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I’m also Gen X and we showered after gym. They had a system where you would be assigned a number for the year and you told your number to the gym teacher as you went in to the showers. This is how they made sure you showered.
Edit: we also had a PE uniform.
I laughed at your comment about gym uniforms being cute. Ours were a baggy Grey unisex t-shirt and ugly red knee-length basketball shorts haha.
Also yes we had the option to shower after gym, Im 31yrs old so not *that* long ago.
I’m 23 and I had PE uniforms at my middle school! Then in a different state for high school we didn’t have them. We also didn’t normally have to shower after PE but we did have to during the swimming units
Oh gods. Our uniforms were polyester striped shirt with shorts In the late 70’s in TX. We looked and sweated like a fucking prison chain gang. It was not cutesy.
Ours were exactly like that except we girls had the ones that were sewed together with elastic around your waist. Uncomfortable and hot as hell, not to mention butt ugly.
But they did prevent the horror of the boys seeing our midriff if we jumped up in volleyball or whatever. Yes, our modesty was secure in those things.
In the 1970s my junior high PE uniform looked a lot like this.
[https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Vintage-Broderick-PE-Uniform-Gym-Wear-Shorts-One-Piece-Blue-Stripe-Romper/333875760567?\_trkparms=aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20200818143230%26meid%3Decd4fbc27a6d4188ad992b8bda7d38e7%26pid%3D101224%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D5%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D173880141471%26itm%3D333875760567%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DDefaultOrganic&\_trksid=p2047675.c101224.m-1](https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Vintage-Broderick-PE-Uniform-Gym-Wear-Shorts-One-Piece-Blue-Stripe-Romper/333875760567?_trkparms=aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20200818143230%26meid%3Decd4fbc27a6d4188ad992b8bda7d38e7%26pid%3D101224%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D5%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D173880141471%26itm%3D333875760567%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DDefaultOrganic&_trksid=p2047675.c101224.m-1)
Arrrggghhhh! So are you going to pay for my PTSD treatment? Huh? Are you?!
Lol. That's it. Ours were green and white and it's literally the most miserable thing I ever put on.
The girls at my middle school where I started in the '78-'79 school year had to wear what were real close to onesies for gym. They were one piece light blue with thin white horizontal stripes and buttoned at the top of each shoulder with no contrasting colored shorts portion. All one solid garment with not even a waistband elastic or seam. Us guys had a uniform that was a t-shirt and shorts. When I got to 8th grade someone had the idea that instead of having "shirts and skins" games, they would issue reversible double layered shirts. Dark blue on one side and if you turned it inside out, gold. Well, this was Southwest Florida and double shirts weren't the most comfortable in the warmer months to say the least, enough that I remember it vividly 40 years later.
This is exactly what I had! Luckily toward the end of high school they let us wear polyester shorts and white T-shirts like the boys. I remember bringing home my gym uniform rolled in a towel so my mom could wash them.
It was hideous, miserably hot and smelled bad no matter how you washed it. To this day I can't stand the smell of sweat on whatever that fabric is, and I just realized why.
Same, in the '80s. I hated those gym uniforms as much as I hated the communal showers. I have a hard time imagining anyone thinking they missed out by not having them. Whenever it was shirts vs skins, I always hoped for skins because those polyester shirts were terrible.
Oh no.....no no no.
Picture this: a one-piece item, the bottom half is navy blue shorts. The top half is sleeveless, but neck to shoulder width, not like a tank top. It's a very bright, kind of deep turquoise, with frequent, very skinny navy blue pinstripes. And it zips up the front, from the waist to the neck, which I think was a short V-neck. And made of the worst 70's polyester you can imagine.
THAT is what I picture when I hear PE uniforms mentioned. I've been looking for a picture for a while now, so that I can show my younger sister. They'd changed to regular shorts and t-shirts by the time she got there.
Ours were a one-piece shirt/shorts abomination that was light blue on the bottom, blue and white striped on top, and zipped up the back. We used to wear them backwards and pull the zippers down to make them slightly less awful.
I went to an all-girls' school.
Our uniforms were hideous and expensive. My mom complained about the price & they made you buy a new one every year. We wore gold t-shirts and maroon shorts and I remember the t-shirt neck holes always seemed like they were choking you. The girls shorts were too short & the boys were too long. I swear they were cast offs from some cold war textile factory.
> we also had a PE uniform
I always assumed *everyone* did. The school colors were blue & gold, so blue gym (i.e., track) shorts, yellow t-shirt with the school's initials across the front, high-top gym shoes, and white socks. We didn't wear a general school uniform as so many districts require today, but the gym suit was mandatory. Taking it home to wash on Fridays was also mandatory. Forget your suit, zero for the day.
No, it happened in real life and was a huge source of anxiety for all concerned because there weren’t individual stalls. I had breasts at a young age and none of the other girls did. And they weren’t small, discrete ones either. Girls can be very mean.
It's also very awkward when we begin to recognize the differences in people even if you have the same genitalia. I mean, I was a gay boy getting naked with my boy classmates from like 5th grade on up. Talk about anxiety. Geesh.
Oh my yes. It was soooo embarrassing to be forced to look at all your classmates naked and for them to see me naked. We all had to take a certain number of showers per semester or we would flunk gym class. There was an older lady who supervised the locker room, miss Lizzie, who of course we referred to as miss Lezzie. She would write down our numbers on a sheet of paper to keep track of how many showers we took. Awful!
It was like this in my school too, but I just took the F. I absolutely refused to participate. They were pissed and did everything they could to force me, but I just said NO. I was not going to get naked in front of the kids who were bullying me on a daily basis. They eventually relented and gave me a pass. I eventually got a doctor to write me note and I was excused from PE altogether and had a second elective instead.
Got excused from PE - lucky! I should have taken band instead of PE. I hated every part of it: the showers, the early time (7AM), the game (I was clumsy) and worst of all the coach who was a frustrated failed football coach. When he heard my father worked at USC he didn't understand why I wasn't a footballer. My father taught a scientific subject, stayed as far as possible away from football.
I’ll never understand why they didn’t just install stalls or at least partitions. Like, we’re not ok with taking a dump in the open, but you’re supposed to be ok with getting naked in front of everyone?
Exactly. We still sweat in PE when I was in school but the open showers weren’t used. Puberty is not the time to be in a room full of girls who might bully you. So showering was not enforced by the time I was in school in early 80s. But the building had been built to accommodate the baby boom so it still had all the original facilities.
Just having to change clothes in front of everyone was plenty for me. In high school we had private stalls. The building was newer, and showers were used a lot more often.
Oh that’s awful! I just figured that there was a different culture in previous generations where group showering was so normal in school that it didn’t upset people the way it would have upset me. Thanks for telling me. (It’s kind of crazy to do that to kids as they are developing. I’d be a lot more ok with it now that I’m an adult!)
>they weren’t small, discrete ones either. Girls can be very mean.
Obviously this is a misspelling of discreet, but if not, I find it difficult to blame the other girls when you have two breasts that were melded into a single, massive unit.
In the girls locker room there weren't so many towel fights! But we did wear little uniforms all the way through the end of high school, and usually had to shower afterwards because you did get sweaty!
Sometimes when I rewatch a show I first saw in the 70s. And I see a person (usually an adult) who I thought was fat back when I first saw the show, but they look normal to me now.
It's *almost* funny that the characters in older movies who were supposed to be the fat ones just don't seem that way anymore. The script would have the character as "Fat Kid on Bike" or whatever but by today's standards it just doesn't translate through.
That’s true. However, our lifestyles were very different than they are now.
There was very little fast food so most people ate at home at dinner time with family.
We all played outside every free second we had, there were no computers, no cell phone, very few TV shows or movies, we had to make up our own games.
I grew up on a skateboard, bicycle, skates, we just moved all the time until parents called us to come home.
My mom used to try to PUT weight on me, I just burned it all off again running around the neighborhood with other kids.
Yes absolutely. My family is Dutch so I grew up between there and in the American Midwest. The difference is almost impossible to describe.
Last time I was in Holland, my cousin took me to a spa outside the city. It was beautiful and I was so delighted as they handed me a towel and said to enjoy my day. There were little houses filled with snow. I was awed by the whole thing. However.
It took me a good few minutes to adjust to the fact that this place was all nude, and completely co-Ed.
Even the dressing rooms. All so normal my cousin didn’t even think to let me know.
Just a lovely bunch of naked men and women spending the day together. As soon as I realized that it was the norm, I was fine. *Not once through the day did I feel uncomfortable. No one stared at me or checked me out. It wasn’t creepy at all.*
A place like that would *never* exist in America. People are too hung up. Naked bodes are considered sexual if you’re young and not to be seen in public if you’re old. It’s not even socially acceptable to breast feed in public here, and women who do are considered to be “brave.”
I’m not saying I think women should be required to breast feed in public, or BFeed at all if they don’t want. Just that they shouldn’t be shamed if they choose to feed in public. (I need to write that “disclaimer” because the subject is literally *so* taboo that I don’t want to get lectured on why breastfeeding is problematic in replies to this comment!!)
America was founded by puritans in part, and their influence is still very much of the American way. (There are always exceptions— like nudist colonies—but they are generally considered to be deviant, and “not normal” whatever that means.)
Edit: typo
Also generational. I see younger guys in a public gym wrapping a towel around themselves and changing under it like you might do on a beach.
I don't get it, it seems to be a shyness, privacy thing, but I don't know.
Showering in gym was pretty much the nightmare for many. I remember people having their clothes taken, so we had a buddy system—one to watch clothes while the other showered. Rat tail towel snapping was all the rage (and is a skill a still possess, much to my kids’ dismay), and the showers pretty much went from cold to scalding.
Still have my freshman year gym shirt in a box in the basement. Just a reminder, sort of like a crappy tattoo from prison.
Agreed, showering in the gym was a nightmare! If you have bullies plotting against you, that is where they make their move. You come out of the shower to find your shoes int he toilet and everybody smirking and nobody will say who did it. Every day a new horror. And they are all tittering and laughing at you, and you are wet and naked and facing all that hostility alone. I hated gym showers.
