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??

We also had the hand down the pants in the school medical. It was well known it would happen...after the medical I only talked about it to my best friend...we decided it must be to see if you flinch, because we both did...therefore that was normal. This was an older female Dr...why would she have done that to girls??? As an adult I cannot imagine any genuine medical reason

As a teen I had massive anxiety even just getting into the shower at home. I hated it. I used to turn it on, wrap a towel around myself and put each leg under the spray one after the other. Then wash my armpits at the sink. I didn't mind a bath but there had to be so many bubbles you couldn't see anything from the neck down. It wholly stemmed from school and the showering rules there.

At some point in my early 20s I realised I didn't feel as ashamed or embarrassed to shower but even now mid 30s I'd never be happy naked in front of anyone except dh (and even then only in certain situations) and I change in front of my very small dc but that won't last forever.

Secondary school in the 90s. We had the vile PE knickers and there were strict rules about which sports meant you could wear skirts so most PE lessons had girls in tight tops and pants. All year round. Completely degrading especially when we had to go over the fence to retrieve kit which had gone out of school bounds. I still remember all the van drivers vile catcalls

We had communal showers and fortunately my form's
PE teacher was lovely but other classes had PE teachers who made them shower naked and basically ogled them. We had one of the other teachers for a term and it was awful.

Even now, I take off my clothes under a towel or in the shower cubicle after swimming. I avoided swimming for decades and only had lessons two years ago after going through therapy for something else that increased my over-all confidence, but I still get paranoid about undressing in public places like gyms, or changing rooms in shops.

In shops I prefer the cubicles with the doors that close and lock, because I'm afraid the ones with curtains will be swooshed aside by the shop assistant or by mistake, just like the PE teacher used to do when we were in the shower. That's the legacy it's left me with, that and the feeling that I'm crap at sport.

Some really appalling stories on here - couldn't stomach reading the whole thread tonight. Best wishes to those of you still struggling with issues stemming from this sort of humiliating bullshit. It shouldn't have happened.

I honestly had no idea how rife this stuff was. I was at secondary school late 90s-early 2000s and I realise reading this that we were lucky. We had a shower block but it was used precisely once, on our induction day to the school. Thankfully after that it was never, ever used again - we just coated ourselves in Impulse. The PE uniform rules were very flexible, so we all wore polo shirts and football shorts or tracksuit bottoms. Although the bullying for not having the requisite Adidas three stripe was ferocious, your privacy and dignity was intact.

I remember our PE teacher once commenting that she hated giving out navy blue bibs (we often had bibs to denote teams, in different colours) because when she was at school, they had awful navy blue gym knickers which they referred to as navy blues. So when she was collecting the bibs up after the lesson she'd have to say "Give me all the navy blues" and then she'd shudder. She said we were lucky that we got to wear proper tracksuit bottoms, which reading this, I think she was right! But at the time, I'd assumed that she meant that the gym knickers were for wearing under your shorts or gym skirt, not that they were worn as outerwear I just assumed it was like the rule at primary school about wearing cycling shorts under your school skirt or summer dress if you wanted to do cartwheels.

This is one thread that I actually wouldn't mind ending up in the Daily Fail as it might raise awareness of this hideous buried secret in our schools!

Wow. This thread brought up a lot of unhappy memories.
Corridor of showers - check - although we were allowed to hold the towels over our head and run through
Teacher checking we were wet - check
Period register - check
Hating every second - check
Gym knickers and not enough clithes in winter - check
Hands so cold that you couldn't undo buttons anyone?
I am feeling quite emotional and so angry thinking about it all. No wonder i hate exercise. I think knowing tonight that other schools didn't do this is hardest of all.
84-89 (11-15 years) in the Midlands

My pe teacher tried to order me and another girl (we were alone in changing rooms with her) into the shower as we clearly hadnt been in, we point blank refused, she stood infront of us demanding we strip, still no
We ended up getting sent to the head and put on detention.
There was absolutely no chance i was doing it (reasons stemming from childhood) and any other punishment would have at least been a step up from having to be naked in front of other people, plus i was a very late developer and was ashamed of how i looked, i didnt even like the feeling of being naked at home when i had to get into the bath.

