I was catching up with my uncle recently, and he dropped a story that had me questioning everything. It was so wild, I thought he was pulling my leg. When he kept insisting it was true, I even wondered if Uncle Toby had a touch of dementia. But nope, Uncle Toby’s sharp as ever, and his story was 100 percent real.
So, what had me so floored? We were talking about schools and sports, and Uncle Toby casually mentioned that when he was in high school back in the 1950s, all the boys had to swim nude.
Uh, excuse me, what?
Yup, you heard that right. Uncle Toby said during gym class, the boys and girls were separated. The girls swam in bathing suits, but the boys? They swam totally naked. I was like, “Uncle Toby, what kind of crazy school did you go to?” And he swore it was a regular public school, adding that most schools in the US did the same thing until the 1970s.
I mean, come on, right? You can see why I thought old Uncle Toby was off his rocker. This sounded completely insane. So, naturally, I had to do some digging. And guess what? Uncle Toby was spot on. Up until the 1970s, American schoolboys were swimming in the buff at public schools across the nation.
Now, the burning question is, “Why?” Let’s dive in, shall we?
I stumbled upon this fascinating article titled “When boys swam nude in gym class” from the Democrat and Chronicle:
“When you got into high school, and you used the pool for gym, they had these rules and everybody had to follow them,” Reeves recalled of his days at Charlotte High School.
No running on the deck. No horseplay. No diving in the shallow end. Take a shower before swimming. Swim naked. No chewing gum…
It may be inconceivable to anyone under 50, but nude swimming was standard for high school boys in Rochester and in many American cities and states until at least 1970.
Yes, to a Millennial like me, this concept sounds completely whacko.
But that still didn’t answer the burning question: Why were young boys forced to swim in the buff around each other and, more importantly, around their adult male teachers? I had to get some insight from Uncle Toby. So, I asked him, “Why were schools enforcing naked swimming?” He dug into his dusty memory archives and tentatively suggested it might have been about maintaining cleanliness.
“Cleanliness?” I shot back. “Then why were the girls wearing swimsuits? If it was about hygiene, shouldn’t everyone have been suitless?” I felt like Jessica B. Fletcher, ready to crack open a “Murder She Wrote” mystery. But I could sense Uncle Toby’s growing frustration. He flatly said, “Bella, don’t ask me to make sense of this nonsense. When the government tells me to wear a seatbelt, I just do it without questioning.”
“Fair enough, Uncle Toby,” I replied, “but if they ever ask you to wear a seatbelt without your clothes on, I hope you ask why.” With that, I ended the call and dived into my investigation, determined to uncover the “why” behind this peculiar practice.
It turns out I wasn’t the only one baffled by the naked swimming. Just like Uncle Toby, the boys forced to swim naked were also totally confused. The Democrat and Chronicle piece took a deeper dive into this bizarre chapter of school history.
“It was the weirdest thing in the world,” recalled Chuck Napieralski, 67, who graduated with Reeves from Charlotte in 1968. “You can just imagine standing there in a line with your hands across the front hiding yourself. Once you got to the pool you just jumped in.”
Well, upon closer inspection, I was starting to realize that once again, old Uncle Toby might have been onto something.
It turns out that this rather bizarre tradition of boys doing the breast stroke in their birthday suits can be traced all the way back to 1885, when it began at an all-male indoor pool in Brooklyn’s YMCA. The kicker is that this decision to introduce nude swimming was driven by concerns surrounding the wool swimsuits and how the fibers collected dirt and bacteria, posing a potential threat to health and the pool’s filtration system. After that, the rest is basically “history,” as the Democrat and Chronicle piece explains:
In 1926, the American Public Health Association published the first guide for swimming pool management. It recommended men swim nude and women wear suits “of the simplest type.” Those guidelines remained until 1962.After that, it was a matter of custom. Andrew Saul, a nutritionist and author from Rochester, wrote of swimming nude at Charlotte High School as late as 1970.“Back dives were especially revealing,” Saul wrote in his 2003 book, Doctor Yourself.Perhaps school administrators thought nude swimming built cohesion between young men. Maybe it did. Few activities foster solidarity like man-to-man defense in a naked water polo game.
And if young boys were looking for some comfort and support from advice gurus like Ann Landers, they were outta luck. Back in 1974, a 15-year-old boy wrote to Ann about how uncomfortable he was taking showers in front of others, and her advice was not exactly “comforting.”
“You need to talk to a school counselor and learn why you are so uptight about being seen naked. If you look around you’ll find the vast majority of the guys who are showering are not in the least bit self-conscious.”
