The Naked Swim
April 25, 2007
Here I am at 14, in the worst suit of all time. Orrin’s on the left in the fashionable sports jacket ensemble.
It was 1974 . President Nixon was still in the White House. Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record. All in the Family was the #1 TV show.
I was in Middle School. It was The Awkward Years.
The part we all dreaded was swim class. Incredibly, all boys took swimming classes naked, an enforced rule due to the different standards of the time. This naked swimming practice wasn’t just in public schools, it was widespread: in Boy Scouts, Summer Camps and YMCAs. It was even going on in Europe and I’m sure all over the world.
The people in charge gave us the reasons to swim naked, but there was one lingering question. Why were girls allowed to wear bathing suits and not us?
Naked swimming did teach us about hygiene, something that seems to be sorely lacking in today’s schools, and being comfortable in our own skin. But did this institutionalized practice of parading adolescent boys around naked do more harm than good?
I got invaluable help in creating this episode by several of my old classmates who emailed me their Eyewitness Accounts.
If you went through something similar like gym horror stories or bad coaches, please post your stories and comments. Please, no names!
April 25, 2007 at 25:24 pm
[...] on The Blogincluding eyewitness [...]
April 25, 2007 at 25:47 pm
Well, I’m glad that someone finally raised this issue in a serious way. I too was subjected to the naked-swim tortures. When I was 13, I had a hernia operation which left a bright red scar near my private parts. It was simply something I didn’t want to be sharing with 30 other boys. So I went to Mr. D…, our swimming instructor, explained the situation and asked to be excused from swimming for a few months until things healed. He said, “Aw c’mon, it can’t be that bad. Drop your pants and let’s take a look!” So I naively did. And he said, “Aw, it’s nothing. You are NOT excused!” So I spent the next few months in swim class, trying to hold up various objects in front of my private parts to protect the view. Naked swimming — it was institutional psychosis. Thanks, Jerry, for providing this therapy forum.
April 27, 2007 at 27:34 pm
When I was in high school we had a gym teacher- He was supposed to have been a former Mr. Universe or something, with huge arms and a pickled face. He always carried this clipboard around, and was pretty sadistic. He ran us miles and miles, until we dropped. As in Jerry’s class, we too had to stand out in the cold, no matter what the season. I remember many times having to run in the freezing, early morning rain — all of us shivering and soaked to he bone — wearing only our T-shirts, shorts, socks & shoes.
May 1, 2007 at 01:27 am
You know the first Olympics was all naked. I guess they were extra careful when running the relay race when handing off the baton.
It was this sort of thing we’d always joke about as kids while at track & fields meets.
May 11, 2007 at 11:34 pm
I am 69 years old. I graduated from Eugene High School in 1955, and that Fall I began attending the University of Oregon in Eugene. At that time, one could NOT graduate with a degree (4 years) WITHOUT PROOF that he or she could swim! One either took a swimming test to prove that they could swim, or took swimming for PE one term. Now I grew up using the neighborhood skinny dipping hole in a “backwater” of the Willamette River, but I had never really become a good swimmer. So the very first term in college I took swimming for PE, to get that requirement for graduation “out of the way.” And it was required that we swim nude. No reason was ever given. Since I had grown up skinny dipping with the neighborhood boys and girls, I was “OK” with the nude swimming PE class UNTIL it was time to learn to dive from the diving board. Somehow, being up there on the diving board nude, for all to see, made me VERY uncomfortable. Looking back, I can’t help but “wonder” about the teacher’s hands-on
showing me how to move my legs for swimming. At any rate,
I learned how to dive from the diving board nude, and passed
the PE swimming class to prove that I could swim, and did graduate from the University of Oregon after completing all other requirements
May 12, 2007 at 12:34 am
It was the early to mid 1960’s at Chicago’s Albert G. Lane Technical High School. The embarassments included bare assed swims in a very cold pool (which proved to me that all boys are created equal, if the temperature is cold enough.
It was an all boys high school, so we didn’t have to suffer the fear of being surprised by teenaged girls. But it was the end of the Brylcreme era, so we had to shower all the grease out of the hair before we got into the pool. The gym teacher had upper class lifeguard (who got to wear trunks) and members of the swim team at the entrance to the pool making sure we didn’t make an oil slick in the deep end.
In addition to being obsessed with making us swim nude (Johnny Weismueller had swum in this pool in this state some thirty years before us and who did we think we were to object), at least one of the gym teachers was obsessed by jock straps. He did regular checks, pulling the waistband up from behind. It wasn’t a wedgie, it was much more painful, as your testicles attempted to ascend back into a place of safety and warmth.
