to think stripping naked to shower after PE at school was horrific? **title edited by MNHQ**

[Flowersinyourhair]

Recent conversations with my daughter about PE at school (she loves it, I hated it) have got me thinking about why I disliked it so much.

I was reminded of the hideous shower experience. After PE, the girls would be obliged to have a naked shower, all in together. We would then have to go to the teacher, totally starkers and dripping wet, and bit ticked off on a register to say we'd had a shower.

I can't to this day understand why it mattered so much. It's a safeguarding nightmare really and I'm so glad it doesn't work like that anymore.

AIBU to think it's no reason I hated PE and to ask whether my school was particularly weird??

Late 80's, very old fashioned private school. We'd have to queue for the corridor of cold showers, walk through, present yourself to the games teacher at the exit to be ticked offor the register. If you dared to say you had your period and ask to be excused she'd take out a red pen and mark a big red P by your name (and check to make sure this was only a monthly occurrence).

We got off more lightly than the boys as a couple of high profile court cases in the late 90's proved.

Yes we had to do this too, it was horrifying and absolutely why we all detested PE.

Looking back - why on earth would it have mattered? Kids don't get that stinky anyway?

No one showered after pe at my school and no one was ever noticeably smelly. I just used to use deodorant afterwards and then would shower at home in the evening.

What went on in the past was totally unnecessary. Sounds to me that like a lot of practices of times gone by, it was a way of putting the kids in their place via humiliation and degradation

Sparrow, I went to a convent school (FCJ) in northwest England, where a lot of the nuns were from Ireland. This was in the 80s and although there were showers they never seemed to be used. I certainly never had one, solo or communal. I'm so thankful now, because I was painfully shy and awkward, and would have found it excruciating. These stories are just awful.

Reading the posts from people who never went through this makes me feel even more bitter (if that was possible) because it's clear it wasn't mandated across all schools, so why did it happen.

On the other side of the coin we were always allowed to wear the pleated skirt things or shorts (NEVER track suit bottoms though, even in the snow), and I don't recall music or RE teachers just rocking up to enjoy the show, so I feel a lot luckier than some of you.

There was a big scandal at my school just after I left, and one of our teachers ended up doing time. There'd been rumours about what went on in his storeroom for years but it was never acted on. Eventually one brave girl made an official complaint, loads more came forward, and he was jailed. I'd like to think this led to a general overhaul of safeguarding at my school including showering time.

In my mind's eye I can still see myself in that changing room, I remember the lay-out and exactly who used to get changed around me (because you always stuck to the same area didn't you). It gives me the absolute shivers.

KERALA1 - I had size C breasts and started periods before I left Primary.

I was just lucky - I wasn't the only one at my Primary had friends in same boat. I didn't realise till quiet late in life that would have been considered early development.

For reasons quiet beyond me despite having friend in top stream they put me in a class with the people who bullied me in primary - so PE was one of the few times I was with old friends and it's where I made quite a few new ones in same position as me.

It was embarrassing but it was humiliating for all of us. Not okay for anyone but bearable.

I personally found it harder outside of PE - when one was head of my year and when it was reported by other I was punched in the face sought me out publicly to say I was asking to be bullied given my personality or the subject teacher who insisted I read out loud then ridicule me told my parents I was lazy and stupid - I was one of three at that school to go on to get an A at A-level in that subject.

I'm glad my own DD at secondary doesn't have any of this - though she's feeling left out as her friend's periods have all started and her haven't.

Hopefully her experience all round of physical exercise had been more positive despite it not being one of her strengths.

I went to a gym in my 30s unfortunately person showing me round was complete bitch and despite being interested in trying a few things I've never made into another one yet. Any other aspect of my life I would have tried again and again so I wonder about the legacy I've been left with.

I've just read a local newspaper report where a children's football coach has confessed to sexually abusing the children he was supervising during the 80's and 90's. one of the things he mentioned was that he used to strip off and get in the showers with the boys. It reminded me of this thread.

Just your comment about all being in same boat - does makes tough experiences more bearable. Looking back was a shame I never had that though I had nice friends. Wasn't particularly developed just came on early and so ashamed didn't want my friends to know the hiding of that made the whole enforced naked shower thing even more hideous. Best days of your life - I think not!

I would love to hear from a PE teacher from this period of time.

Interesting that the 1999 article mentions religious concern. It sounds like there was actually a change in law which is perhaps why there was such a sudden shift?

Yes it's been strangely Quiet on the teachers' side of things here hasn't it? normally MN has teachers piling in to defend themselves (rightfully) on threads so I have no doubt plenty of teachers have seen this thread. I suppose they can't say anything because there is no defence for this.

We had individual showers with a curtain, and a hook on the outside for your towel and were not supervised. So that meant you could walk into the cubicle in your towel and hang it outside once you were in. Total privacy. PE teacher would also try to avoid coming into the changing rooms but would occasionally stick her head around the door to tell us to hurry up so we wouldn't be late for the next class.

The biggest risk was from your fellow pupils pulling open your shower curtain or nicking your towel to chuck down the loo. Which is why I never showered being someone who was bullied it would have been a certainty that they would have done that to me every week.

No period register, though PE teacher was quite sympathetic and let you sit out quietly if you had cramps.

