Did anyone in your secondary school ever use the showers?

[Soubriquet]

In American programs, teens are always shown using the showers after PE

I remember never seeing anyone using the showers at my school. At best, they were used for some groups of girls to change in semi privately. At worst, they were completely ignored.

So. Your school?

We never used the showers at school.

Forgot to add that our showers were for the exclusive use of the paying clients who used the sports facilities at the weekend.

I'm American -- yes in the 80s, dunno now.
We considered a person highly disgusting if they didn't shower after PE. The peer pressure was intense, of course you showered as a teen, anyway.
If you go to somewhere like American public swimming pools, single sex changing rooms, there is lots of nudity.

I find the prudishness of Brits about view of their naked bodies quite silly.

I went to an all boys school. First thing any PE master at a boys school learns is that teenage boys won't shower and imposing detentions on whole classes makes only makes you look silly. We never used them.

@lljkk

I'm American -- yes in the 80s, dunno now. We considered a person highly disgusting if they didn't shower after PE. The peer pressure was intense, of course you showered as a teen, anyway. If you go to somewhere like American public swimming pools, single sex changing rooms, there is lots of nudity.

I find the prudishness of Brits about view of their naked bodies quite silly.

Our objection wasn't about nudity - it was that we never got enough time to dry ourselves and we were damned if we were going to sit damp through double French or whatever it was after PE. We did shower after Games (i.e rugby or cricket) but the showers were hot and we had as much time as we wanted to dry and dress as we went home afterwards.

It’s downright cruel to force young girls at
Various stages of development into communal showers. To have to say when you’re on you’re period in front of staff and other girls, when some girls had started and some hadn’t. Some girls were wearing bras and others not. I found it humiliating. It’s natural to be shy at that age. To have some screaming PE teacher watching you shower is traumatic. I had only moved to the area a year before and had been relentlessly teased for wearing a bra when no one else at my Primary school was. To then go to a strange secondary school and be forced to shower naked was really traumatising for me particularly as I had literally just started having periods.

We were all forced in the first PE lesson of secondary. Then. Then word got out we were only being made to have a shower because the teachers were lesbians and wanted to see us naked (despite one of the PE teachers being married to another teacher). The hard girls point blank refused, others forgot their towel and many had their period every week (which got marked into the register with a red dot) After a few weeks the teachers gave up forcing us.
My mother not buying me a bra, which caused questions from the other girls, was actually worse than having a public naked shower.

Reading this thread, I have never been so glad that I didn't start my periods until I was nearly 16! The only time anybody wrote down about periods was for swimming and we only swam until Year 9.

@Soubriquet

In American programs, teens are always shown using the showers after PE

I remember never seeing anyone using the showers at my school. At best, they were used for some groups of girls to change in semi privately. At worst, they were completely ignored.

So. Your school?

Nope.

No, never. Some girls used them to get changed in if they wanted extra privacy, eg during their period, and they usually ended up accidentally leaning against the button and getting soaked.

Yes, we had to have at least a quick rinse. The PE teacher would sit at the door with a clipboard, ticking us off. She would mark when we said we had our period and if it didn't fall in line, we would be questioned in front of everyone. This was late 90s, for reference.

I went to an all boys school. First thing any PE master at a boys school learns is that teenage boys won't shower and imposing detentions on whole classes makes only makes you look silly. We never used them.

Lol - the cane was still in use at my school for the boys. After that, the favourite punishment was making pupils write out the school rules. Detentions was common, as were lines.

In my O level French class, if we made a mistake like not making an adjective agree with the noun, we were kept in every lunchtime for a week, writing out

"The adjective must agree with the noun"

Ditto, verbs must agree with their subject. After I had been kept in every lunchtime for 2 weeks, as I made both those mistakes, I never made that mistake again in French. As our teacher was the deputy head, who was in charge of discipline (after the head broke a bone in a boy's hand with the cane), there was nobody higher up to complain to; and anyway the SLT supported each other implicitly!

The ultimate sanction was they would refuse to give us a reference for applying to university. No pupil taught our teachers anything at our school!

The girls didn't and it wasn't expected as the showers were used as storage. Boys did I think. When we used the sport centre next door (year 10/11) for the gym there were individual showers so some of us did.