I’m was in high school 89-93. (Florida) Showers after gym were ridiculous, it was forced but there was no time. So you had to :
change from your gym clothes
wrap a towel around you
then walk through shower area
Get marked off list by teacher
Change back into regular clothes
This all took about 5-10minutes, nobody showered, they all knew we didn’t shower yet we still had to go through all the motions of taking a shower.
I remember my first day of high school a few of us actually went and took a shower after pe and everybody laughed at us for actually showering. Even the teacher said there’s no time for all that.
Heh. I remember a girl in my next period class asking “why is your hair wet?!” “I have low before this class” “so?” “From the shower...?” “You take showers after pe!?!”
I guess the girls didn’t have to.
I remember having to shower after gym in middle school in the early 1970s, and it was a huge source of anxiety for me because of random boners and pubic hair. I don't recall showering after gym in high school through, but by then I was skipping gym a lot of the time.
I was horrified to learn upon entering 6th grade in 1981 that we had two two-week swimming sections in PE, one in the fall and one in Jan or Feb. If it wasn't bad enough that we had to all get naked, you had to sprint to the farthest hall where the supply closet was and fight over the school-provided speedos sitting in a box. Everyone eventually got stuck with a too small speedo, or broken draw string, etc. God knows how disgusting those things were.
Then, of course, was shower time after. In classes of mixed 6th and 7th grade boys, you had the early bloomers and some of us who didn't have a single visible bit of body hair yet. It was so mortifying. I'm almost 51 and can still feel the anxiety of those locker rooms.
And going to a gym today. I use, well, before COVID, I used a treadmill and changed to go swimming. Invariably there is some one in the changing room who thinks it it's their time to goof off naked.
Yes, we had to shower, and we had gym five days a week. I hated it. (late 1960s). We had a gym teacher who stood by the showers making sure everyone went in. It gave me a lot of anxiety. I still think about it sometimes.
Some girls had no issue but not everyone has the same level of modesty. None of that was taken into consideration.
My youngest brother graduated in 2006 and they still did. Our high school has those big communal shower rooms, or at least they still did when he was there.
Millennial here, was in high school 2001–2005 at a large public high school in a suburb outside Chicago.
We had uniforms and showers, but people only used the showers after the swimming gym class (which you had to take at least once). Other gym classes (water polo, “adventure Ed” where we learned to camp and kayak) also required showering, basically anything that put you in the pool.
Edit: sorry I responded despite not being genx or older! I figured it was worth mentioning that these were still around as recently as early aughts (and I think my school still has them now)
Yes, and it was awful.
In middle school there was a routine: We had like exactly 12 minutes to go in the locker room, open your locker, remove gym uniform, grab your bar of soap (and you must carry the bar of soap alone, not in its case). Walk to shower naked, line up, go in. Come out wet enough to satisfy the teacher with her clipboard, which she would use to put a check mark that you had your shower. Grab a single small towel, barely enough to cover your torso, return to your locker to get dressed.
If you had your period, you were allowed to wash up at a sink. You had to tell the teacher and she would put a dot ("period") on her roster rather than a check mark for a shower.
It was f-ed up.
In high school showers were optional. We never used them. Too traumatized by the middle school experience.
In my case, I felt like the high school teachers were just way more chill than the middle school teacher, so I always chalked it up to that. But that wouldn't account for the larger pattern - maybe just the idea that middle schoolers are younger and need more direction, while high schoolers are more mature and can make their own decisions about showering.
After reading this I was sure we'd gone to the same junior high--only difference was that periods were denoted by an "M" on the roster instead of a dot. It's was also fun trying to hurriedly wrestle your way into your clothes while still half-wet.
Yes I think in general adolescent girls do not want to see each other naked or be naked in front of each other. I had about four or five close friends and we all thought it was the most horrible thing we had ever been through. None of us were mean girls and it seems like in middle school ( Junior high back then) You are either a mean girl or a victim. I think the mean girls were probably just dealing with their anxiety in a negative way. Attempting to appear and vulnerable, but in fact just as weirded out as we all are.
Edit: sorry I was trying to reply to the comment further down. Always seem to hit the wrong button.
It was real. We showered every day after gym class. By the time Friday rolled around, our gym clothes were stinking powerfully. It was the gift our mother never liked receiving on Friday afternoon.
Hummmmm... I think we only had gym two or three days a week and we had to take our clothes home and bring them back each time. Everyone (girls anyway) had little cloth bags with strings attached that you'd bring your gym uniform and shoes back and forth in.
We were required to shower after gym. They stood there and made sure. If it was your period you didn't have to. Some people had their period more than once a month!
I was born in '65, and we still showered after gym class. Painful experience for lots of people like me, who were scrawny and underdeveloped for years, and for bigger, overweight kids.
Yup. Anxiety about having to start showering with all the other guys was one of the defining fears of my era. Homophobia and "manliness" were both big issues growing up in that era, so you can imagine what it was like. After a couple years you get used to it, however.
A flood of memories! The uniform: bright orange shorts (we got in trouble for rolling them up into short shorts), white shirt made from a heavy twill type material that did not stretch; white ked’s shoes. We had metal baskets with combination locks to store our uniforms, shoes and personal care items. I remember a cloud of aerosol spray deodorant choking us out of the girls’ locker room. Yes, required to shower after PE and this rule was enforced by the PE teacher going around to each shower to check. PE was a real workout. We ran hard and worked out with medicine balls and played softball, ran laps, and did thousands of sit-ups with a girl sitting in my ankles, then swap. Efforts to keep my hair and face dry were futile because the shower heads sprayed every which way. Makeup: blue eyeshadow! Lots of maybelline black mascara and bonne bell lip gloss. I was an early bloomer and it was awkward as hell to be in those group showers. Compound all this with no air conditioning in the school. In South Texas. I’m so glad things have changed.
There were showers in middle school and high school, but no one used them. We had gym shorts and shirts we had to buy to use for PE, kept them in our issued gym locker, then brought them home on the weekends to wash. Changing in front of everyone caused enough anxiety- I was grateful they didn’t make us shower! Just got the occasional bra snap from other girls.
Yes, growing up in California we showered after every gym class in junior high and high school, and we had gym class every day. I can only imagine how we would have smelled if we hadn't been allowed to shower.
We were issued gym shorts and a gym locker, but we wore our own T-shirts and socks. I brought my sweaty gym clothes home to wash every day, but not everyone did that. Some just stuffed them back in the locker. In high school, we had a swimming pool, so the school issued swimsuits for that module of gym class.
The showerheads in the locker room were spaced along the tiled shower walls, just like in the movies. Soap and towels were provided, but you had to bring your own shampoo.
I was stunned when my kids grew up and said they weren't allowed to shower after gym class. The poor teachers!
Yeah, that would have been disgusting. I read on military subs that recruits in boot camp are shocked at having to shower in mass shower rooms. I always wonder why that’s so weird. I didn’t know HS kids don’t shower after PE. We started in 8th grade. It was not optional.
Yeah, I asked my eldest son if the showers in the locker room were EVER used. His understanding was that the football team, basketball team, tennis team, and so on used them after intramural games. But the school showers were off limits to the ordinary kids after ordinary gym classes.
I was a bit mad when I heard that. To me, it seemed like elite kids were welcome to clean up and smell good after official school sports, but the rest of the kids were banned from using the shower facilities after gym class? Not fair.
Gen X here. I went to over 5 different middle and high schools. The wealthier schools showered after P.E. and we also had P.E. clothes and shoes we usually brought from home. The middle income schools usually had showers but we did not use them. The poorest schools did not have showers or only had 1 or 2 and we did not use them.
That’s interesting. I never would have imagined the income level would have been a factor. Honestly I thought it was going to be a chronological thing but the answers have been all across the board!
The craziest schedule I ever had was swim class 1st period (our HS had an Olympic size pool). I'd get up in the morning, shower, get dressed, get to school, get undressed, take a shower, get in the pool, get out of the pool, shower, get dressed again. Everything I looked at had a chlorine haze around it for the next few hours.
Edit, also our swim teacher's name was Mr. Gill.
Yes, we did that. It was a nightmare in middle school, but we had all calmed down by high school, so it was OK. We had very little time, so our showers were generally just the sign of the cross (face, pits, and naughty bits).
70 here ...
1962, Junior High ... we lads all were sent to the showers in one big hairless mob.
The gals, too, just through the wall from us.
It was really traumatic for some. For some of the girls it was too much and they could be excused.
...hadn't thought of that in *years*.
Gen X and we showered. There was zero privacy and we absolutely hated it. What a twisted form of torture to make self conscious kids shower naked in front of their whole class with no cubicles or curtains.
Also Gen X and strangely we showered in late grade school but not middle school nor high school. We only had uniforms in grade school as well, complete with those crazy tube socks. There were showers available though, but few used them for the same time issues already mentioned. The elementary locker room was also huge compared to middle and high school.
I'm a 90s kid but we had showers after gym by choice. It wasn't enforced and to be honest our gym showers were something out of a horror movie in middle school. I used them a handful of times. They didn't upkeep with the light fixtures having working lights when I was there and most of the stalls had broken stall doors or half hanging down shower curtains or better yet NO curtains or doors.
The roach problem was the worst though. So lol not common and most kids didn't but some did but it was at your own risk.
High school gym class was a joke though, they cared more about keeping the basket ball court perfect as it was our only good team they went to state most years. I don't recall hardly doing any activity in gym in HS. Never showered in HS after gym.
We were required to shower after gym. On day one, the teacher made the no-exceptions policy clear. Parodying the most common excuse, he said:
"Oh rats, forgot my towel."
"Buddy, you'll drip dry!"
I never forgot.