Apparently, Ann was into tough love and some other weird stuff. However, based on his age and the time frame, this kid probably didn’t have to swim in his birthday suit, but if Ann’s response was at all symbolic of the time, clearly, there was not a lot of sympathy or concern about these kids being forced to swim around like “Free Willy.” It might make for some rather strange dinner conversation, but if the topic comes up, find out if anybody in your family had to swim around like a frat boy after a wild kegger.
Needless to say, this was a very strange time in US public schools.
Till next time, be wickedly wonderful.
Took the swim lessons at the Boys Club in Lynn, MA in the 60’s. (@10 – 12 years old). All the boys were buck naked.
Rev 3:9 is ancient
Yep, I grew up in Rochester-area and for swim class in 1971 at Eastridge HS we were all naked. It was a tad cold and the pool water was never more than 72 degrees. Just like the the author of this article states, people find it hard to believe we swam that way. I think it was healthy and would probably help the younger generation of males get over body shame or whatever it is that makes them avoid taking showers or being seen naked at the Y where I used to work out. No one cares what you look like; just get over yourself.
In the late 1980s, I attended Homewood-Flossmoor Community High School in Flossmoor, Illinois. Not only did we have to shower naked with our classmates, every single class period we needed to approach the gym instructor and request a swimsuit. He insisted we be naked to do so. If someone attempted to request a suit while wearing their clothes, or even a towel, he would not provide swim trunks.
No grown man with good intentions would put themselves through that, let alone the hundreds of boys.
When I began at Harvard in 1970, one of the graduation requirements was passing a 50 yard swim test. This was assessed by a pool test during freshman week, and yup, the testees (so to speak) had to swim buck naked.
There were members of the swim team poolside to act as life guards who, BTW, were all wearing swim suits. I remember asking one why we had to swim naked for the test, and his helpful answer was, “To make sure none of you guys is hiding a propeller in there.”
The swim test has since been retired thanks to liability issues and the Americans with Disabilities Act, but over 50 years later, I still don’t understand the reasoning behind one of the strangest educational practices I’ve ever encountered.
Of course Ann Landers didn’t care about a male’s feelings, most of society never does.
How can women cavalierly vote to draft and send young men off to war for them, if they care about their feelings?🤔
Just imagine all the sick homosexual teachers getting their jollies
Born 1950, attending ninth grade at Klamath Union HS in 1964-65, we boys went swimming for p.e. once; no suits. A little awkward, but we were all the same. Your children will have amazed questions for you from your background; culture moves along, observably.
I’m 78 and absolutely remember swimming naked: at school gymnasium and YMCA in Greenville South Carolina, at Boys Club in San Diego California —everywhere. I never questioned it, thought about it, or knew why. It was just the way things were done.
I was born in 1950 and took swim lessons when I was about 8-9 years old. All students were in their single digits. Here’s the kicker: This was not in a government school, nor a YMCA. It was a local Catholic version of the Y, named after some dead bishop who will remain anonymous here. I didn’t like it then at all, nor has my youthful discomfort and disdain for the custom mellowed in retrospect. Of course, the teachers/coaches were clad. Figures. What it figures is still open to substantial speculation. All that said, I recall no signs or evidence of abuse.
It was the second or third grade in the winter we got shipped off to the boy’s club, the girls to the Y. Yes, we were given no heads up and yes they gave you a key with a basket number, you stripped put your clothes away and the key had a small bungy cord to keep it on your wrist. They said it was for swimming lessons, most of us learned at the park by the life guards during the summer. I think we went once a week for 6 weeks. This is the strange part they had a diving board, at the end of the session they gave you ten minutes to do what you want dive off the board just swim whatever. So they knew we could dive.
During one lesion they had each kid walk out to the end of the board, turn raise your arms and try to lean back to try to back flip into the pool. I have never heard of anything like that ever. The only other memory I have about that was the chlorine was so strong it burned the eyes and nose and we all got sick riding the bus back to school. I have my suspicions, but the instructors must be long dead by now.
Supervisors were gay. Dumb question !
I went to a private, Evangelical Christian military-style boys’ school in 6th grade, the Southern California Military Academy on Cherry Ave. in Long Beach, CA, affiliated with Brown University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_Military_Academy
We had to be unclothed together in a large, collective shower. Most of us were pre-pubescent. But one boy had gone through puberty. I saw him “giving the full salute”. The matron, a woman who looked like something out of Wallace & Gromit, older than 65, couldn’t stop herself from staring at him.
Either uncle toby is a perv or his gym teacher was. this story is complete bs.