This was in Ireland in a convent school where they policed skirts being hoicked up so maybe modesty was a part of it.

this was in the 90's

In Year 8 there was a Male PE teacher who would slap me on my bottom and also sat me on his knee. This would have been 1993 I think. Oddly I knew it was wrong but I was isolated and bullied by the other girls and I thought it was special treatment. Confusing time

My DH had this. He hated it and speaks if it to this day. He was a sports "star" as a kid and there was absolutely no getting away from the naked communal shower thing. It literally affected him to be naked in front of his teachers and peers to this day. Disgusting.
I didn't have this which surprises me because my school was hell on earth, I think this would have tipped my mental health over the edge.

Only read to p 18 of the thread but this by Woodlander stuck out

We all rushed to cover ourselves and he just said "It's nothing I haven't seen before". I absolutely hate this attitude. It sounds like an excuse for adults to ignore that teenage girls have any right to privacy, or bodily integrity, because -what- he's seen a naked female before? (Consensually, one hopes - not because he's poked his head around a female changing room door before). It just doesn't make any sense - just because a man's 'seen it all before' doesn't mean he has a right to see me or any other random woman naked angry

Thing is, it is not just an attitude about girls' bodies: it's a very British attitude about ALL female bodies.

You see it on here all the time on threads about childbirth, gynae exams, smear tests etc - 'Oh what you are embarrassed about having a bunch of male students in, it's not anything they haven't seen before' or 'They're not getting off on it, they see it professionally all the time, they're probably thinking about the footie'.

Totally ignoring the point, of course, that the actual WOMAN or girl is feeling uncomfortable.

It's a type of gaslighting imo and it occurs all over, not just with teen girls in schools.

We had the communal showers which seemed to stop after the first year of high school. (Mid 80s)

There was also the period register, where if you said you couldn't have a communal shower because of the time of the month a red P was put in the register. I was more embarrassed about periods than getting naked at that age.

Onchao - I think she means that for boys there is (I believe) a medical reason for putting hands down pants and asking them to cough like that. For girls - there isn't.

Our doctor made us do this when we were kids. I am a woman btw. Is there really no reason for it?

I'd like to challenge this idea that women can't be pervs that seems to have been flagged up on earlier posts. Of course they can. Not only men abuse. This is one of the biggest misconceptions still going on in society. It has led to a hell of a lot of people not speaking out about some very very sexually exploitative experiences. Women do abuse. It may be that they can get away with it more easily actually, or are more subtle about it. Whilst it is definately homophobic to say every Lesbian woman is a perv, It is not homophobic to question why precisely any teacher, lesbian or otherwise chooses to stand and stare at the naked bodies of children, week after week. It was never necessary to do so. Someone upthread said, quite ridiculously IMO, that Lesbians are attracted to adult women. So what? So are men. But any heterosexual man who went into a girl's changing room (well it would end there) and watched while they paraded in front of him naked would be assumed to be a perv. Why is it different if a woman who likes women does the same?

I have been reading this thread in shivering horror. I was very, very lucky - I didn't get my period until we had stopped having swimming lessons, and we didn't have showers after Games or PE at secondary school. TBH there wouldn't have been anything like time to throw 80-odd girls through the shower and get even remotely dressed and back to school (half-mile walk).

When I moved to boarding school for sixth form, you didn't use the showers in the sports hall/boat house/swimming pool etc for the simple reason that you would go back to your boarding house to shower there with all your actual stuff (shampoo, soap, etc) and clean clothes to put on!

Our doctor made us do this when we were kids. I am a woman btw. Is there really no reason for it?

Oh Johnny. It's a very specific testicle thing. I have literally never experienced it, not having testicles myself.

What none of the disgusting apologists on this thread have explained is how a quick skip through a sprinkle of water was going to get you clean or stop you smelling. Not one person's experiences involved soap or shower gel.

Exactly this. A sprint through tepid water isn't even going to rinse off fresh sweat, let alone wash off mud or dried sweat.

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From a different perspective, I used to work in pastoral care in a boarding prep school. The prepubescent boys there were put through warm soapy water on a fairly regular basis. It's pretty easy not to look at someone who's naked; it's very easy to hang shower curtains and place towel hooks/rails so that nobody has to expose themselves unnecessarily. Admittedly some of them will stand still and helicopter and shout "LOOK AT ME!" but that's quite different from the stories of production lines of unwillingly naked children.

It's also homophobic to say (as someone upthread did) that lesbians shouldn't be allowed in girls' (women's?) changing rooms.

The thing is that nobody should be leering at adolescents who are getting changed and feel awkward as fuck already. Nobody should be forcing them to run through communal showers naked or be inspecting them for whether they are wearing any knickers. Not an adult of the same sex as the child, or an adult of the opposite sex. Not an adult who is generally attracted to adults of the same sex as them, or to the opposite sex.

The behaviour is what needs (needed - I so much hope this is no longer a thing!) to be stopped. Not teachers having supervisory access to changing rooms.

Clearly some offenders were lesbians. Mine were both ostensibly straight women though.

"This was in Ireland in a convent school where they policed skirts being hoicked up so maybe modesty was a part of it."

I do wonder that myself. Both my mother, in the 50s/60s, and I in the 80s attended FCJ convent schools (different ones) in NW England, and neither I nor, I'm pretty sure, my mother, ever had to take forced, communal showers. I really am shocked that this went on - I honestly had no idea.

We had this at my school too, mid 1980s. In my case, I didn't sense the teachers were perving on us so much, more humiliating us. The worst of it came from other girls though.

any heterosexual man who went into a girl's changing room (well it would end there) and watched while they paraded in front of him naked would be assumed to be a perv. Why is it different if a woman who likes women does the same?

I'm sure you could brand the heterosexual woman similarly if she watched naked girls parading. Are you saying lesbians shouldn't be allowed in girls' changing rooms?