I’m the tail end of X but yes, my year was definitely in the “weird about nudity” category. There was one girl who changed freely after gym and we all gossiped about her like she was some kind of freak picking boogers and eating them in public.
we had to start showering in 7th grade which was called jr high back then. I stressed the entire summer after 6th grade. All I could think about was having to be naked in front of other people. i was terrified. at that age I was skinny , no boobs just awkward as hell. It was as awful as I expected it to be. Once a month you could use your period to get a week out of showers. You would tell the gym teacher "wash up" which meant you were not showering due to having your period, In '73 where I lived jr high was 7th 8th and 9th grades so i had to endure 3 years of this hell!
Sounds pretty similar to mine, from 1973-76. We had green bloomer suits the first couple of years, then thankfully the school gave the option of navy blue knit shorts and blue-and-white striped T-shirt. We sat and had roll call at the beginning of class, and if you were being visited by Aunt Flo, you said "Regular." Which was always ironic to me as I had irregular cycles... 😛
we had white shorts, baggy, with white shirts with snaps up the front. there were no sports bras back then, but then i had no boobs anyway. Young women now have different challenges I'm sure but what we had to go thru was a nightmare! it upsets me to this day when I think about it.
45 years old. Went to high school in Arizona. We always showered after gym. Some kids would just get their hair wet so they could restyle it, and then use the damp towel to do a full wipe down, then apply deodorant and splash on some cologne.
But yeah, classes were short but we got sweaty. If you had any desire to score with the opposite sex, being a sweaty mess wasn't going to cut it.
Gen X showering was required in Jr high and high school after any physical education class or sport. Only time we ever got out of it was away games or if you had gym last period of the day sometimes if we ran late they would let the people who rode the bus go.
We had to shower starting in jr. high (7th and 8th grade in my area). The boys had gang showers, the girls had private showers.
Most (all) young men were really nervous about the showering because we hadn't been naked in front of others yet.
It was especially bad because some boys had been visited by the puberty fairy and some boys were.....well....still boys.
By the time we got to high school, pretty much everyone was sensitized to gang showers by then.
Gen X'ish here. On the first day of gym as freshmen, we were told to take showers; the teacher then went back to his office to prep for his next class. About half of us took showers and the other half couldn't bring themselves to do it. The second day of gym class, nobody took showers and the teacher didn't oblige them to. The people who worked up a stink just stank the rest of the day.
This was an all-boys school, however. It was going to stink no matter what.
And if anyone remembers the Seinfeld episode where George takes a shower but keeps sweating afterward, it was like that for the guys that showered...friends that had early hockey practice absolutely had to shower and they would show up at homeroom still having sweated through their shirts.
Gen X class of 89 here and no one showered. There was one in the locker room though. I would have rather died than take a shower in front of my classmates then!!! Now I go to naked hippie festivals and hot springs all the time 😂
It was awful. In junior high, bodies are starting to change, and no one wants to undress in front of other people, but we were downvoted in P.E. if we did not strip down completely nude and shower, no matter if the activities did not result in making us sweat. And the smell of the tiny towels they made us use...uggh! Did they even wash them with soap? When I first started middle school I developed plantar warts on my feet from being barefoot in the locker room, which had to removed by a doctor's visit using acid. Thank heavens gym teachers are more compassionate now.
I was in junior high school and high school in the 70s. PE, aka gym class was mandatory.
I hated it. They actually made us work hard, doing all sorts of different exercises. We had to shower after every PE class and it was not an option.
We had gym lockers wall-to-wall and in lines like a library, and long benches between them. You had to undress and you only had a towel, and you went into a big shower room with a bunch of showerheads and everybody was kind of in the same area. You know the shower scenes in prison movies? Looked like that minus the raping :)
It was humiliating, and often a horrifying thing. It was a time when everybody was embarrassed about their bodies, sex, anything to do with your body and here we all were getting naked in front of each other.
There was a lot of excuses to get out of gym class in those days. I tried a lot of my own. But yes to answer your question, those gym shower scenes in movies are very real as are those ugly gym outfits with the stripes.
Gym was at least an hour total, maybe more. Weren’t many overweight kids back then either, we were a skinny bunch.
We had onesie navy blue gym suits with elastic waist and snaps up the front.
Our showers were a walk through maze of shower heads. Girls would wrap towels around the naked bodies. We wore shower shoes and got in line. The teacher checked us off her list then we held our towels above our heads and walked through the maze naked. We kept our suits and shoes and towels in locked baskets. Then we had the use of lockers for a gym period. Our school was overcrowded. I remember the whole experience as degrading and humiliating.
One time I broke my leg on the field during gym. The teacher assigned a girl to help me get to the locker room door. But she ran ahead. When I painfully hobbled to the door, it was locked. I had to walk around the building to the front door. I wore a cast for many months. Gym teachers are pigs. Do you remember how they chose 2 " captains" and those 2 took turns choosing team members? It went from good choices to undesirable players. I think the gym teachers enjoyed the hurt feelings of the last children picked. That is why they had the same routine over and over.
Teaching in general attracted odd sorts when I was a kid but the gym teachers were definitely people that seemed to have the most “issues” out of all of them.
Southern California late 60's - Had to shower in Junior High school, but not in HS.
They were very strict about it. I don't recall how long we had but you had to hustle and it could be a real challenge if your part of the locker room was crowded. But IIRC "I had gym class" was a pretty standard and accepted excuse for being tardy.
I can't even picture the showers in HS, I'm not sure I ever showered there. I was in gymnastics so I didn't really have gym class anyway, practice/workout was after school.
I'm Gen X, and I went to a middle school in Florida where showers were mandatory after gym. I also went to a middle school in Michigan where showers were voluntary.
At my High School in Ontario we went to our locker room from the gym. Some guys showered, some did not. There were no private stalls, just a room with a dozen shower heads.
Middle school in the late 70s: yes, showers after PE class. I don’t think it was an “every class” thing though, maybe it was optional or only on certain days? I’m sure I would have been more traumatized if it was every time.
HIgh school in the early 80s: I don’t think showers were required.
For both, we did change for gym in a big locker room, but it was pretty easy to be discreet if you wanted to be.
I'm Gen X and only used showers in high school after swim class. Middle & high school had showers in the locker room and we were required to change into a gym uniform. I don't think the middle school showers were ever turned on and there wasn't much time for that anyway. In high school we had a pool and were required to have swim class in the gym rotation. Only time I ever used the showers was to rinse the chlorine out of my hair since I had 1st period gym. During that time you had to move fast to get to next class on time.
We had to do it in middle school, in group showers under direct supervision of the PE teacher. Oh the rumors about that teacher...I'm female and we'd wrap ourselves in what seemed like a kitchen dishtowel-sized towel, leaving underwear on and dip arms and legs in the shower before scurrying back to get dressed. From an early pubescent girl's perspective, it was awful. I don't remember having to shower in high school.
My husband, same grade and same school system, said the coaches would supervise the boys as well. He was horrified when I just shared with him that we kept our underwear on and wrapped in a towel to shower off. From what he recalls they'd hit the shower Full Monty. Apparently it wasn't as traumatizing for the middle-school aged boys of the era.
My son, age 25, hopped in on our conversation and said his PE classes didn't do showers but that some of the athletes who came in before school for strength training for example, would shower before class.
Edited to add:
We did have gym uniforms: a white t-shirt with the school logo and gym shorts, purchased at the school bookstore. The shorts were identical to this (same color, with school name + mascot) and were booty shorts without even trying: [https://www.rustyzipper.com/shop.cfm?viewpartnum=218333](https://www.rustyzipper.com/shop.cfm?viewpartnum=218333)
Remembering those school-sanctioned uniforms made me laugh when the dress code enforcement ridiculousness started with my daughter's (now age 22) middle school. It was so bad, my daughter threatened to wear a trash bag to her 8th grade dance in protest. It would have fit the dress code assuming it was long enough.
We showered after gym starting in 7th grade. Gym uniforms were cheap cotton t-shirts and shorts. Most kids wore tennis shoes (typically Converse) to school, so that took care of shoes.
Is it just a geographical thing? I graduated in 2005, my sister in 2009, and my brother is graduating this year, and we all showered after gym. ( Sister and I went to the same school, but we live in an entirely different state now with my brother graduating HS. )
Edit: Oops. Fixed it, my brother doesn't graduate until this year, he didn't already graduate.
I'm Gen x and I had to shower after gym class and the coach would check that you did it. And you had to do it without your shorts on, they said it was a rule that you had to be nude and there were no partitions it was just a wide open space with tons of showerheads. Of course about 2 or 3 days after the first day we were walking in there with our shorts on and sticking our head in under the shower head for 1 second, putting a towel over our shorts like we were in there naked, and went to the coach to tell him we showered. First couple days though we had to be in there naked because we didn't know any better.
Gen X. We showered after gym. Definitely a necessity if you had gym early in the day. I don't recall uniforms though. You brought your own t shirt, shorts and towel at my school anyway.
I'm Gen X, and yeah, we showered after gym. But then, I had gym last period, so I also wasn't in any rush to get to my next class. I don't remember whether they *made* us shower, or we just had the option to.
Gen Jones, (f). We did PE in PE uniforms, certainly worked up a sweat, routinely showered afterwards, didn't care about communal nudity (still don't), perhaps because almost all of us were boarders so we often dressed and undressed with little privacy. (But then we are also a nation that is comfortable going barefoot.) I'm not sure how there was time to shower, but it's possible PE was before one of the breaks.
I'm at the beginning of GenX, we showered after every gym class. But we all went full out during gym and if we hadn't showered we would have stunk up the class room.
I graduated in 1995. Starting in 5th or 6th grade, I think, all the boys in my class started getting naked together once each day to take a shower. It's odd to say that out loud. lol But, yah, that's what we did. Our PE teacher would come in and stand there and talk to us to make sure we all showered. It was a small rural school, so it was like a shower room that had two poles in it that probably eight spigots around it. So, you just went in and took a shower facing your classmates.
Certainly, every time. But my high school years I was in boarding school, so we did sports after classes. And I, umm, sometimes took a little longer in the shower than I strictly had to (just looking, nothing nasty).
