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??

OMG - where are all these schools ?? I was a teenager through the 80's - nothing like this ever happened ? It's shocking - I'd never have been at school if this happened to me !

Yanbu urgh flashbacks. Horrid basic smelly concrete obligatory naked showers. I had started periods really young and for some reason desperate to keep it secret from my friends none of whom had started. So I never admitted when I was on and had awful contortions to hide my bloody towels while stripping off. Fucking awful. Plus had to shower as rural school and we had cross country ie running through mud - only did this in November . Honestly put me off running for life.

We had to wear leotards when we did a term of dance during PE. I hated wearing a leotard as I was very conscious of being a bit plump and quite well developed. I was also terrified that you might be able to tell I was wearing sanitary towels if it was my period as I had very heavy periods and often wore 3 towels at once.

When we questioned it we were told it was for 'safety' - but when the boys had a term of dance they were allowed loose fitting shorts and t-shirts!

Wow. I started high school in '95 and we (girls) never had a shower despite the fact we had shower cubicles with curtains in the dressing room. Too cold we always thought, plus we usually had to be dressed and onto next class about 3 minutes later. I think the boys may have had to after rugby sessions though.

Was thinking about this the other day.

I was at senior school late 80s/early 90s and we had a shower block that we were all supposed to run through naked then get dried at the end, with the PE teacher watching, making sure we did it. It was a fucking humiliating experience and I always wondered why a female teacher would collude in this.

As someone upthread said, the teachers shower remained unused. If she'd have had to shower with us after every lesson, you can bet that they'd have been cancelled every week

Early/mid nineties we had communal showers. I was fat and body conscious. It was like torture. Just thinking about it makes my mouth go dry with fear.

Ugh, I'm so glad they didn't make us have showers when I was at secondary (87-92) I honestly don't think I could have coped with it. I hated getting changed in the same room as the other girls, let alone getting naked. There were showers there but I don't ever recall them being used.

We had to wear those horrible pe knickers but not if we had our period - then we could wear a skirt. Which didn't help that one time my period started in pe and I had blood running down my leg. I'm so glad pe kits seem to be a lot better these days, girls can even wear tracksuit bottoms! I would have loved that!

Isn't it awful that now they don't shower at all?

Why is it so beyond the English school system, to treat teenage girls with some decency as if they have the right to some dignity and just set up private showers, like they have in sport centres?

I can't believe we haven't solved the problem of the need to wash after exercise, with the need to have some fucking privacy and dignity.

How can it be beyond our ken? It's astonishing when you think about it.

And now we have "this girl can" to promote exercise in women,huumm wonder if it's linked..we all hated it at school,put us off sport for life,so up pops an advert to encourage us...pervey bastard teachers..yeah the gym nickers I remember playing netball in them and all the boys watching

I wonder if the period tracking was really just to check which girls were having pregnancy scares? I mean, when girls first start they can be so irregular for a few years, so what is the fucking point?

Thing is, I think all of that seems so wrong looking back and I wonder why we didn't just all refuse to do those things as a group (I mean, what could they have done- given us all detention each week?) but I was a good girl in all my lessons and did what I was told. I would never have refused to do something I was told to do, even if I disagreed with it . You can really understand how predatory types would take advantage of this.

There was something sadistic about it. The Pe teachers were out of proportion aggressive to years 7 - 9 they were fine as you got older. We weren't bad kids all quite well behaved - certainly didn't warrant being treated like new recruits to the sodding marines or something. They used to yell and shout at us too.

I had no idea this happened, I went to school in the 80's (did A levels in 89) and never did I take a shower after PE. The showers were there, but nobody ever took one.

It wasn't like we worked up much of sweat standing on a hockey pitch in the freezing cold wearing a tiny skirt.

We had individual showers that had curtains but we had to make sure we looked adequately showered. We used to tuck our bra straps under our towels and keep our pants on. One girl slipped and it revealed this; rather than help her up she got bawled at for not being naked and sent back into the shower!

The boys had it worse, I think they had a communal shower set-up and the PE teacher would pick on certain boys to keep making them go through it again and again and again. Supposedly because they weren't properly clean but really it was for the staff lolz.

I left school in 1993.

I'm genuinely shocked by this thread btw. Sounds more like something from a Magdelene Laundry tbh.

We had communal showers in the 90s too - I remember showing some other girls that if you got your feet wet and walked out of the showers, then back in again backwards, several times, very quickly before the teachers arrived, the floor looked as if we had all showered and the teacher would stop harassing us (provided we had wet hair/a towel, as discussed upthread).

Our pe teacher would cane us with the climbing ropes or his trainer...I rember the joint pe lessons in the gym knickers with boys looking for bulges and shouting fish if they saw one....teachers thought it funny..this was 88 89

I also had the hideous communal shower block to endure. I loved PE but fucking hated the enforced showering in front of everyone while the teacher had the register of who had their period. Just so invasive.

I went to look round DD1's school when we moved here four years ago. I was so jealous. The girls PE rooms were gorgeous, tiled, individual shower rooms with proper doors, all chrome and most importantly, private! Trying to explain the hideousness of a concrete communal square room with showers dribbling out tepid water while you were forced to walk naked in front of your peers and a teacher to my teenager was met with disbelief.

Horrible. We had a pervy male PE teacher who used to wander into our changing rooms and pick the most large-breasted girl to have long stints on the trampoline. I left in '89. He was suspended years later for some verbal perviness, can't remember details. Ugh, the things we put up with.

My school, a very naice girls' grammar, had compulsory communal naked showers after PE. It absolutely horrified me when I started secondary school in 1975. It was awful, absolutely humiliating, and there was no getting out of it, no excuses.

Horrible, horrible memory

Our showers were broken and they never fixed them, so the shower area was used as an extension of the changing room when 2 groups overlapped. Teachers did often hang around in the changing room though, apparently to make sure people weren't dawdling.

Really glad we avoided the hell of showers, the changing room was bad enough.

I also remember being checked once a year at the start of every school year for veruccas. As if none of us would ever pick one up after that!

This all sounds horrific! I was in secondary school late 80's/early 90's and the only time we showered was after a swimming lesson. We kept our costumes on. I can't imagine how awful it was for those of you who were put through that.

Yup, one of the secondary schools I went to as well. The sadistic twisted bastards would also make us do cross country, regardless of the weather, in those tiny gym skirts and t-shirt. While they huddled around fully clothed for a bit watching us, before heading indoors. Morning lessons were the worst, tortured in the snow with cross country, called in early to have the shower of shame.

Another one was far more civilised. No tiny gym skirt, trackie bottoms acceptable. Showers that where cubicles and your choice.

Other one not sure. Was there for gcse years and thankfully there was no space left.

Yep to communal naked showers 77-81 with teacher watching unless it was your period which meant no shower.I was told years later that is was a safeguarding reason. They were looking out for any unusual marks/bruising/burns to report.We had the added indignity of having only one shower room but two changing rooms - one (with toilets) was upstairs and along a corridor. That was interesting to run up and down to with just a towel around you, especially in the winter when cold and wet.

I started senior school in the mid 90s. The boys had to shower after PE, but the girls didn't. I don't know if it was ever explained, it was just assumed the boys ere smelly and the girls would take too long! I would have hated it, it seems like something from the 60s not the 90s.