May 19, 2007 at 19:52 pm
Damn, we must be about the same age…1974 was also the year the Ramones started, told to me by Johnny Ramone himself may he RIP!
May 20, 2007 at 20:10 am
Back when I was in HS we also had horrible times with swimming.
We weren’t swimming nude at all because it was co-ed gym class, but the suits that we were forced to wear were either way too tight, or way too loose. And appeared to be from the 40’s and a faded brown color.
I remember we would all wind up fighting over the baggy trunks and I actually came out in a victory getting a pair. After class when I went to my locker to get dressed I noticed that the pull string somehow got in a knot … and it was a seriously tough knot at that. I spent several moments trying to get it untied in a panic not even having enough time to towel myself off.
I was already late for my next class, and I had enough, so I managed to grab an old key from my bag and tried to saw through the thick rope like drawstring. Finally getting it off I threw it to the side, got dressed, and began running to my next class that just happened to be across the street in another building…. during winter… and I was hardly dry.
Needless to say I was frozen stiff.
June 21, 2007 at 21:32 pm
June 22, 2007 at 22:20 am
Parkland HS, 1976 Orefield,PA checking in
July 4, 2007 at 04:47 pm
[...] revlogging their latest opus (read what Jerry writes about his naked swim trauma by CLICKING HERE) we present you a RED CARPET INTERVIEW with Jerry just before the award ceremonies. And of course [...]
August 7, 2007 at 07:47 pm
We did the naked swim at Cathedral Prep High School in Erie, PA back in the early 70’s. The pool and the air temperature were always very cold, as I recall. It’s an all-boys Catholic school, and they told us we couldn’t wear trunks because we would probably leave them in the lockers and contaminate the pool water with cumulative mold. Funny, they didn’t have any problem doing a mass search of our regular lockers whenever they felt like it, but making the janitor sweep through the gym lockers after swim class was too much! They eventually allowed trunks, some time after I graduated.
August 30, 2007 at 30:33 am
I actually prefer to swim naked.
September 11, 2007 at 11:32 pm
I live in Australia, and although I don’t remember their ever being a culture of nudie gym class swims, as a kid I think although I would’ve preferred not to go nude I wouldn’t have a huge problem with it. Makes you think though, as their is probably no nationwide US gym class instructors nude-boy watching conspiracy, they really have no reason to enforce boys to go nude swimming.
September 18, 2007 at 18:50 am
Jerry, you brough back some painful memories. We also got ‘invaded” by the girls swim class, in their swimsuits, us bareass (and barefront) It was humiliating to ask any of the girls on a date, since they all had already ’seen all of our goods” LOL…
September 19, 2007 at 19:10 am
Jerry, and lets not forget the decision of school authorities to have doorless and or stall-less toilets in the boys bathrooms. Girls always had locking doors, and seemed fascinated to walk into the boys bathrooms after lunch, knowing they would catch us sitting on the toilets relieving ourselves. Female teachers also felt they had a free pass to walk in and ‘check for smokers” whenever they wanted. Talk about embarrasing ……………
September 28, 2007 at 28:39 pm
Gambatte, Mike! Which is Japanese for “persevere, never give up.” Jerry
October 4, 2007 at 04:53 am
Jerry….how does that pertain to anything?
October 4, 2007 at 04:54 am
LOL
October 10, 2007 at 10:27 pm
The Jr. High School I attended in Massachusetts (1968-1969) was so old (1880’s) that it didn’t have a functional gymnasium. So the 8th grade boys would take their weekly 2 hour PE class at the YMCA gymnasium down the street.(This was pre-Title IX, so the girls could still take their class on the playground during spring and fall and take an indoor “health” class during the winter, as did all 7th graders.
Every third week, after changing from our school clothes to regulation gym shorts, T-Shirts and sneakers, and having 30 min. of exercise in the gym, we would have an hour of swimming in the Y’s pool. Although we had heard from older students that we would all have to be nude for this part of our class, I can still remember being quite surprised the first day when the teacher announced at the end of exercise: “Go downstairs to your lockers, take off all of your clothes, and line up at the entrance to the shower room.”
So along with 25 classmates, I stripped naked, lined up and waited until we were told to walk beneath a running shower to rinse off before walking down a corridor to the pool deck. We did as we were told, and no one questioned why. To me, it kind of made sense: why go to the trouble of bringing a bathing suit, and then have to carry it around while wet all day, when all that inconvenience could be avoided by going into the pool without any clothing.