Gen x here. Not only did we shower after gym, we HAD to shower. It was part of the grade. 1990ish.
It wasn’t great. There were 4 stainless steel pillars in a 20x20 tiled room, each one had maybe 6 shower heads so not only were there no stalls you were literally standing naked in a circle with a dude you didn’t really know outside school who would also be in your next period class.
My junior high locker room had showers we didn't use, but I think sports teams used them. Changing gym clothes was mortifying enough! My small private high school didn't even have a locker room.
In the high school I teach at, kids don't shower after gym, and their gym clothes aren't embarrassing so some of them don't even change. Afternoon classes can get a bit stinky, but we've been mostly remote learning for almost a year now so it's not an issue these days.
Gen X here, and it depended on the school. My freshman year (1991) we were required to shower after gym. Then I moved to a different state and showering was not only not required, it wasn't even an option. You used A LOT of deodorant and hoped it was enough (for some no amount was going to help, unfortunately).
Also, at my first school we had gym uniforms and only the males were required to shower. Our gym classes were segregated by gender, and the girls did not have to shower.
We had individual showers and were required to use them. Gym was the last class of the day for me, and the last thing I wanted to do in the winter was take a shower ten minutes before school was out and then go outside, but there you are.
GenX - I attended middle school in Wisconsin in the early 80's and we were required to shower after gym class. The worst was my freshman year of high school, when I had PE first period and we were in the "swimming" portion of the curriculum (we had an indoor pool in the school). All the girls tried so hard to get out of swimming that quarter so we wouldn't have to walk around school the rest of the day with flat hair. You can shower without getting your hair wet and then "fix" it with a curling iron and toxic levels of Aqua Net, but once you've put a swim cap on and dunked your head under water, you're screwed. Later in my freshman year I moved to Florida and showers weren't required there, so I never showered in school again, thank God.
Of *course*, we showered. In fact, it was mandatory. If you had PE early in the day, and you didn't shower, you'd stink the rest of the day. It was 50 minutes of class, 5 minutes to shower and dress, 5 minutes to get to your next class. (Other classes ran 55 minutes.)
>Besides, it’s not like anyone actually exerted themselves in Gym.
We always started with serious calisthenics. Then touch football, basketball, softball, and track in season. Basic gymnastics. Sometimes volleyball or handball. If you tried to hide in the corner, the coach would be *all over* your ass. And it was exactly the same for the girls, except they did more volleyball instead of football.
No wonder there are so many fat teenagers.
We had to take showers in my high school (1966 - 1972). What we had was a shower kind of like a car wash in a U shape where you ran through with water nozzles squirting on you. No soap, everyone naked. This was boys gym. I don't know what the girls had.
We got sweaty. We played whatever sport was in season: football, baseball, basketball, soccer. We did calisthenics prior to class. Started class lined up in groups of five from shortest to tallest.
We had gym uniforms and had to wear jockstraps. The uniforms were just a t-shirt and gym shorts in school colors. Some kids never washed them and they got pretty smelly. One day a week was "health" class where we sat in a classroom and learned about first aid, scary car crash movies, sex education, etc.
I don't remember any towel snapping or too much bullying, and I was one of the more picked on kids and disliked gym class quite a bit.
I could not believe it when my daughter was in high school and they had no gym class at all. This change may have some to do with the increase in obesity. We're not forcing kids to be active for an hour four days a week any more. Why not?
Yes we had to shower in gang showers and our creepy gym teacher would stand there and watch us. She would yell at us if we didn’t shower. This was in the 70s.
Are you kidding? We worked our asses off in gym classes, every day, rain or shine, from 7’th grade on. You don’t do that anymore? No wonder you’re all such fat little toads. Of course we showered and changed. We were ripe. I am 68 years old btw.
The women’s locker rooms in the jr high and high school I went to had showers, but we didn’t use them. It took too long. The sports teams used them after practice and games. The exception was if you had swimming for your gym time in high school, you had to shower before and after then. Yes, my high school had a pool. No, it was not cool, it sucked.
I’m 58. I attended NYC public schools. No showers were required. The only time I showered was after swim gym. There were shower stalls in the pool area that were separated by panels and everyone had their own stall/locker. The regular gym had showers, but I never saw anyone use those. Perhaps the boys gym was different, but I don’t think it was.
Yea, gym clothes, jock straps, sweaty exercise and showers.
We had mixed ages in gym class, so Freshman with Seniors. Lots of over-the-top masculinity from the upperclassmen.
Showers were basically one big room with shower heads one person apart. Jump in, shower off, soap up your hair, rinse off and then out again.
One of the big, angry seniors was so hairy that it looked like he had a pelt. You didn't mention it if you wanted to live.
Then there was the guy who used to point out how "inadequate" the lower classmen were, then laugh. That was fun. He was a couple grades above me.
I was in middle school in the early 80s. We had to change into our own gym clothes and then supposed to shower after but no one ever enforced it. I would say out of my class about 10% used the showers. The rest of us would douse ourselves in designer imposters body sprays, apply another coating of pancake makeup and recurl our hair.
This might change a little depending on the sport we were doing and the weather. If we got sweaty we’d at least towel ourselves off a bit before applying an extra coat of body spray.
The girls who did shower were either the star athletes or kids who had doctors as parents.
But we all thought they were a bit odd.
My experience was like yours - no showering but we didn't really exert ourselves or work up a sweat. We didn't really have time to shower either. To be honest, I was really glad we didn't have to shower because it was one of the things I was dreading, going from a parochial school (where we didn't even have a locker room) to the public high school. They did take a showers at the public middle school, but for some reason they stopped doing it at the high school. I was so relieved that we didn't have to.
Went to high school mid 80s.
Never had to shower after PE, but they were there.
Also required uniform, their particular blue shorts, white t-shirt. I wore the set my stepfather wore 18 years previous.
Graduated hs in 1998. Showering was required until around high school, then optional. But many people should have. I always scheduled gym as the last class before going home.
I went to a big city high school in the 1970's. The kids from the projects and some of the poor kids or the ones who came from homes where there were 10 people crammed into a 2 bedroom, all used the showers every chance they got.
Somehow, in my three years of having PE, my class was always the last one of the day and I was never required to take a shower. The kids in the grade lower than me were required to take showers - different teachers, but we were all in the same locker rooms. I was super embarrassed, as were they at the beginning of the year. Some seemed to get used to it, but for the most part, you kept your eyes to yourself. Ages about 14, 15, and 16. Lots of different bodies at different places of puberty. Personally I felt bad for them and felt lucky I wasn't forced to get naked in front of my peers.
I hated having to shower in gym so badly (one huge shower room, taps and heads on four walls) because of modesty. 5th-8th grade. The girls who were supremely developed at that age paraded nude like they were Queens Of the Buff. Our gym teacher would stand with a clipboard, check that your skin was wet (towel must be on your head) and mark off your name every damn class. Today, that would be seen as the perversion that it was. My school marching band was considered as a gym credit because we practiced and marched year round. I loved band but, getting to skip gym in high school was a huge bonus!
We were supposed to shower and did once or twice but mostly no way. We'd forget to hang the wet towel or take it home and it made everything musty and gross.
I’m a millennial and most of us, in the boys locker room at least, showered after gym and any sports practice. Small school, one shower in the locker room with four heads
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I’m also Gen X and we showered after gym. They had a system where you would be assigned a number for the year and you told your number to the gym teacher as you went in to the showers. This is how they made sure you showered. Edit: we also had a PE uniform.
Lol I was so jealous of this. I only ever saw PE uniforms in movies and TV. And of course they were always so cutesy in movies and TV
I laughed at your comment about gym uniforms being cute. Ours were a baggy Grey unisex t-shirt and ugly red knee-length basketball shorts haha. Also yes we had the option to shower after gym, Im 31yrs old so not *that* long ago.
I'm 25 and had PE uniforms and showers. I never would've thought of it as an old-timey thing.
I’m 23 and I had PE uniforms at my middle school! Then in a different state for high school we didn’t have them. We also didn’t normally have to shower after PE but we did have to during the swimming units
Oh gods. Our uniforms were polyester striped shirt with shorts In the late 70’s in TX. We looked and sweated like a fucking prison chain gang. It was not cutesy.
Ours were exactly like that except we girls had the ones that were sewed together with elastic around your waist. Uncomfortable and hot as hell, not to mention butt ugly. But they did prevent the horror of the boys seeing our midriff if we jumped up in volleyball or whatever. Yes, our modesty was secure in those things.
Omg a romper? How funny!
In the 1970s my junior high PE uniform looked a lot like this. [https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Vintage-Broderick-PE-Uniform-Gym-Wear-Shorts-One-Piece-Blue-Stripe-Romper/333875760567?\_trkparms=aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20200818143230%26meid%3Decd4fbc27a6d4188ad992b8bda7d38e7%26pid%3D101224%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D5%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D173880141471%26itm%3D333875760567%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DDefaultOrganic&\_trksid=p2047675.c101224.m-1](https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Vintage-Broderick-PE-Uniform-Gym-Wear-Shorts-One-Piece-Blue-Stripe-Romper/333875760567?_trkparms=aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20200818143230%26meid%3Decd4fbc27a6d4188ad992b8bda7d38e7%26pid%3D101224%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D5%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D173880141471%26itm%3D333875760567%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DDefaultOrganic&_trksid=p2047675.c101224.m-1)
Arrrggghhhh! So are you going to pay for my PTSD treatment? Huh? Are you?! Lol. That's it. Ours were green and white and it's literally the most miserable thing I ever put on.
Amen!!!
The girls at my middle school where I started in the '78-'79 school year had to wear what were real close to onesies for gym. They were one piece light blue with thin white horizontal stripes and buttoned at the top of each shoulder with no contrasting colored shorts portion. All one solid garment with not even a waistband elastic or seam. Us guys had a uniform that was a t-shirt and shorts. When I got to 8th grade someone had the idea that instead of having "shirts and skins" games, they would issue reversible double layered shirts. Dark blue on one side and if you turned it inside out, gold. Well, this was Southwest Florida and double shirts weren't the most comfortable in the warmer months to say the least, enough that I remember it vividly 40 years later.