I don't think an apology wouldn't be too much to expect. An apology was issued on behalf of the Magdalene laundries by the church and, I think, the govt (similarities drawn up thread)

Exactly the same here too. All of justhappy's list. Early to mid 90's, NW comp. We tried doing the 'splash water on shoulder with hand trick but she cottoned on and started standing at the exit of the shower corridor to make sure we actually went in. I was the first girl in my year to develop breasts and started my period long before any of my friends. I stopped going to PE altogether in the 4th year. It was the last double period in the afternoon so I would just go home. No one ever said anything about my absence and I believe other girls did the same.

Same here. The Pe teacher would watch and bark out to whoever wasn't washing enough. This is late 80s, nice school in Norfolk

Have also just remembered that the communal shower block was in a separate stand alone building from the gym changing rooms, so we had to cross a playground, outside, in our towels, to get to it. We weren't allowed to change at the showers or wear shoes as there wasn't anywhere to put them apparently. So would go bare foot, naked, in a towel, outside to a long concrete corridor where we had to shower in front of each other and a watching teacher, then go back across the playground with damp hair etc. Baffled now as to why none of us told our parents. We definitely all hated it and said so to the teachers and each other.

This was one of the reasons I loathed PE. Like other posters, I went to a school with a ridiculous PE uniform. Running knickers, gym skirt, polo neck t-shirt, and long socks and a jumper for winter hockey if it was cold enough. My legs used to go all mottled and red in the cold, and I hated them at the best of times - I was massively self conscious, and PE made it so much worse.

Then there was the showers - cold, dirty cubicles with no curtains in one changing room, a communal shower in the other, with the PE teacher checking to see if we'd gone in.

I fucking hated PE. Actual hatred.

Similar story here. Boarding school in 1980s for me. Communal showers after PE and knicker checks -ours were white for gym and grey for school.
Showers in the dorms were communal and supervised by male teacher for girls aged 6-14. I do remember that he would leave the older girls on their own though. We'd get in 5-6 at a time.
I love sport still but for everyone who was humiliated by sadistic teachers. We had two teachers at our school who were later convicted of sexual offences against boys.

Baffled now as to why none of us told our parents.

I think some people did tell parents, but for whatever reason parents didn't complain to schools in those days. On the other hand I was hit very hard around d the head for saying the F word in front of a teacher: I would never have told my parents!

I told my parents the shower situation and how uncomfortable I felt and dm just said I was a prude and "we've all got the same" and "you need a shower after pe"

My dm doesn't give two hoots about communal nakedness. Nor is she particularly good and empathising when others think and feel differently to her!

I know this is hardly the same but whilst we're here can I add picking teams to the list of humiliating PE shite? Always the two people who were best at sport, and also bullies, chosen to be team leaders and everyone else lined up in front of them whilst they chose. Their friends chosen first, then the generally popular girls, then anyone actually good at PE, then what was left was about 3-4 girls who were either unpopular, bullied and/or over weight. Team leaders would then argue amongst themselves as to who got the 'worst' one then pull faces as they picked the last. Sometimes they'd refuse and the teacher would eventually step in and force them to take them. How the fuck did the teachers think that was ok? It was horrible to watch after being picked let alone being one that was left.

Lynette I was meaning 'us' as in the other girls on my year but I think you're right.

It saddens me to read all this as my time at my convent school was largely happy, even if I was rather clumsy and crap at sports, and just muddled through it. Our gym shorts were made of thick, stretchy material in hot pant style, coming up to the waist and about an inch down the thigh. I think it was pretty much the style of the time. We wore them for gym and track if it were warm enough, no issues with perving onlookers as we had extensive grounds and high fences. As I've mentioned no showers and absolutely no forced nakedness. I started developing at 10, and the thought of exposing my body to anyone else fills me with horror. I truly hope that it's now acknowledged that to force anybody to remove their clothing under protest is abuse, full stop. So awful that it happened to so many young people.