It was all completely innocent. As far as I know, no one felt uncomfortable. For a few weeks prior, we had been required to take a group shower in an open communal shower room after gym class, so we were already accustomed to being nude in each other’s presence. It actually felt liberating to be able to engage in an activity without clothing. The only uneasiness I recall had nothing to do with being nude per se, but rather related to the fact that I had reached puberty much earlier than almost all of my classmates, so I stood out as different having fully grown pubic hair.
October 30, 2007 at 30:02 am
Wow. I’m suddenly glad to have been growing up in the nearer present time. O.o When I was in school, by law the coaches couldn’t even force us to shower since it was a communal shower - they can’t force us to strip for any reason, unless official police strip searchers are present. No coach would even dare to say we had to - doing so would risk a sexual harrassment lawsuit.
November 3, 2007 at 03:26 pm
We had naked swimming in our Junior Highchool in Edina, Minnesota. This was F**** UP, our gym teacher in this day and age would have been put in prison for a very very long sentence. He was truly an old pervert, who should have never been teaching gym classes to young boys. Today, the High School pool in Edina Minnesota is named in honor of this f***. If I saw him today, he’s already dead, I’d punch square in the jaw and know his lights out. That F***@^&%!!!
November 20, 2007 at 20:51 am
swimming nude healthy and refreshing!!! Just gotta get used to being nude. Will help bring your school grades up.
November 24, 2007 at 24:27 am
When I was in middle school and high school in the 1950s, we were required to swim nude and take communal showers. The same was true at YMCAs. At the University of MN in 1957, all new students were required to submit to physical examinations and had to wait around nude. At that time, a boy who was uncomfortable with being nude with other boys was assumed to have serious mental problems. I hid the fact that I was uncomfortable for that reason.
Nudity should be optional and there should be provision for those who are uncomfortable with it.
December 17, 2007 at 17:07 pm
I also attended Lane H.S. in Chicago, graduating in 1971. There was plenty of nervous tension about attending Lane knowing we were required to swim naked. Fortunately I had pubic hair and had developed some as many other 14 years olds do. Once we finally took the plunge, so to speak, we had to undress in a locker room, then take a communal shower and finally be inspected by the lifeguards who, by the way, were allowed to wear swim suits.
Once together however the naked part was soon overlooked and in fact I would actually feel sorry for the few 14 year olds that hadn’t started puberty, at all…….with their baby soft smooth bodies and little equipment, lol.
December 29, 2007 at 29:29 pm
i was in the 8th grade. i had changed schools. in the 7th grade i didn’t play n e football or n e thing. my new class mates talked me into playing football with them, so on the first day of my football practice, after practice i kept my tidy whities on and the coach made me take them off so i could take a shower with the other boys. it was the next to last class and he didn’t want me to go to my last class stkinkin’. after the first day, i was used to it an’ it didn’t bother me n e.
December 31, 2007 at 31:47 am
I was in 7th grade in the 70s and I swam nude for 12 weeks with 50 class mates. After the first few days it was not a big deal except at least once a week one of the female gym teachers would come into the pool area to get a look.
January 9, 2008 at 09:02 pm
Heritage High School, Littleton, CO. 10th grade, 1972. New high school, new swimming pool. I hated PE anyway. And I didn’t know how to swim. There was some new requirement with the new school that everyone had to take a swimming class. All PE-classes were single-sex, except that the swim classes were co-ed, I guess to make better use of the facilities. Anyway, I took a beginning-swimming class. The class was full(crowded) of students that already knew how to swim and was taking a beginning-level because it was “easier” (The following year, you couldn’t get into the beginning class unless you could prove you couldn’t swim!). I was one of two boys in the class that absolutely couldn’t swim. The woman coach they had teaching the class didn’t have time to teach the two of us to swim becuase the class was too full. So the two of us were put into the charge of the student-assistant. The other guy learned to swim. I showed up in my swimsuit everyday, and stood in a corner of the shallow end of the pool. For that, I got the passing grade of “C”. All the boys wore nearly identical dark blue swim trunks that were about like white briefs(underwear) in cut. To this day, I can’t swim. The showers were communal. I hear that these days, because of some Title IX requirement for equal PE instruction, all PE classes are co-ed, and many of the contact-sports have been eliminated.
January 27, 2008 at 27:13 pm
I had a ymca membership after getting my first permanent f/t job so I could to weight training. that way I wouldnt get bullied anymore. it worked.
I could never ever ever ever ever figure out why the fuk swim trunks were banned. so I stopped using the pool time and only went when it was mixed gender and trunks were mandatory.