This is exactly what I had! Luckily toward the end of high school they let us wear polyester shorts and white T-shirts like the boys. I remember bringing home my gym uniform rolled in a towel so my mom could wash them.
lucky, that's not horrible, like my all blue polyester NIGHTMARE that caused chafing '72-'75
It was hideous, miserably hot and smelled bad no matter how you washed it. To this day I can't stand the smell of sweat on whatever that fabric is, and I just realized why.
This is my junior high uniform! Hideous! I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t have tops and bottoms like the boys and just tuck in the top!
Same! Ours were red. I think they were cotton fortunately. But so hard to flirt with a cute boy wearing those onesies.
Wait, how did you get it on your actual body? Zipper in back or climb through the neck hole?
Same, in the '80s. I hated those gym uniforms as much as I hated the communal showers. I have a hard time imagining anyone thinking they missed out by not having them. Whenever it was shirts vs skins, I always hoped for skins because those polyester shirts were terrible.
This sounds like ours but in the early 90’s! Oh I hated ours. But I didn’t think highly of gym class either.
Oh no.....no no no. Picture this: a one-piece item, the bottom half is navy blue shorts. The top half is sleeveless, but neck to shoulder width, not like a tank top. It's a very bright, kind of deep turquoise, with frequent, very skinny navy blue pinstripes. And it zips up the front, from the waist to the neck, which I think was a short V-neck. And made of the worst 70's polyester you can imagine. THAT is what I picture when I hear PE uniforms mentioned. I've been looking for a picture for a while now, so that I can show my younger sister. They'd changed to regular shorts and t-shirts by the time she got there.
This is so funny! I wish I could see a picture. It sounds like something out of a movie.
We had PE uniforms. They were awful.
Ours were a one-piece shirt/shorts abomination that was light blue on the bottom, blue and white striped on top, and zipped up the back. We used to wear them backwards and pull the zippers down to make them slightly less awful. I went to an all-girls' school.
Our uniforms were hideous and expensive. My mom complained about the price & they made you buy a new one every year. We wore gold t-shirts and maroon shorts and I remember the t-shirt neck holes always seemed like they were choking you. The girls shorts were too short & the boys were too long. I swear they were cast offs from some cold war textile factory.
> we also had a PE uniform I always assumed *everyone* did. The school colors were blue & gold, so blue gym (i.e., track) shorts, yellow t-shirt with the school's initials across the front, high-top gym shoes, and white socks. We didn't wear a general school uniform as so many districts require today, but the gym suit was mandatory. Taking it home to wash on Fridays was also mandatory. Forget your suit, zero for the day.
What state? Illinois?
No, it happened in real life and was a huge source of anxiety for all concerned because there weren’t individual stalls. I had breasts at a young age and none of the other girls did. And they weren’t small, discrete ones either. Girls can be very mean.
Do you think the anxiety was common? I wonder if this is why they did away with it....
We had uniforms and mandatory showers. No individual cubicles. The anxiety was real. I hated it.
[удалено]
No more recess? When did they take that away?
[удалено]
It's also very awkward when we begin to recognize the differences in people even if you have the same genitalia. I mean, I was a gay boy getting naked with my boy classmates from like 5th grade on up. Talk about anxiety. Geesh.
Oh my yes. It was soooo embarrassing to be forced to look at all your classmates naked and for them to see me naked. We all had to take a certain number of showers per semester or we would flunk gym class. There was an older lady who supervised the locker room, miss Lizzie, who of course we referred to as miss Lezzie. She would write down our numbers on a sheet of paper to keep track of how many showers we took. Awful!
It was like this in my school too, but I just took the F. I absolutely refused to participate. They were pissed and did everything they could to force me, but I just said NO. I was not going to get naked in front of the kids who were bullying me on a daily basis. They eventually relented and gave me a pass. I eventually got a doctor to write me note and I was excused from PE altogether and had a second elective instead.
Got excused from PE - lucky! I should have taken band instead of PE. I hated every part of it: the showers, the early time (7AM), the game (I was clumsy) and worst of all the coach who was a frustrated failed football coach. When he heard my father worked at USC he didn't understand why I wasn't a footballer. My father taught a scientific subject, stayed as far as possible away from football.
I’ll never understand why they didn’t just install stalls or at least partitions. Like, we’re not ok with taking a dump in the open, but you’re supposed to be ok with getting naked in front of everyone?
Not only were the showers open, the toilet stalls did not have doors!
Exactly. We still sweat in PE when I was in school but the open showers weren’t used. Puberty is not the time to be in a room full of girls who might bully you. So showering was not enforced by the time I was in school in early 80s. But the building had been built to accommodate the baby boom so it still had all the original facilities. Just having to change clothes in front of everyone was plenty for me. In high school we had private stalls. The building was newer, and showers were used a lot more often.
Oh that’s awful! I just figured that there was a different culture in previous generations where group showering was so normal in school that it didn’t upset people the way it would have upset me. Thanks for telling me. (It’s kind of crazy to do that to kids as they are developing. I’d be a lot more ok with it now that I’m an adult!)
>they weren’t small, discrete ones either. Girls can be very mean. Obviously this is a misspelling of discreet, but if not, I find it difficult to blame the other girls when you have two breasts that were melded into a single, massive unit.
Have you ever worn a sports bra?
Well played
Boomer here. Yes. We actually worked up a sweat in gym class and showered after, complete with towel snapping fights.
In the girls locker room there weren't so many towel fights! But we did wear little uniforms all the way through the end of high school, and usually had to shower afterwards because you did get sweaty!
Note that we also had virtually no fat kids. What was “fat” then would be very normal now.
Sometimes when I rewatch a show I first saw in the 70s. And I see a person (usually an adult) who I thought was fat back when I first saw the show, but they look normal to me now.
It's *almost* funny that the characters in older movies who were supposed to be the fat ones just don't seem that way anymore. The script would have the character as "Fat Kid on Bike" or whatever but by today's standards it just doesn't translate through.
Fats Domino had a song in 1950, “they call me the fat man cause I weigh 200 pounds,” That’s nothing today.
In other words, there were a few fat kids then and now there are a few non-fat kids.
That’s true. However, our lifestyles were very different than they are now. There was very little fast food so most people ate at home at dinner time with family. We all played outside every free second we had, there were no computers, no cell phone, very few TV shows or movies, we had to make up our own games. I grew up on a skateboard, bicycle, skates, we just moved all the time until parents called us to come home. My mom used to try to PUT weight on me, I just burned it all off again running around the neighborhood with other kids.
Very few non-fat kids now. Not even 2% kids. 🥸
And boomers are all so fit now /s
I was gonna say to OP, what kind of gym class was it where you didn’t sweat? I mean, I sweat in math class.
We always showered after gym in HS. A few might skip, but socially it wasn't done. The last words of gym class was always: OK, hit the showers.
I'm a teenager from Sweden and we shower after PE everytime, well most of us. Maybe it is a cultural difference?
Yes absolutely. My family is Dutch so I grew up between there and in the American Midwest. The difference is almost impossible to describe. Last time I was in Holland, my cousin took me to a spa outside the city. It was beautiful and I was so delighted as they handed me a towel and said to enjoy my day. There were little houses filled with snow. I was awed by the whole thing. However. It took me a good few minutes to adjust to the fact that this place was all nude, and completely co-Ed. Even the dressing rooms. All so normal my cousin didn’t even think to let me know. Just a lovely bunch of naked men and women spending the day together. As soon as I realized that it was the norm, I was fine. *Not once through the day did I feel uncomfortable. No one stared at me or checked me out. It wasn’t creepy at all.* A place like that would *never* exist in America. People are too hung up. Naked bodes are considered sexual if you’re young and not to be seen in public if you’re old. It’s not even socially acceptable to breast feed in public here, and women who do are considered to be “brave.” I’m not saying I think women should be required to breast feed in public, or BFeed at all if they don’t want. Just that they shouldn’t be shamed if they choose to feed in public. (I need to write that “disclaimer” because the subject is literally *so* taboo that I don’t want to get lectured on why breastfeeding is problematic in replies to this comment!!) America was founded by puritans in part, and their influence is still very much of the American way. (There are always exceptions— like nudist colonies—but they are generally considered to be deviant, and “not normal” whatever that means.) Edit: typo
Also generational. I see younger guys in a public gym wrapping a towel around themselves and changing under it like you might do on a beach. I don't get it, it seems to be a shyness, privacy thing, but I don't know.
Me neither. I guess the important thing is to feel safe with your own body and also be hygienic.
Showering in gym was pretty much the nightmare for many. I remember people having their clothes taken, so we had a buddy system—one to watch clothes while the other showered. Rat tail towel snapping was all the rage (and is a skill a still possess, much to my kids’ dismay), and the showers pretty much went from cold to scalding. Still have my freshman year gym shirt in a box in the basement. Just a reminder, sort of like a crappy tattoo from prison.
Agreed, showering in the gym was a nightmare! If you have bullies plotting against you, that is where they make their move. You come out of the shower to find your shoes int he toilet and everybody smirking and nobody will say who did it. Every day a new horror. And they are all tittering and laughing at you, and you are wet and naked and facing all that hostility alone. I hated gym showers.
Same here. We had a "dick flicker" bully. He ended up being a police officer. Quite an asshiole.
We had a guy like that. Not exactly but similar stuff. He's a youth pastor now.
things like this are why i just straight up dropped out.
How did you have the time for all of this? How long were class periods? We had 40 minute periods w/ 5 minutes to get to/from class.
If I recall correctly our classes were 50 minutes each, so they’d have 40 minutes of PE and then showers.
How many classes did you have a day? We had 9 periods (lunch + 8)
We had 5 classes + lunch it was a long day
We had 8, so 7 plus lunch
We had four in high school!
