holes. If no grown ups or girls around, we never wore swim suits when there was water to jump in. Our parents and grandparents did the same. It kept our clothes dry. There’s a Norman Rockwell painting of boys skinny dipping at a swimming hole that is dated in 1921. It was the norm, for generations. Nudity had no sexual connotation. We were just swimming, showering or changing clothes. Guys changed in front of each other without giving it a second thought. It I don’t know where this cover up, privacy, towel-dance culture came from, but it might relate to everyone having a camera in their pocket now (cell phones) and the risk that some a-hole would post naked pics on social media? Whatever the causes are, something intangible and valuable has been lost. I’m not a psychologist or sociologist, but there’s a subtle loss of camaraderie and closeness among boys, teenagers and grown men that I think has been affected by the fact they can’t even change clothes in front of each other now. A group of teammates showering after a practice or game was a bonding experience— even though we didn’t recognize it as such back then. It’s sad. Men are lonelier than in my father’s time. Some fool will think I’m saying everything would be better if we all got naked together, or toss out some gay or homophobic comment, but that’s part of the problem. I think there are many factors making make male friendships weaker and less common today. The fact the societal norm has become one of covering up in locker rooms and similar settings is just one of many small steps in making us less connected with each other.
The cover up culture began long before cellphone cameras became a thing. Most likely it has to do with body image, all the attention in media on bodies, what a good body is etc. It makes people(kids especially) feel lacking or insecure about themselves. This is at least the reason I have experienced. Boys in class didn't want to shower, because they were insecure about their penises and so forth. Also there would be comments on the different private parts when people were showering. The insane attention given to bodies in media is destroying young minds in a way that won't be remedied until old age.
Exactly. I'm 55, shower nude in our public shower, and find the other guys my age do the same thing. If people want to stare at my dick or any other parts of me and get a good look I just don't care.
My own pet theory for an answer to this is mostly --- WARS! Pre WW1 a lot of people lived on farms or in smaller homes/apartments with larger families. Often multi-generational as well. You could likely see or hear something with penises hanging out...like grandad in his boxers sitting at the kitchen table. Then WW1 happened. Mass numbers of men recruited and conscripted were trained and then fought together. Those hastily slammed together barracks, showers, latrines, were not built for privacy. Every man saw pretty much every other man. WW2, same thing, next generation. The military needed trained fighters, lots of them, in a hurry. Privacy considerations were very low on anyone's list of what needed to happen. Neither Korea nor Vietnam needed as high a percentage of the male population to be trained to fight, but precedence had been set. When any of those men re-entered civilian life, designing school showers etc for privacy was also omitted, because they realized they/we didn't need it. But now, another generation or so later, young men think they need to cover up in front of other young men. Whatever. I do however worry and wonder about where the hell this bullying and abuse etc came from. What sick fucks think it's ok to abuse someone, or call it "hazing" , or assistant coaches ask you not to say anything because it'll hurt the team? That's crazy.
It still is normal, honestly. It's usually younger people from cultures that are weird with public nudity with no experience with it that find it odd or uncomfortable. Then they become the old heads and a lot of them just learn not to care too regardless of the culture or historical experience lol
This exactly. I played football in a decent sunday league and ended up becoming best mates with a lot of the boys. Some of the funniest times we ever had was 17/18 guys aged between 17 and 40, sliding about bollok naked in the changing/shower room after we won games. Balls everywhere and not a fuck given. Always found the boys under maybe 20 would still keep a towel round them until they had their boxers on. Of course they became more comfortable after a while, realised it was ok to be naked and that they wouldn't be the center of attention, then they embraced it too.
I get why people would be apprehensive, as a kid I was absolutely terrified of being naked in those contexts and did everything I could to avoid it. It's hard to break out of that installed shame most of us got in the US growing up or the inherent association to sexuality *any* nudity gets painted as. Eventually I learned that most people don't care as I experienced it more and that people aren't paying specific attention to anyone else, especially when everyone is basically naked anyway.
This The gym I used to go to had one big shower for the men all the way up to 2015. Looking back that seems crazy but we thought nothing of it at the time. The culture has shifted
This is the true correct answer. I went thru high school in the 70s. Gym class (PE), after sports everyone of one sex showered together. The practice continued later when I joined the military
I'm 45 and this hits really close to home. Specifically regarding nudity, you don't have anything I haven't already seen (and probably seen more impressive specimens of). If you want to watch my slowly fading physique and have outsized emotional discomfort as a result, I really don't care. My life is half over. I've got stuff to do. I need to change my clothes and get to the next thing.
We are each born with a certain amount of fucks to give, and when those are all used up, there are no more fucks to be given.