January 31, 2008 at 31:05 pm
i was in this class and he touched me…its was so good i moaned all night even when he came i loved it..
February 24, 2008 at 24:35 pm
I also attended Lane Tech in Chicago in the late 60’s. All swim classes were in the nude and I also loved to go to the local “Y” to swim on Saturday. The “Y” was a no suit venue too. I guess that I never thought about why did we need to be nude.d
February 26, 2008 at 26:34 am
i was in the boy scouts in the 70’s and on a field trip to a forest we camped on a river and swam and played naked all day now that im older i think that our scout leader was a pedofile but i wasnt touched or seen anyone molested but he sure liked us naked i didnt mind after all we all have the same parts and its only flesh and i got a great tan
February 26, 2008 at 26:57 pm
I had nude swimming in senior high. I took junior high in another district and had gym class where the teacher made syre we had the right color. The summer after I graduated high school I visited Europe and spent time on a nude beach in Denmark. It was just like any beach except most were nude. What is with the big stink in this country over skinny dipping? Sides, if you are going to marry somebody both of you should be nude before so you know what you are getting.
March 1, 2008 at 01:29 pm
I did the nude swimming in gym class. It was 1970-1973 in a suburban Chicago high school. At first I was very scared
because I was afraid of getting beaten up, or worse, by the older kids. I started high school early, and I was physically immature at about 4′10′ and 87 pounds. I was also very apprehensive about the prospect of corporal punishment as the swim class would be the worst possible time for it. It turned out okay. The older kids left freshman alone, and the coach was sympathetic to our insecurities and did what he could to smooth things over. It was eventually a liberating feeling to swim nude without any fear or carnal self-consciousness.
March 13, 2008 at 13:46 am
Actually, I did not really take pe naked. however, If i had forgotenned to wear my pe attire that day(it happens most of the time), I was made to take pe naked and mine was a mix school! how humuliating. Sometimes , I got caning by my parents the day before usually 5 - 7 srtokes. However, there was once i did somethng real bad , and I was caned countless times until my skin tore. It bled. Afterwhich, I was not allowed to redress.(i was naked) I was made to stand outside the door of my house and do pushups . How my ass really hurt.
April 4, 2008 at 04:28 pm
1968-69 …Thacker Junior High School in Des Plaines Illinois was the scene of my naked swimming experience. It was weird at the time, but the creepiness factor has increased substantially as times have changed and I now look back. If our coach “Coach K” observed any horseplay, he would have us come out of the pool, stand on the edge, and plant a “rose” on our ass…basically his handprint. Pretty unbelievable. I now wonder about whether he got any thrills out of this.
Fortunately, we moved to our newly built school in eighth grade which thankfully did not have an indoor pool.
April 10, 2008 at 10:23 am
Catholic schools in the 70s were oppressive in many ways.
Required p.e. showers, required gym “jockey” straps, slaps to the face,
required swimming in the buff, forced work with no pay to take down chairs after Bingo, etc. Not to mention “the paddle” at about 2.5 feet long and 6″ wide with 30-35 airholes, made of oak. Maybe I was bicurious or just an exhibitionist, but I had no problem at all with swim class, not even when I had paddlewelts on my keyster and got teased about it. I liked girls, but the thought of 30-35 athletic, tanned classmates swimming in the buff together had an attraction all its own. But it was innocent, not sexual. Some of the coaches may have been ephebophiles, but if they were they did not use corporal punishment nearly as often as they could have.
April 12, 2008 at 12:29 am
I am not really sure of this subject matter; but swimming naked, i think was to get the male population to get ready for WAR. The point was to shape the male to feel comfortable in close quarter situations. To rid the male of this discomfort would enable the highest percent of survive due to hygiene.
April 22, 2008 at 22:43 pm
[...] revlogging their latest opus (read what Jerry writes about his naked swim trauma by CLICKING HERE) we present you a special page where you’ll find a Red Carpet Interview with Jerry just [...]
May 3, 2008 at 03:00 pm
I had swimming in gym and the clothing code was we could wear whatever. I did it in jock whereas everybody did it in speedo or girls panties. There was an exception. We had water polo and half the guys were “skins” which meant wear nothing. The last day the coach promised a surprise. First the whole class was told to strip and then some of the girls ran though and screamed while looking at us. Turned out the girls’ class had girls that wanted to look so they had talked the teacher into letting them streak and making us strip for the girls. Several girls went into the cage nude. They handed out the towels while watching the showers. There were a few woodies and the girls let us know that they knew.
May 8, 2008 at 08:05 pm
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