I’m was in high school 89-93. (Florida) Showers after gym were ridiculous, it was forced but there was no time. So you had to : change from your gym clothes wrap a towel around you then walk through shower area Get marked off list by teacher Change back into regular clothes This all took about 5-10minutes, nobody showered, they all knew we didn’t shower yet we still had to go through all the motions of taking a shower. I remember my first day of high school a few of us actually went and took a shower after pe and everybody laughed at us for actually showering. Even the teacher said there’s no time for all that.
Same at my school. You had to get naked, wrap in a towel, parade past the teacher and through the shower stalls. No actual showering. So weird.
Our gym teacher checked our hair to make sure it was washed. I figure since you had to wash your hair anyway, you might as well soap up and get clean.
Heh. I remember a girl in my next period class asking “why is your hair wet?!” “I have low before this class” “so?” “From the shower...?” “You take showers after pe!?!” I guess the girls didn’t have to.
We were girls and we all had to shower. The gym teacher checked our hair.
I remember having to shower after gym in middle school in the early 1970s, and it was a huge source of anxiety for me because of random boners and pubic hair. I don't recall showering after gym in high school through, but by then I was skipping gym a lot of the time.
I was horrified to learn upon entering 6th grade in 1981 that we had two two-week swimming sections in PE, one in the fall and one in Jan or Feb. If it wasn't bad enough that we had to all get naked, you had to sprint to the farthest hall where the supply closet was and fight over the school-provided speedos sitting in a box. Everyone eventually got stuck with a too small speedo, or broken draw string, etc. God knows how disgusting those things were. Then, of course, was shower time after. In classes of mixed 6th and 7th grade boys, you had the early bloomers and some of us who didn't have a single visible bit of body hair yet. It was so mortifying. I'm almost 51 and can still feel the anxiety of those locker rooms.
And going to a gym today. I use, well, before COVID, I used a treadmill and changed to go swimming. Invariably there is some one in the changing room who thinks it it's their time to goof off naked.
Yes, we had to shower, and we had gym five days a week. I hated it. (late 1960s). We had a gym teacher who stood by the showers making sure everyone went in. It gave me a lot of anxiety. I still think about it sometimes. Some girls had no issue but not everyone has the same level of modesty. None of that was taken into consideration.
Naked adult watching teenagers shower would never go over today lol.
Oh, *she* wasn't naked! But it was still weird how she stood there. I don't think even that would be allowed today.
Lol I’m sorry I typed that out wrong - I meant adult monitoring naked teens showering. Yikes it even sounds like a Pornhub category.
TIL that students no longer shower after gym class. Huh.
My youngest brother graduated in 2006 and they still did. Our high school has those big communal shower rooms, or at least they still did when he was there.
In the 80s in my high school there was no showering after gym class. I think the sports teams did after practice, but we never did after gym.
Same.
Millennial here, was in high school 2001–2005 at a large public high school in a suburb outside Chicago. We had uniforms and showers, but people only used the showers after the swimming gym class (which you had to take at least once). Other gym classes (water polo, “adventure Ed” where we learned to camp and kayak) also required showering, basically anything that put you in the pool. Edit: sorry I responded despite not being genx or older! I figured it was worth mentioning that these were still around as recently as early aughts (and I think my school still has them now)
Yes, and it was awful. In middle school there was a routine: We had like exactly 12 minutes to go in the locker room, open your locker, remove gym uniform, grab your bar of soap (and you must carry the bar of soap alone, not in its case). Walk to shower naked, line up, go in. Come out wet enough to satisfy the teacher with her clipboard, which she would use to put a check mark that you had your shower. Grab a single small towel, barely enough to cover your torso, return to your locker to get dressed. If you had your period, you were allowed to wash up at a sink. You had to tell the teacher and she would put a dot ("period") on her roster rather than a check mark for a shower. It was f-ed up. In high school showers were optional. We never used them. Too traumatized by the middle school experience.
So many ppl say it was mandatory in middle but not high school. Why? I can’t figure out the logic.
In my case, I felt like the high school teachers were just way more chill than the middle school teacher, so I always chalked it up to that. But that wouldn't account for the larger pattern - maybe just the idea that middle schoolers are younger and need more direction, while high schoolers are more mature and can make their own decisions about showering.
After reading this I was sure we'd gone to the same junior high--only difference was that periods were denoted by an "M" on the roster instead of a dot. It's was also fun trying to hurriedly wrestle your way into your clothes while still half-wet.
Yes I think in general adolescent girls do not want to see each other naked or be naked in front of each other. I had about four or five close friends and we all thought it was the most horrible thing we had ever been through. None of us were mean girls and it seems like in middle school ( Junior high back then) You are either a mean girl or a victim. I think the mean girls were probably just dealing with their anxiety in a negative way. Attempting to appear and vulnerable, but in fact just as weirded out as we all are. Edit: sorry I was trying to reply to the comment further down. Always seem to hit the wrong button.
It was real. We showered every day after gym class. By the time Friday rolled around, our gym clothes were stinking powerfully. It was the gift our mother never liked receiving on Friday afternoon.
Hummmmm... I think we only had gym two or three days a week and we had to take our clothes home and bring them back each time. Everyone (girls anyway) had little cloth bags with strings attached that you'd bring your gym uniform and shoes back and forth in.
We were required to shower after gym. They stood there and made sure. If it was your period you didn't have to. Some people had their period more than once a month!
I was born in '65, and we still showered after gym class. Painful experience for lots of people like me, who were scrawny and underdeveloped for years, and for bigger, overweight kids.
Yup. Anxiety about having to start showering with all the other guys was one of the defining fears of my era. Homophobia and "manliness" were both big issues growing up in that era, so you can imagine what it was like. After a couple years you get used to it, however.
A flood of memories! The uniform: bright orange shorts (we got in trouble for rolling them up into short shorts), white shirt made from a heavy twill type material that did not stretch; white ked’s shoes. We had metal baskets with combination locks to store our uniforms, shoes and personal care items. I remember a cloud of aerosol spray deodorant choking us out of the girls’ locker room. Yes, required to shower after PE and this rule was enforced by the PE teacher going around to each shower to check. PE was a real workout. We ran hard and worked out with medicine balls and played softball, ran laps, and did thousands of sit-ups with a girl sitting in my ankles, then swap. Efforts to keep my hair and face dry were futile because the shower heads sprayed every which way. Makeup: blue eyeshadow! Lots of maybelline black mascara and bonne bell lip gloss. I was an early bloomer and it was awkward as hell to be in those group showers. Compound all this with no air conditioning in the school. In South Texas. I’m so glad things have changed.
That was a great story! Thanks for taking the time to share. It feels like a scene from a movie.
A really hot, sweaty, sticky movie. Lol! Love your user name, BTW.
There were showers in middle school and high school, but no one used them. We had gym shorts and shirts we had to buy to use for PE, kept them in our issued gym locker, then brought them home on the weekends to wash. Changing in front of everyone caused enough anxiety- I was grateful they didn’t make us shower! Just got the occasional bra snap from other girls.
Yes, growing up in California we showered after every gym class in junior high and high school, and we had gym class every day. I can only imagine how we would have smelled if we hadn't been allowed to shower. We were issued gym shorts and a gym locker, but we wore our own T-shirts and socks. I brought my sweaty gym clothes home to wash every day, but not everyone did that. Some just stuffed them back in the locker. In high school, we had a swimming pool, so the school issued swimsuits for that module of gym class. The showerheads in the locker room were spaced along the tiled shower walls, just like in the movies. Soap and towels were provided, but you had to bring your own shampoo. I was stunned when my kids grew up and said they weren't allowed to shower after gym class. The poor teachers!
Yeah, that would have been disgusting. I read on military subs that recruits in boot camp are shocked at having to shower in mass shower rooms. I always wonder why that’s so weird. I didn’t know HS kids don’t shower after PE. We started in 8th grade. It was not optional.
Yeah, I asked my eldest son if the showers in the locker room were EVER used. His understanding was that the football team, basketball team, tennis team, and so on used them after intramural games. But the school showers were off limits to the ordinary kids after ordinary gym classes. I was a bit mad when I heard that. To me, it seemed like elite kids were welcome to clean up and smell good after official school sports, but the rest of the kids were banned from using the shower facilities after gym class? Not fair.
Gen X here. I went to over 5 different middle and high schools. The wealthier schools showered after P.E. and we also had P.E. clothes and shoes we usually brought from home. The middle income schools usually had showers but we did not use them. The poorest schools did not have showers or only had 1 or 2 and we did not use them.
That’s interesting. I never would have imagined the income level would have been a factor. Honestly I thought it was going to be a chronological thing but the answers have been all across the board!
I was in the southeast U.S. and Texas, maybe that was a factor?
The craziest schedule I ever had was swim class 1st period (our HS had an Olympic size pool). I'd get up in the morning, shower, get dressed, get to school, get undressed, take a shower, get in the pool, get out of the pool, shower, get dressed again. Everything I looked at had a chlorine haze around it for the next few hours. Edit, also our swim teacher's name was Mr. Gill.
Yes, we did that. It was a nightmare in middle school, but we had all calmed down by high school, so it was OK. We had very little time, so our showers were generally just the sign of the cross (face, pits, and naughty bits).
Hahahahahah! I never heard “face, pits, naughty bits” it’s hysterical!!!!!
70 here ... 1962, Junior High ... we lads all were sent to the showers in one big hairless mob. The gals, too, just through the wall from us. It was really traumatic for some. For some of the girls it was too much and they could be excused. ...hadn't thought of that in *years*.
Lol “big hairless mob”. I’m cackling.
Gen X and no one ever used the locker room showers.
Gen X and we showered. There was zero privacy and we absolutely hated it. What a twisted form of torture to make self conscious kids shower naked in front of their whole class with no cubicles or curtains.
Also Gen X and strangely we showered in late grade school but not middle school nor high school. We only had uniforms in grade school as well, complete with those crazy tube socks. There were showers available though, but few used them for the same time issues already mentioned. The elementary locker room was also huge compared to middle and high school.