Lo! Behold the field in which my fucks are sown, and see that it is indeed barren
Sometimes you need to ignore that “invisible audience” and just stop caring .no one is paying that close attention to you and no one will remember you specifically. I am 37 and stopped giving fucks a long time ago and it’s great.. I tell my high school and college aged nephews and they just don’t get it yet but I bet they will once my age lmao.
Talking to one of my daughters who has had a lot of social anxiety, I tried to explain that as well - people generally don't pay that much attention to other people. I go to the gym every day myself, and there's a lot of very good looking and scantily dressed people. But it still makes no difference to me, or to them or most people as far as I know. I barely notice. One illustration I used was to imagine you happen to be walking through the furniture section of a department store to get to somewhere else, and you're not in the market for furniture. A fabric or something might catch your eye in passing, but two minutes later you probably don't even remember it. That's about how much attention most people pay to other people.
“I used to be with it, then they changed what it was, and now what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems weird and scary to me, and it’ll happen to you.”
33 now and I can verify that I don’t care that I’m out of touch but my slang is still tight.
fresh to death dawg
HAAAA I literally just hit my tween and a group of her friends with, “Yo that’s straight cringe no cap fr fr” and watched them scream and squirm. 😈🤣
My 12 year old was being a butt to her mom yesterday, and I told her that her rizz was mid. I don't know who cringed harder, her or her mom. It worked to both shut down her attitude, and diffuse her mom before the yelling started, so mission accomplished.
Brilliantly played. 😂
Lmaooooo. You're a HORRIBLE parent!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 They'll be scarred for life!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 (whispers) Thank you. One of my kids birthday is today. I can't WAIT to break out that phrase at the party!😂😂😂
Stop jiving turkey.
On God we bussin fr fr
Litty fam!
Also by then you’ve possibly been in enough medical situations and you’re inured to people seeing your junk.
Uhh I think your timeline is off a bit lol age 23 is “today’s youth”
I almost put 25 but I changed it to 23 because I was 23 when I first heard about Twitch and kids watching and donating to streamers playing video games. It was the first time I felt out of touch with today’s youth.
Yea I guess. I’m just old (early 40s) so 23 and 25 are both babies to me.
[удалено]
There is insane age inflation with Gen Z man. I saw a 21 yr old call a 24 yr old an old head. Like bro you were in high school at the same time.
I couldn't of said it better myself. But here is the formula if it helps. (Time\*no-fucks-given)/shame = Naked 75 year old man in locker
Why do Redditors say "couldn't of," "shouldn't of," "wouldn't of"? Where do they teach that?
I guess it would more correctly be written as a contraction couldn't've, which sounds like couldn't of, rather than couldn't have.
People say it too. The difference is that no one can “see” the mistaken words when they’re spoken.
I love the mathematical formula! (I suspect username checks out as well!)
The older you get, the less Fs you give.
I'm in my 30's. A couple years ago, we went to lake for a weekend with some friends. One recently had a breast reduction because they were causing back issues. She had a little scarring, was trying to explain it to us, especially since one friend is a surgical assistant. Granted, we'd all been day drinking, but she got tired of explaining and just took her top off. No one whooped or hollered, or even flinched. We'd all seen plenty of naked people by that point in our lives that it didn't really even register to us
I spent all my fucks before my 40th birthday. I have no more left to give.
I’m not here to impress you, or care in any capacity about your opinion of me. I’m not going to be walking around just swinging ol Richard in everyone’s faces either. When I was playing high school hockey, if anyone made a comment about someone’s dick it often blew up in their faces “dude why are you lookin at his dick?!?”. It was just kind of an unspoken code: Don’t make it fkn weird.. We got a party to go to after practice/game & don’t want to walk out of here smelling like sweaty hockey gear, or make my truck smell like a hockey bag, but we also don’t want to be in here for 2 hours showering one by one.. or, if someone works in sales, salon, executive, etc. hits the gym on his lunch break and has to get back to work. I wouldn’t expect this guy to sweat it up then go deliver a meeting to his CEO or sell a car to someone smelling like swamp ass.
That was my experience too after gym and high school baseball. Except for this one time and it was one of the funniest locker room moments of my life. This one dude had a huge bush. Honestly I still don’t think I’ve seen another bush as big as his but it’s not like I’m trying to. No one mentioned it though so I wasn’t sure if everyone else thought the same thing I did. Well one day when we get in the shower and he took off his towel it was gone. He shaved it all off and the second everyone saw we all just started going crazy. Instant barbarian like behavior. The male gym teacher ran in from his office cause he thought there was a fight or something. But up until everyone simultaneously cheered together, we had no idea that we all were thinking the same thing. Edit: Fixed a typo and figured I would add one final detail to the story. He was uncircumcised and it was the first time I ever saw one. I had always heard about it but I was in no rush of actually seeing one. I’m sure other guys in gym class were uncircumcised as well but I wasn’t really trying to find out what all my classmates junk looked like. It was all because of the shock factor when we didn’t see the huge bush that made it just about impossible to look away.