In primary school (left in 90s) the girls pe kit was a leotard. Regardless of the activity, gymnastic leotard, tennis leotard, cross country running yep leotard. My mother went up and caused stink that it was inappropriate to be doing most sports with a leotard on. I wore shorts and t-shirt like the boys and more and more started to wear shorts over their leotards and then eventually they just changed it to short/t-shirts for all.

yes, we had communal changing rooms and communal showers and we HAD to shower. If we said that we had our period we could ask the teacher and then would usually be allowed to keep our knickers on and sometimes use one of the showers that had a curtain if available. We had to hang our towel on the hooks, and go in through the communal showers and a PE teacher would make sure we had done it.
Absolute fucking ordeal. I was crap at most PE, dyspraxic, autistic and generally bullied. I also often didnt have the most fashionable style of knickers of the day, and also wasnt allowed by my mum to shave my armpits or legs because "women shouldnt have to conform to this stuff and theres nothing wrong with it" and I wasnt confident enough to argue or to tell anyone the extent of the grief I got in case they did it too.

Its horrible to think back to those enforced showers and terrifying PE teachers.
Also really weird when I think back about having to do PE in vest and pants at primary school. Loads of kids climbing up the ropes or having to hop over the gym horse etc in the big hall in our knickers. Its quite unsettling

@Branleuse

yes, we had communal changing rooms and communal showers and we HAD to shower. If we said that we had our period we could ask the teacher and then would usually be allowed to keep our knickers on and sometimes use one of the showers that had a curtain if available. We had to hang our towel on the hooks, and go in through the communal showers and a PE teacher would make sure we had done it. Absolute fucking ordeal. I was crap at most PE, dyspraxic, autistic and generally bullied. I also often didnt have the most fashionable style of knickers of the day, and also wasnt allowed by my mum to shave my armpits or legs because "women shouldnt have to conform to this stuff and theres nothing wrong with it" and I wasnt confident enough to argue or to tell anyone the extent of the grief I got in case they did it too.

Its horrible to think back to those enforced showers and terrifying PE teachers.
Also really weird when I think back about having to do PE in vest and pants at primary school. Loads of kids climbing up the ropes or having to hop over the gym horse etc in the big hall in our knickers. Its quite unsettling

That’s barbaric and abusive

this was an estate comprehensive 86-92

We 'had' to. Communal shower room. Teacher would watch us go in, in our towels. We were allowed to just open them up and keep our back to everyone else. She used to make sure we didn't have our bras on by checking there were no straps visible. Of course we only ever slipped the straps under our arms, went in and got our legs and shoulders wet and came out again.
At the time we genuinely thought we were fooling her and that she thought we were showering (iirc she couldn't watch us once we were in there but checked we were wet on the way out). Looking back she must have known. Surely?

That would have have 1995-2000.

Only after swimming and we were allowed to keep our costumes on. There were showers available and they worked, but we didn't have time to use them even if we'd wanted to (definitely didn't, they were open plan) , so the changing rooms reeked of impulse/so/body shop white musk body spray

We always showered after PE, especially yesterday 9, 10 & 11. I guess it helps that it was a small school, there wasn't any real cliques or mega bitch gangs either which made school an awful lot nicer than the experience of friends who went to different schools.

*years not yesterday

We were made to shower in communal showers, 2 watching teachers. This was early 90s
It was beyond awful and yes, they too made comments about girls being fat and about body odour

The problem is, when you're a child at school, 11+, you believe you have no rights and that you have to do what a teacher tells you to do. Or at least that is how it used to be. However if everybody refused to shower communally, they could have done nothing to us. I say 'us', never had them where I was at school, thankfully, but I've heard some horrible stories from others.

@Rollergirl1980

Mid to late 80s - showers in a line. We had to wait in a queue wrapped in our towel and one by one walk through the water spray from start of showers to end. We had to hold our towel above our head to keep it dry. PE teacher stood at start and watched you go through. No actual washing took place. They might as well have hosed us off. Very embarrassing experience but completely accepted.

We had to do this too. It was a grammar school in the 70s. It was awful.

We had single cubicles with curtains. I definitely used them occasionally but probably only about 1/3 of the times. The PE teacher would stand there yelling that we had to get in or there would be detention 🤔 If I didn’t fancy it then I’d get changed super quick and rush off to my next lesson, she was hardly going to drag me out of geography for a shower was she??!!

I wouldn't have minded a single cubical with a curtain, no way would I have pranced around naked. I've heard of girls coming on their period at that time and feeling embarassed with blood leaking away.