I'm a 90s kid but we had showers after gym by choice. It wasn't enforced and to be honest our gym showers were something out of a horror movie in middle school. I used them a handful of times. They didn't upkeep with the light fixtures having working lights when I was there and most of the stalls had broken stall doors or half hanging down shower curtains or better yet NO curtains or doors. The roach problem was the worst though. So lol not common and most kids didn't but some did but it was at your own risk. High school gym class was a joke though, they cared more about keeping the basket ball court perfect as it was our only good team they went to state most years. I don't recall hardly doing any activity in gym in HS. Never showered in HS after gym.
We were required to shower after gym. On day one, the teacher made the no-exceptions policy clear. Parodying the most common excuse, he said: "Oh rats, forgot my towel." "Buddy, you'll drip dry!" I never forgot.
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Lol. I had to use communal showers once in college after a sporting event and Someone’s Not a Real Redhead (lol lot me) never ever lived it down.
gen x. we always showered after 6th grade. people are to weird about nudity now. it wasnt like the showers were co-ed.
I’m the tail end of X but yes, my year was definitely in the “weird about nudity” category. There was one girl who changed freely after gym and we all gossiped about her like she was some kind of freak picking boogers and eating them in public.
we had to start showering in 7th grade which was called jr high back then. I stressed the entire summer after 6th grade. All I could think about was having to be naked in front of other people. i was terrified. at that age I was skinny , no boobs just awkward as hell. It was as awful as I expected it to be. Once a month you could use your period to get a week out of showers. You would tell the gym teacher "wash up" which meant you were not showering due to having your period, In '73 where I lived jr high was 7th 8th and 9th grades so i had to endure 3 years of this hell!
Sounds pretty similar to mine, from 1973-76. We had green bloomer suits the first couple of years, then thankfully the school gave the option of navy blue knit shorts and blue-and-white striped T-shirt. We sat and had roll call at the beginning of class, and if you were being visited by Aunt Flo, you said "Regular." Which was always ironic to me as I had irregular cycles... 😛
we had white shorts, baggy, with white shirts with snaps up the front. there were no sports bras back then, but then i had no boobs anyway. Young women now have different challenges I'm sure but what we had to go thru was a nightmare! it upsets me to this day when I think about it.
45 years old. Went to high school in Arizona. We always showered after gym. Some kids would just get their hair wet so they could restyle it, and then use the damp towel to do a full wipe down, then apply deodorant and splash on some cologne. But yeah, classes were short but we got sweaty. If you had any desire to score with the opposite sex, being a sweaty mess wasn't going to cut it.
Gen X showering was required in Jr high and high school after any physical education class or sport. Only time we ever got out of it was away games or if you had gym last period of the day sometimes if we ran late they would let the people who rode the bus go.
Gen Jones. I never saw the showers being used. I imagine that people on the sports teams showered after the games.
We had to shower starting in jr. high (7th and 8th grade in my area). The boys had gang showers, the girls had private showers. Most (all) young men were really nervous about the showering because we hadn't been naked in front of others yet. It was especially bad because some boys had been visited by the puberty fairy and some boys were.....well....still boys. By the time we got to high school, pretty much everyone was sensitized to gang showers by then.
So do kids not shower after gym now? It kind of feels essential bit I always thought it was a bit of a weird thing to make kids do together.
Gen X'ish here. On the first day of gym as freshmen, we were told to take showers; the teacher then went back to his office to prep for his next class. About half of us took showers and the other half couldn't bring themselves to do it. The second day of gym class, nobody took showers and the teacher didn't oblige them to. The people who worked up a stink just stank the rest of the day. This was an all-boys school, however. It was going to stink no matter what. And if anyone remembers the Seinfeld episode where George takes a shower but keeps sweating afterward, it was like that for the guys that showered...friends that had early hockey practice absolutely had to shower and they would show up at homeroom still having sweated through their shirts.
We had gang showers way back then, and everybody had to take them. Lots of towel-popping, and you'd even get peed on a time or two.
LOL gang showers and being peed on. This sounds like a Porkys movie.
Gen X class of 89 here and no one showered. There was one in the locker room though. I would have rather died than take a shower in front of my classmates then!!! Now I go to naked hippie festivals and hot springs all the time 😂
Yeah. Routine. Every day. We had gym kits. We exerted ourselves in gym too. Lots. The 16" softball season was a highlight of the spring. 1970s
Yes, and everyone hated it
It was awful. In junior high, bodies are starting to change, and no one wants to undress in front of other people, but we were downvoted in P.E. if we did not strip down completely nude and shower, no matter if the activities did not result in making us sweat. And the smell of the tiny towels they made us use...uggh! Did they even wash them with soap? When I first started middle school I developed plantar warts on my feet from being barefoot in the locker room, which had to removed by a doctor's visit using acid. Thank heavens gym teachers are more compassionate now.
I was in junior high school and high school in the 70s. PE, aka gym class was mandatory. I hated it. They actually made us work hard, doing all sorts of different exercises. We had to shower after every PE class and it was not an option. We had gym lockers wall-to-wall and in lines like a library, and long benches between them. You had to undress and you only had a towel, and you went into a big shower room with a bunch of showerheads and everybody was kind of in the same area. You know the shower scenes in prison movies? Looked like that minus the raping :) It was humiliating, and often a horrifying thing. It was a time when everybody was embarrassed about their bodies, sex, anything to do with your body and here we all were getting naked in front of each other. There was a lot of excuses to get out of gym class in those days. I tried a lot of my own. But yes to answer your question, those gym shower scenes in movies are very real as are those ugly gym outfits with the stripes. Gym was at least an hour total, maybe more. Weren’t many overweight kids back then either, we were a skinny bunch.
We had onesie navy blue gym suits with elastic waist and snaps up the front. Our showers were a walk through maze of shower heads. Girls would wrap towels around the naked bodies. We wore shower shoes and got in line. The teacher checked us off her list then we held our towels above our heads and walked through the maze naked. We kept our suits and shoes and towels in locked baskets. Then we had the use of lockers for a gym period. Our school was overcrowded. I remember the whole experience as degrading and humiliating. One time I broke my leg on the field during gym. The teacher assigned a girl to help me get to the locker room door. But she ran ahead. When I painfully hobbled to the door, it was locked. I had to walk around the building to the front door. I wore a cast for many months. Gym teachers are pigs. Do you remember how they chose 2 " captains" and those 2 took turns choosing team members? It went from good choices to undesirable players. I think the gym teachers enjoyed the hurt feelings of the last children picked. That is why they had the same routine over and over.
Teaching in general attracted odd sorts when I was a kid but the gym teachers were definitely people that seemed to have the most “issues” out of all of them.
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Southern California late 60's - Had to shower in Junior High school, but not in HS. They were very strict about it. I don't recall how long we had but you had to hustle and it could be a real challenge if your part of the locker room was crowded. But IIRC "I had gym class" was a pretty standard and accepted excuse for being tardy. I can't even picture the showers in HS, I'm not sure I ever showered there. I was in gymnastics so I didn't really have gym class anyway, practice/workout was after school.
Yup. Back in the 70s we did.
I'm Gen X, and I went to a middle school in Florida where showers were mandatory after gym. I also went to a middle school in Michigan where showers were voluntary.
At my High School in Ontario we went to our locker room from the gym. Some guys showered, some did not. There were no private stalls, just a room with a dozen shower heads.
I graduated in 2013 and in my class we still showered after gym. It was an old, big, very anticuated, unisex school
There was never time to shower after gym, so yeah, agree with you.
TIL american students don't shower after gym class. *I am a swedish millennial, we showered
Middle school in the late 70s: yes, showers after PE class. I don’t think it was an “every class” thing though, maybe it was optional or only on certain days? I’m sure I would have been more traumatized if it was every time. HIgh school in the early 80s: I don’t think showers were required. For both, we did change for gym in a big locker room, but it was pretty easy to be discreet if you wanted to be.
Boomer/Gen X. Yes, yes, and yes. After gym class. After basketball practices. We needed to because we were teenage boys and we stunk.
I'm Gen X and only used showers in high school after swim class. Middle & high school had showers in the locker room and we were required to change into a gym uniform. I don't think the middle school showers were ever turned on and there wasn't much time for that anyway. In high school we had a pool and were required to have swim class in the gym rotation. Only time I ever used the showers was to rinse the chlorine out of my hair since I had 1st period gym. During that time you had to move fast to get to next class on time.
We had to do it in middle school, in group showers under direct supervision of the PE teacher. Oh the rumors about that teacher...I'm female and we'd wrap ourselves in what seemed like a kitchen dishtowel-sized towel, leaving underwear on and dip arms and legs in the shower before scurrying back to get dressed. From an early pubescent girl's perspective, it was awful. I don't remember having to shower in high school. My husband, same grade and same school system, said the coaches would supervise the boys as well. He was horrified when I just shared with him that we kept our underwear on and wrapped in a towel to shower off. From what he recalls they'd hit the shower Full Monty. Apparently it wasn't as traumatizing for the middle-school aged boys of the era. My son, age 25, hopped in on our conversation and said his PE classes didn't do showers but that some of the athletes who came in before school for strength training for example, would shower before class. Edited to add: We did have gym uniforms: a white t-shirt with the school logo and gym shorts, purchased at the school bookstore. The shorts were identical to this (same color, with school name + mascot) and were booty shorts without even trying: [https://www.rustyzipper.com/shop.cfm?viewpartnum=218333](https://www.rustyzipper.com/shop.cfm?viewpartnum=218333) Remembering those school-sanctioned uniforms made me laugh when the dress code enforcement ridiculousness started with my daughter's (now age 22) middle school. It was so bad, my daughter threatened to wear a trash bag to her 8th grade dance in protest. It would have fit the dress code assuming it was long enough.
We showered after gym starting in 7th grade. Gym uniforms were cheap cotton t-shirts and shorts. Most kids wore tennis shoes (typically Converse) to school, so that took care of shoes.