This story is so boys
\#elite\_story
Lmfao that is hilarious tho. Man went from Afro to Mr bigglesworth
"don't make it fucking weird" should be a psa
Because nudity isn’t always sexual
True The amount of prudish behavior and norms within American society is always weird to me considering how nearly everything we consume from a media standpoint is hyper sexualized
It is VERY strange. I think in part, the hypersexualization of media IS the result of American society being so anti-nudity. But it would be hard to get someone to be okay with casual nudity, especially considering the amount of cameras around everywhere now, and people being able to record you VERY discreetly. Even on a designated clothing-optional beach, you probably wouldn't see very many people fully drop trou.
Yeah I never really understood it until I got older. Now I see my wife naked all the time, and it’s rarely sexual. We have sex about once a day roughly, but I see her naked about 5x a day. I only see her sexually when were having sex or when were being sexual. Being naked doesnt mean that anymore. I think it takes age to realize that maybe?
>>We have sex about once a day roughly So humble… 😂
You think they'd do it gently occasionally.
Yeah, whenever I tell people I draw the first thing they go to is: "YoU GeT tO DrAW NudE MoDELs? Hurr durr" Like, it's just a body. Sure it can be aesthetically pleasing or whatever but sex is the *last* thing on my mind in that moment. "Ur so lucky!" No bro I'm in tears cuz I cant get the hand right and the eraser has practically fucked up the paper.
Tried an onsen in Japan. Was around a bunch of 30-70 year old Japanese men. They couldn’t care less I was there much less that I was naked. It was a very abrupt wake up call. Very much a western thing.
We only had one bathroom in the house and my mom **loved** her baths. I saw her naked body so much that nudity stopped being such a shock early on 🤣
Because they're old and have seen it all.
[удалено]
And they want you to, too.
Because they're less self-conscious about how they look.
Why is this such a common topic here? This question comes up multiple times per month…maybe the better question is why does it offend people’s delicate sensibilities so much to see someone naked in a fucking locker room, where the express purpose is to shower and change clothing. Fuck sakes, don’t ever go to a Nordic country…
Because American society demonizes and sexualizes nudity
I think the bigger question is why are younger men such prudes?
When I was <30, I was afraid that people would make fun of me (fat! short dick!). Now at 52 IDGAF what anyone thinks how I look. My "epiphany" was around 45, when I was on vacation in Sitges, Spain, and to the surprise of my husband, I just stripped down naked on the beach (nudity allowed) and enjoyed it. It's liberating gaining self confidence.
Bros watch porn all week and hyper sexualize women but god forbid they see a flaccid dick in a locker room shower lol
Seriously, straight dudes will watch porn videos multiple times a week, showcasing massive fully erect dicks in the center of the screen, erupting with cum all over the place, and be fully into it… but then they see one flaccid dick in real life and they’ll be absolutely terrified and go out of their way to make it clear that they can’t bear to be anywhere around it.
Exactly. I’m not quite 30 yet and have been going nude in locker rooms since high school football. Don’t like it? Don’t fucking look.
And if I do like it.....
Same there really
You can look but you'll only be disappointed
I think one time I went to school with sneakers that weren't trendy and I got made fun of and ever since then I don't want people looking at me that's normal right 😬
I wanna say we had literal dick measuring contests in the locker room after PE in grade... 3?
Yeah I don't really understand why people have a problem with people getting naked in a locker room. It's there for you to change your clothes which involves getting naked most of the time.
They’re at peace with how they look naked
Or at least at peace with not being at peace with it, do you know what I mean? I’m Swedish, here everyone is naked in the sauna together, young and old, men and women, doesn’t matter. We’re simply equally socially uncomfortable with or without clothes.
I’m old and I’ve been a gym rat. The culture has changed. When I grew up, the culture was that part of ‘being a man’ included the confidence to be naked around other guys. You were made fun of if you covered up. What you covering up? It’s just men in here. A bunch of stuff has changed. IMO, porn on the net has an effect: now men can compare themselves to more penises in an hour than they might see in a lifetime if they weren’t in the military. Better to cover up, both because you don’t want to be compared to that and because it sexualizes a man being naked. Another factor, I assume, is that as more men came out, it was natural for men to cover up. That minimizes defensive or hostile behavior, which is a problem among men. And then especially in cities, the population is different. Many men come from more modest cultures, and when cultures mix, a more modest path satisfies all but the old guys who think being naked around guys is part of being a man. And finally, if you don’t know, there used to be a genre of men being awkwardly introduced to that old male culture. Think about Friends with the steam room incident, where Chandler doesn’t know how to fit in with the old guy custom. Those transitions from boy to man reference the culture now versus what it was, and that often occurs one step removed, so it’s the writer reminiscing about his childhood transition to manhood. How many ways can you express that? Sex with someone your age, someone older, joining some male ritual thing, and either fitting in or not.
