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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Original poster

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

883 replies

Flowersinyourhair · 05/12/2016 22:35

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??

OP posts:
TheSparrowhawk · 07/12/2016 14:05

No adult at all should be in the girls changing rooms.

crystallised · 07/12/2016 14:12

But adults are allowed in changing rooms where children are present, in schools and other situations. Nowadays with much improved and more rigorous safeguarding procedures in place.

TheSparrowhawk · 07/12/2016 14:14

Those children are generally with their parents. In the situation being discussed here, it's a teacher standing there watching naked girls showering and in some cases touching those girls to see if they're wet enough.

BlackeyedSusan · 07/12/2016 14:14

we were allowed to take a towel in. The shower curtains were crappy so it was wrap in towel, go behind half a curtain. face wall. open towel at front only keeping rest to the sides. get the smallest part of the body wet. close towel. walk out. I think there was a bit of a crack down on towels in the shower at some point but did not last long.

Oncemorewithlessfeeling · 07/12/2016 14:16

I got off lightly. We had communal showers and the female PE teacher would check if you'd had a shower - but we used to rush back to the changing room, wrap towels around us with underwear (and sometimes still PE shorts) on underneath, dash into the shower and splash water over our legs, arms and faces. The teacher would tick us off on the register and would note down if anyone said they hadn't had a shower as they were on their period. For this reason I think any PE records would show me starting my period a good year or so before they actually did! Although god knows why they needed to keep track of these things.

We used to think we were so clever to beat the teacher in this way, but having read this thread I wonder whether she knew what we were doing all along and was giving us a head start back to the changing rooms.

crystallised · 07/12/2016 14:18

Yes, I know. I mentioned schools specifically, though. Adults were allowed in changing rooms, then and now. Thankfully with much more rigorous safeguarding than in the past and as described on this thread (as I've just said).

streetface · 07/12/2016 14:32

I remember having to do P.E in my knickers and absolutely hating it. Especially when I was told off for wearing 'fancy' knickers because mum put me in one with a bow or something on. Criinge.

PutDownThatLaptop · 07/12/2016 15:17

I suffered major issues with this. State high school, mid eighties.
Each girl had a designated peg according to name and mine was at the furthest point from the door. Our names were called out one by one and we were forced to do the walk of shame naked from our peg, down the length of the room, into the shower room (a line of showers in a trough) and back again. The rule was that the towel must remain on the peg and so the walk in each direction had to be fully naked.
I was a very early developer and had large breasts. I used to try to arrange my hair to cover them and then hold one hand in front and one behind to cover myself. In my head, I was the only person who felt like this and the only one who suffered.

itsmine · 07/12/2016 17:07

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MoonHare · 07/12/2016 18:26

Still no explanations from anyone in the teaching profession during 60s/70s/80s/90s then?

Genuinely I'd like to know.

Mammylamb · 07/12/2016 18:42

What the actual fuck?? Can't believe anyone had to go through this. Absolutely disgusting and degrading. I went to school mid to late 90s in Scotland. No way would this have happened. No one had a shower after PE, but the teacher did pop into the change room to either hurry us up or have a quick chat. (I actually think it was to keep an eye out for bullying). There was one butch teacher that everyone said was a lesbian. Never once seen her in the changing rooms. Think it's just a typical school rumour. Still hated PE though. Typical unfit fattie that I am

RubbishMantra · 07/12/2016 19:45

Thank goodness I went to a convent boarding school! Nudity was frowned upon, so no showers after sports. Being stinky = better than being demeaned and abused. Both PE teachers (not nuns) were lesbians, and like a pp wrote, we were forced encouraged to do some questionable poses in leotards during "gymnastics". Forward rolls, into a position supporting upper body with arms, legs spread as far as you could was most encouraged.

JustaBoy, you didn't board at a prep school with a name that sounds like four trees did you? Thankfully that vile place is now closed down. They even had chicken wire around the stairs, to stop the little lads throwing themselves off falling.

WhisperingLoudly · 07/12/2016 19:50

Our PE teacher loved it. Not in a sexual way necessarily but she totally got off on the humiliation she inflicted.

We also had to do a "fat test" the teacher got calipers and measured us all and called out our results plus whether that made us "underweight, normal, overweight, obese" to the entire class.

I was a 92lb 14 year old who has spent time in hospital for food issues and she relished telling the class that I might be the right weight but I was "flabby". Fucking nasty bitch. I've never really got over my body shame.

Justaboy · 07/12/2016 19:54

RubbishMantra No it was a catholic day school.

But this is epidemic all this, hope that things are much better now there are some right sods entrusted with this job it appears!

ToadsforJustice · 07/12/2016 19:59

I've posted this before - on another PE thread - if I had a period and wanted to avoid the shower, I had to show the teacher my bloody sanitary towel by pulling my knickers down in the changing room.

AntiqueSinger · 07/12/2016 20:04

We also had to do a "fat test" the teacher got calipers and measured us all and called out our results plus whether that made us "underweight, normal, overweight, obese" to the entire class.Shock You never!!!

Mammylamb · 07/12/2016 20:06

Toads for justice that is horrendous. I honestly would report the teachers who demanded you do this for sexual abuse. Weirdos

Hestheoneandonly · 07/12/2016 20:15

Same at our school late 80s/early 90s. Hung up your towel one end. Walked through the showers then round to collect towel. Ticked off on register unless you told the teacher you were on period (when you also got to announce this fact to the school by wearing your netball skirt over your skimpy knickers). Put off al sport for life!

Dancergirl · 07/12/2016 20:54

Still no explanations from anyone in the teaching profession during 60s/70s/80s/90s then?

They wouldn't dare.

I am so angry reading these terrible stories Angry

I urge anyone who suffered abuse to please please report it now. It's not too late.

OnchaoFerngrass · 07/12/2016 21:07

whispering no one ever actually measured us, but the teachers would "jokingly" go around and see if they could 'pinch an inch'.

TheWoodlander · 07/12/2016 21:20

It was abuse - so many of these stories quite simply describe state-sanctioned child abuse. State-sanctioned because they happened to entire classes in schools, were enforced by teachers, and there was clearly some sort of government sanction for it (as shown by the news article that this practice was being stopped in 1999).

I've been mulling this thread over for 2 days now, and I'm just utterly horrified.

SemiNormal · 07/12/2016 21:32

I've been mulling this thread over for 2 days now, and I'm just utterly horrified. - Same here. I attended a lecture today given by Alan Collins, a solicitor involved in some very high profile child abuse cases ie Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith, Max Clifford, Haut De La Garenne Jersey Childrens Home (and many many others) ... there was the opportunity to ask questions during and after, I wish I could have got his thoughts on this, I wonder if anything can be done? I know they won't compensate so many people but as I mentioned previously, an apology, an explaination as to how and why this was allowed to go on, and acknowledgement that it happened and it was wrong!

NapQueen · 07/12/2016 21:35

Where's Matthew sodding Wright when we need him?

DeleteOrDecay · 07/12/2016 21:39

I would love to see this discussed on The Wright Stuff actually. I feel like this is something that has been swept under the carpet by the powers that be, never to be spoken of again.

Mushypeasandchipstogo · 07/12/2016 21:41

Yes. We had to do the same as OP in the late 70s / early 80s. I used to dread the communal showers and made a habit of locking myself in the toilet and then getting changed. When challenged by the PE teacher I lied and said that I had been in! By the late 80s I was teaching PE and was told to do the same by my head of department to check for bruising/ cuts. This was all very well but my main sport was hockey! I must admit that I took a rather casual approach to doing all of this as I felt very uncomfortable doing it.