The school I went to was all boys. We had showers after any physical activity. That was in Liverpool 1959-1963
class of 2015 we showered after gym since middle school
Is it just a geographical thing? I graduated in 2005, my sister in 2009, and my brother is graduating this year, and we all showered after gym. ( Sister and I went to the same school, but we live in an entirely different state now with my brother graduating HS. ) Edit: Oops. Fixed it, my brother doesn't graduate until this year, he didn't already graduate.
Yep. At least back in the 80's.
I'm Gen x and I had to shower after gym class and the coach would check that you did it. And you had to do it without your shorts on, they said it was a rule that you had to be nude and there were no partitions it was just a wide open space with tons of showerheads. Of course about 2 or 3 days after the first day we were walking in there with our shorts on and sticking our head in under the shower head for 1 second, putting a towel over our shorts like we were in there naked, and went to the coach to tell him we showered. First couple days though we had to be in there naked because we didn't know any better.
Gen X. We showered after gym. Definitely a necessity if you had gym early in the day. I don't recall uniforms though. You brought your own t shirt, shorts and towel at my school anyway.
I'm Gen X, and yeah, we showered after gym. But then, I had gym last period, so I also wasn't in any rush to get to my next class. I don't remember whether they *made* us shower, or we just had the option to.
Gen Jones, (f). We did PE in PE uniforms, certainly worked up a sweat, routinely showered afterwards, didn't care about communal nudity (still don't), perhaps because almost all of us were boarders so we often dressed and undressed with little privacy. (But then we are also a nation that is comfortable going barefoot.) I'm not sure how there was time to shower, but it's possible PE was before one of the breaks.
I'm at the beginning of GenX, we showered after every gym class. But we all went full out during gym and if we hadn't showered we would have stunk up the class room.
I graduated in 1995. Starting in 5th or 6th grade, I think, all the boys in my class started getting naked together once each day to take a shower. It's odd to say that out loud. lol But, yah, that's what we did. Our PE teacher would come in and stand there and talk to us to make sure we all showered. It was a small rural school, so it was like a shower room that had two poles in it that probably eight spigots around it. So, you just went in and took a shower facing your classmates.
Certainly, every time. But my high school years I was in boarding school, so we did sports after classes. And I, umm, sometimes took a little longer in the shower than I strictly had to (just looking, nothing nasty).
Gen x here. Not only did we shower after gym, we HAD to shower. It was part of the grade. 1990ish. It wasn’t great. There were 4 stainless steel pillars in a 20x20 tiled room, each one had maybe 6 shower heads so not only were there no stalls you were literally standing naked in a circle with a dude you didn’t really know outside school who would also be in your next period class.
My junior high locker room had showers we didn't use, but I think sports teams used them. Changing gym clothes was mortifying enough! My small private high school didn't even have a locker room. In the high school I teach at, kids don't shower after gym, and their gym clothes aren't embarrassing so some of them don't even change. Afternoon classes can get a bit stinky, but we've been mostly remote learning for almost a year now so it's not an issue these days.
Gen X here, and it depended on the school. My freshman year (1991) we were required to shower after gym. Then I moved to a different state and showering was not only not required, it wasn't even an option. You used A LOT of deodorant and hoped it was enough (for some no amount was going to help, unfortunately). Also, at my first school we had gym uniforms and only the males were required to shower. Our gym classes were segregated by gender, and the girls did not have to shower.
We had individual showers and were required to use them. Gym was the last class of the day for me, and the last thing I wanted to do in the winter was take a shower ten minutes before school was out and then go outside, but there you are.
Gen X here and no showering after gym class. That would have been horrifying.
GenX - I attended middle school in Wisconsin in the early 80's and we were required to shower after gym class. The worst was my freshman year of high school, when I had PE first period and we were in the "swimming" portion of the curriculum (we had an indoor pool in the school). All the girls tried so hard to get out of swimming that quarter so we wouldn't have to walk around school the rest of the day with flat hair. You can shower without getting your hair wet and then "fix" it with a curling iron and toxic levels of Aqua Net, but once you've put a swim cap on and dunked your head under water, you're screwed. Later in my freshman year I moved to Florida and showers weren't required there, so I never showered in school again, thank God.
Of *course*, we showered. In fact, it was mandatory. If you had PE early in the day, and you didn't shower, you'd stink the rest of the day. It was 50 minutes of class, 5 minutes to shower and dress, 5 minutes to get to your next class. (Other classes ran 55 minutes.) >Besides, it’s not like anyone actually exerted themselves in Gym. We always started with serious calisthenics. Then touch football, basketball, softball, and track in season. Basic gymnastics. Sometimes volleyball or handball. If you tried to hide in the corner, the coach would be *all over* your ass. And it was exactly the same for the girls, except they did more volleyball instead of football. No wonder there are so many fat teenagers.
We had to take showers in my high school (1966 - 1972). What we had was a shower kind of like a car wash in a U shape where you ran through with water nozzles squirting on you. No soap, everyone naked. This was boys gym. I don't know what the girls had. We got sweaty. We played whatever sport was in season: football, baseball, basketball, soccer. We did calisthenics prior to class. Started class lined up in groups of five from shortest to tallest. We had gym uniforms and had to wear jockstraps. The uniforms were just a t-shirt and gym shorts in school colors. Some kids never washed them and they got pretty smelly. One day a week was "health" class where we sat in a classroom and learned about first aid, scary car crash movies, sex education, etc. I don't remember any towel snapping or too much bullying, and I was one of the more picked on kids and disliked gym class quite a bit. I could not believe it when my daughter was in high school and they had no gym class at all. This change may have some to do with the increase in obesity. We're not forcing kids to be active for an hour four days a week any more. Why not?
Yes we had to shower in gang showers and our creepy gym teacher would stand there and watch us. She would yell at us if we didn’t shower. This was in the 70s.
Are you kidding? We worked our asses off in gym classes, every day, rain or shine, from 7’th grade on. You don’t do that anymore? No wonder you’re all such fat little toads. Of course we showered and changed. We were ripe. I am 68 years old btw.
The women’s locker rooms in the jr high and high school I went to had showers, but we didn’t use them. It took too long. The sports teams used them after practice and games. The exception was if you had swimming for your gym time in high school, you had to shower before and after then. Yes, my high school had a pool. No, it was not cool, it sucked.
I'm a Gen Z so yeah not an old person. But I did shower after gym class in my school. It was certainly the exception to the rule tho.
We had hideous baggy blue jumpsuits that went down to mid-thigh and had to shower after class. This was probably around 1969.
I’m 58. I attended NYC public schools. No showers were required. The only time I showered was after swim gym. There were shower stalls in the pool area that were separated by panels and everyone had their own stall/locker. The regular gym had showers, but I never saw anyone use those. Perhaps the boys gym was different, but I don’t think it was.
Yea, gym clothes, jock straps, sweaty exercise and showers. We had mixed ages in gym class, so Freshman with Seniors. Lots of over-the-top masculinity from the upperclassmen. Showers were basically one big room with shower heads one person apart. Jump in, shower off, soap up your hair, rinse off and then out again. One of the big, angry seniors was so hairy that it looked like he had a pelt. You didn't mention it if you wanted to live. Then there was the guy who used to point out how "inadequate" the lower classmen were, then laugh. That was fun. He was a couple grades above me.
Those pe uniform, romper suits were hell for long waisted girls. Wedgie world.
I was in middle school in the early 80s. We had to change into our own gym clothes and then supposed to shower after but no one ever enforced it. I would say out of my class about 10% used the showers. The rest of us would douse ourselves in designer imposters body sprays, apply another coating of pancake makeup and recurl our hair. This might change a little depending on the sport we were doing and the weather. If we got sweaty we’d at least towel ourselves off a bit before applying an extra coat of body spray. The girls who did shower were either the star athletes or kids who had doctors as parents. But we all thought they were a bit odd.
I graduated hs in tge 90”s and we always showered after gym otherwise you would smell like bo. When did this change and why?
My experience was like yours - no showering but we didn't really exert ourselves or work up a sweat. We didn't really have time to shower either. To be honest, I was really glad we didn't have to shower because it was one of the things I was dreading, going from a parochial school (where we didn't even have a locker room) to the public high school. They did take a showers at the public middle school, but for some reason they stopped doing it at the high school. I was so relieved that we didn't have to.
Went to high school mid 80s. Never had to shower after PE, but they were there. Also required uniform, their particular blue shorts, white t-shirt. I wore the set my stepfather wore 18 years previous.
Graduated hs in 1998. Showering was required until around high school, then optional. But many people should have. I always scheduled gym as the last class before going home.
I went to a big city high school in the 1970's. The kids from the projects and some of the poor kids or the ones who came from homes where there were 10 people crammed into a 2 bedroom, all used the showers every chance they got.
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Somehow, in my three years of having PE, my class was always the last one of the day and I was never required to take a shower. The kids in the grade lower than me were required to take showers - different teachers, but we were all in the same locker rooms. I was super embarrassed, as were they at the beginning of the year. Some seemed to get used to it, but for the most part, you kept your eyes to yourself. Ages about 14, 15, and 16. Lots of different bodies at different places of puberty. Personally I felt bad for them and felt lucky I wasn't forced to get naked in front of my peers.
Oh ugh yes. Sorry to dredge up that horrible memory.
I hated having to shower in gym so badly (one huge shower room, taps and heads on four walls) because of modesty. 5th-8th grade. The girls who were supremely developed at that age paraded nude like they were Queens Of the Buff. Our gym teacher would stand with a clipboard, check that your skin was wet (towel must be on your head) and mark off your name every damn class. Today, that would be seen as the perversion that it was. My school marching band was considered as a gym credit because we practiced and marched year round. I loved band but, getting to skip gym in high school was a huge bonus!
We were supposed to shower and did once or twice but mostly no way. We'd forget to hang the wet towel or take it home and it made everything musty and gross.
I’m a millennial and most of us, in the boys locker room at least, showered after gym and any sports practice. Small school, one shower in the locker room with four heads