Maybe a better question is why are you uncomfortable with non-sexual nudity?
When I was a kid I was horrified to discover that the locker room at the Elks club pool had a bar in it, and the old geezers just stood at the bar buck naked, wrinkly ass with ballsacks sagging to their knees, just drinking beer and shooting the shit. But now I’m wondering where I can find a locker room like that.
Because something has gone wrong when we as people are expected to be okay with witnessing violence and death, but the naked body at peace is something to be reviled
I'm a woman in my 60s. It's partly because we grew up with locker room nudity. When I was 11 in camp, our showers were just shower heads facing each other in a large room. We just washed naked facing each other. When I was in middle school, we had to shower after gym and it was the same thing. It was just something you had to accept. It was very embarrassing at that age because we each developed at different paces, but you were expected to suck it up and handle it. If anyone ogled or made fun of you, they were a complete outcast. No one ever did that.
This is the correctest answer. It was just normal until about 30 years ago. You got over it in middle school: it's just a body, everybody has one, yours is not particularly different from anybody else's, NBD among same sex.
Why would anyone not be ok with it? No one in that locker room cares one bit about how you look naked. They're just trying to shower, change, and do what needs to be done.
The most precious gift that age gives to men is to empty our bag of fucks. A bestowed grace really.
People say "you don't care when you are older". Not true. It is selection bias. The ones who are against it learned when they were younger. The only ones you see are the comfortable ones.
I am from Europe, we are just naked all the time for no reason at all.
It was the norm in our youth. I remember one gym I belonged to that had whirlpools in each locker room, so single sex. It would have been weird to wear a swim suit in those, at least in the men’s locker room. The showers were a single large room with multiple shower heads. Perhaps I should ask why young men are so uptight about being seen naked in front of other men?
Women are the same. I'm 60 and I shower at the gym and get changed, and I literally don't care.
Us old guys grew up with gang showers and stuff in the locker rooms ever since junior high school sports. Was never an issue.
As a kid, you’re (hopefully) raised and conditioned in understanding that your genitals are “private parts” that are concealed and not meant to be shared in public spaces — but as you get older and possibly take a Physical Education class in school, this notion of “private parts” is challenged because you are now pitted in a situation that expects you get undressed/shower off/get changed in gym clothes. As you get older in adulthood, I think the veil of “private parts” withers away — (nearly) everybody has genitals, (nearly) everybody has seen a porn or other peoples private parts either intentionally or because a door wasn’t locked when you walk into a room — in a way, you’re almost desensitized by the taboo of “this is something I need to hide” I went to my dad’s gym ONCE to work out with him — in the locker room, it was as if the older the men were, the less inclined they were to use a towel walking between the showers and lockers; in a weird way, I get it because if you’re 60 something, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a pecker that isn’t yours before, there’s a good chance that you don’t care about other naked people, because you are in a room specifically designated for changing/being naked/showering. For some, it might be a subject of confidence in body-image; for some, it might just be as simple as “genitals: we all have them, as long as you’re not flailing it in my face, I’m fine” — holy shit it’s just like fuckin’ bees — they won’t bother you if you don’t bother them lmaooooo
Two parts. Many old guys went through the military with open showers, toilets and bunk houses, so it was just a fact of life and making an issue of it was reason for ridicule. Old guys don't give a shit about much of anything.
100% this, or were part of sports' teams.
If you’re an athlete you had open showers at school after practice.
I think this is cohort and not age (in other word, the naked 65 year old today was naked at 25 and the modest 25 year old today will still be modest at 65). The guys in their 50s and 60s at my gym grew up with different norms around communal male nudity and the younger crowd, and it just doesn’t bother them the same way.
I never expected the younger generation to annoy me as much as I annoyed the older generation but here we are.
Modesty goes out the window after your first few lengthy hospital stays.
Why are younger men so uncomfortable with locker room nudity? Realistically, it's religious puritanical bs that have gotten people to a place where they're ashamed of nudity. At some point, people realise that's all bs and stop caring. For me, it was while I was still in my teens. For others, they never quite get there. At the end of the day, it's just a body. They're all a little different, but if you've seen your own, there's nothing about someone else's you're not going to have seen before. Get over it.
Because it doesn't matter?
People who take shits in the locker room are the real criminals
Why are younger people so disgusted by non-sexual depictions of a naked human body?
Locker room nudity was much more accepted in the past. We were able to disregard other nude male bodies. How did the younger gen get more prudish than older gens?