A former classmate of mine is now a BBC sports journalist and presenter - I wonder what she would have to say about this, not having had to endure it herself.

Wow this thread is awful. I'm so shocked that this was still happening in the 90s and 2000s.

I was at an all girls school late 80s 90s, and the shower rule was banded a few years before I started. We were told it was legislation (now no idea if it was!?) The shower block was dry, they put curtains on each entry point and if we wanted to shower we had bring a swimming costume. No body showered. The teachers were not allowed in the changing rooms whilst we were changing. If we were taking to long they would knock then open the door a bit and shout to hurry up. There was also 1 single changing cubicle for anyone who was uncomfortable changing in the main area. A few girls would wait and take turns.

I think in my last year they were in the process of putting individual shower cubicles in.

I think parents, and adults in general, used to have more of a deferential attitude to authority. Things were much more coy- remember when we were learning about child sexual exploitation, it was all about "stranger danger" and this mythical stranger who would be waiting at the school gates luring you into his car with sweeties? What a bizarre, obviously untrue picture of the real threat - and how peculiar to approach it at such a tangent!! It was like it wasn't even possible to articulate that the threat might come from within the family, or from those who were familiar to children.

As a result, they managed to protect children from a totally fictitious threat, while teaching them absolutely nothing about what they could do if they were touched or treated inappropriately. Why? Maybe authority and hierarchy had something to do with it, and an unwillingness to face the real problem, with devastating results for so many children.

The fact that parents didn't raise objections to showering might be related to all this. I think it might also have appeared liberal compared to what our parents suffered at school in an era of corporeal punishment? (Though not sure about this).

Interesting because while I loathed games (always last to be chosen etc) I didn't mind the communal showers - at least I got warm again. Perhaps early-teen boys mind being naked in front of each other less than girls. Unacceptable in either case of course.

As for kids choosing each other - other teachers have had to accept mixed-ability teaching and there is no reason why games teachers should not do the same. It's the long shadow of Arnold of Rugby at work, I fear. If every school-leaver enjoyed some form of healthy activity enough to go on with it in adult life and we produced no world-beaters, that would be a good bargain, wouldn't it?

I remain grateful to the one teacher of sense who when I was fifteen agreed with me and a few other refuseniks that we would quietly slope off and go for a healthy walk in ordinary clothes. We kept to our end of the bargain faithfully and he had three fewer bored youngsters getting in the way!

Thing is, PE can be great.

I had the hands-down-the-pants medical but my actual PE experience - tellingly, not in the UK - was great.

We had 'theoretical' classes periodically where we learnt about the effects of exercise on the body. I vividly remember a model of a human body that the teacher cut into, showing us bright yellow subcutaneous fat. Then, we chose each semester from four different options, typically things like: step aerobics, running, a ball game such as soccer/ football/ basketball/ hockey, or weightlifting for older children.

After PE we washed our faces, sprayed deodorant liberally, and went back to class! A few girls did shower and the teacher might wander in and out of the changing rooms but it was totally optional and I never felt uncomfy with any of the teachers.

That doctor, on the other hand.............

I loved PE, was in cross country and hockey teams. Communal showers didn't bother me but we only had a bath at home so I actually liked having a shower. We had a huge communal shower and then the other sports area did have the curtained off individual cubicles.

I do remember lots of the girls hating it, our teachers didn't inspect us in any way though. I was bought up by a Mother who celebrated sex and nakedness.

The horrible PE memory I have is when out on cross country adult men jeering and wolf whistling at us as we ran past in our bloody Lolita in their eyes gym skirts. Being me I would shout fuck off and give them the finger but lots of girls were intimidated by them.