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??

No school showers here. That was the 80's.
And posters saying it went on in the 90's? Blimey!

I've no idea why if the school didn't have an actual pe kit, why they didn't just request parents bought in shorts and a t-shirt to change into instead?

My primary school (late 70s) let the older children bring in a kit (can't remember if it was in school colours or not) but not the younger ones. Not sure at what age you could bring one in. I remember as an older child (maybe 9) doing PE with the younger ones due to my teacher being off and not being allowed to use it.

I wonder if the reason the younger ones didn't use a kit was that it was quicker as it would half the time of them getting changed.

I was at a state middle school in the 90s and went through all these things too- horrible cold communal showers, scary bully of a PE teacher watching us, taking our towels off us if we tried to go in with them, checking to see if we'd got wet enough. The gym knickers, which failed to conceal sanitary towels or pubic hairs, and having to wear them in freezing weather whilst the bitch teacher was in a tracksuit. The period register. I had a friend who was quite overweight at age 12- she'd started her periods at 10 and had very large breasts. Running was agony for her and so embarrassing. The whole thing amounted to a twice weekly ritual humiliation session for all of us, for four long years until we went to Upper School and got treated with a bit of dignity.

I don't see the value in any of it beyond being a way to dominate and cow us- it certainly didn't get us clean. Children were treated like sub-humans who didn't deserve privacy or respect back then. My mum was a teacher at my school and was no help. If I knew my kids had to go through that I'd permanently excuse them from PE. It definitely effected my self esteem and how I feel about sport. At the time most of us did have at least one sport we enjoyed doing (mine was gymnastics) but the horrible teacher and the showers squashed all the joy out of it for us.

At primary school we didn't have a PE kit in the early years. We took off our ties and jumpers and changed our shoes. I think in P6 and P7 we changed into shorts and T shirts. No changing rooms so the boys changed in the assembly hall and the girls in the gym.

My kids school doesn't have a PE kit. They just take their sweatshirts off and change their shoes. Their uniform is a polo shirt so it's comfortable enough for them to move round in I suppose.

This happened at my school in the late 60s/early 70s too. It was like torture, forced nakedness, period diary. If you said you were on your period and it didn't tally with their register you got sent to the senior mistress and she would ask to 'have a wee look'. I also remember a primary school 'medical' where we all lined up in the corridor in our underwear and the doctor pulling my knickers down at the front to have a look. When all of these things were normalised and forced on us it's no wonder so many children were suffering more serious abuse and not speaking up.

"When all of these things were normalised and forced on us it's no wonder so many children were suffering more serious abuse and not speaking up".

I think that's exactly it. It was such a dangerous practice. Totally degrading and utterly confusing for any child trying to learn about safe boundaries. Thinking back I can't help but wonder how those kids who were perhaps suffering abuse outside of school coped with it. It must have been even worse for them.

I think the scandi comment is interesting, if it is culturally normal for people to be naked in saunas etc, showering communally after sport wouldn't upset most girls. But it is not culturally normal in the UK. The cruelty was that children were made to do things many adults would not want to. I hated the showers in PE but now I am completely unbothered about getting changed, showering with other women after sport, but that is obviously my choice. Our attitude to nudity alters all the time. At traditional country fairs men used to race and wrestle nude (many because they were poor and only one set of clothes) Pictures of women breastfeeding in Victorian times show women with their breast exposed to a degree which would get a daily mail reader frothing.

I think this thread goes a long way towards answering the question of why prolific abusers and paedophile rings can go unnoticed within a society. If there is a culture of bullying and humiliation the next step into active abuse is smaller and less obvious.

I went to two schools which had the naked communal showering policy.

The worst was my (Yorkshire) middle school, so age 9-13, where we would get changed in the classroom - so zero privacy from outside or the corridor, would have to strip, wrap a towel round ourselves then walk out of the classroom in just a towel, round a corner, along a corridor and into the shower room. Towels on a hook, walk through a row of showers then back out, grab towel and walk back wet in towel through corridors to classroom to dry off and dress.

This was usually after running round the streets of Leeds in gym knickers.

We weren't allowed a towel.
One PE teacher especially made a point of standing in the doorway between the showers and the changing room, so everyone had to edge past her, naked and wet, while she openly scrutinised us up and down.
We loathed her.
Our complaints were dismissed with ...'why would Miss R be interested in you ?'

I wonder where she is now.

Why is this thread not on the Daily Mail?!

All the sensationalist crap they do pick up on-this is a real issue.

How did they expect you to dry yourselves without a towel Marcipex?

I hated my PE teachers, sadistic perverts. We did the naked showering too and I hated it, I went through puberty relatively early and was so self-conscious. I forgot my hockey boots once and was made to play hockey in the snow in bare feet. My parents were of the opinion that teachers know best .

I am friends with a retired female PE teacher, she used to hate the shower thing as much as we did. She was told by her H of D that she had to ensure that girls showered properly. She would try to let them do the splash of water wrapped in towel business as long as the h of d wasn't around. I think it also left teachers vulnerable to false accusations of abuse or being a pervert. She was so happy when individual cubicles were built and showers were made optional in the 90s.

User, we had to leave our towels with our clothes, edge past The teacher in the shower doorway, shower and edge back past her , completely naked.

I am friends with a retired female PE teacher

Could you find out from her if the showering was a mandatory government thing? Also-were they actually told to do this at teacher training-what were people's reactions?!

I just can't imagine listening to this-actually being told I has to do this to young girls, and not saying something.

Oh I see, I interpreted that as no towels allowed at all! Sorry!

Only one of our three teachers did this rollon

There was a very nice part time teacher and one who was tough but okay, and the one we dreaded. So were the other two risking their jobs by not perving?

And if you were allocated to Miss R you got her all year of course.

I will ask her about, she did let the girls get away without showering properly, but was obviously breaking the rules. These tales are so common I wonder if it was a policy. Its a strange one, especially as in the 80s lots of people didn't have a shower at home anyway!

ifigoup when you were at the Nordic school was there any element of shower enforcement by teachers, period registers etc?

"Could you find out from her if the showering was a mandatory government thing?"

I've already stated that it can't have been. Three generations of my own family, from 1946 to present day, girls and boys, in state and private schools, in England and Scotland, and not one of us were made to shower after games. That confirms that it wasn't mandatory nationwide, at any time.

God period registers, at my school you were allowed not to shower if you were on your period. You could avoid a shower of you were on your period, but to stop us lying about continuous periods, it would be marked on the register! What a bizarre waste of time. I assume most people who became PE teachers did so because of a love of sport and a desire to educate, unless they were just at a loose end cos the hitler youth was no longer recruiting

Ok, you say it wasn't mandatory. So was it considered 'good practice'? Was it something 'old school' teachers did and younger teachers were too scared to argue about it? Did they genuinely think it was important to have 4-week periods and if you didn't you were lying? Was the stripping/showering to 'break' them and make them easier to control?! Did certain heads make it compulsory within their own schools?

I'm just trying to get an understanding of what the PE teachers at the time thought about it. Did the English/maths etc teachers know about the practice or not? Did teachers feel that they had to go through it themselves so it was a rites of passage thing?!

I agree with most posters that it was horrific and have just told my dh about this thread.
He has a completely different view as the naked showers made a huge difference to him. It was due to the pe teacher who noticed massive bruising and a boot print on his back and went to the police. This PE teacher helped to get him away from his mother and stepfather. The PE teacher left the school and joined the police force and eventually headed up a task force investigation into abusive and pedi teachers.