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??

but did anyone have to do gym in just their knickers at school? I must've been about 5, or thereabouts and because I'd forgotten my PE kit was forced to prance around the room in just my knickers. I was mortified and I was only about 5!

Umm yep but I was about 8 or 9 and I deliberately forgot the PE kit to get out of it and the showers. This is around the time I learned to forge my mother's signature. But I had like frilly knickers on and the teacher gave me 2 minutes to get ready and get to the gym.
I panicked knowing that the frilly knickers were gonna get me bullied so I sat and ripped off the frills and then got to gym.
That's the only time I remember all the other girls being kind and hiding me amongst them when the boys class joined us, because I was topless too.
God what were they thinking back then?

We also did PE in just knickers whilst in Junior school. Not just when we'd forgotten PE kit, that was the 'PE kit'.

When we were in the final year though (equivalent year 6 now), we were allowed to wear a vest with our knickers.

Hideous.

This thread brings back awful memories.

Secondary school from 1983/4? Compulsory showers after PE, even swimming.

I remember that we used to try to take our towels and leave them out side of the (in-curtained) shower. One of the pe teachers used to pick them all up and put them on a beach next to her at the other end of the changing room so we all had to run up naked, to get our towels back. Awful.

And yes to pe knickers. I remember playing hockey in the snow. Ground frozen. We were al wearing sodding knickers and a fucking pe skirt, with a polo top.

Apparently, if we 'ran around' we'd 'soon warm up'.

There WAS a PE Teacher who commented further up thread about doing it, IIRC. She recalled how she'd been subjected to it herself, but then as a PE teacher herself had to enforce it and felt uncomfortable about it. Perhaps it was deleted, it was days ago (not the poster who was friends with a PE teacher).

I was at uni in the 90s with a trainee PE teacher, I commented to some friends that I thought she was too nice, and they replied "no, she's got an evil streak". Pity those poor PE teachers who just wanted to share a love of sport with their students!

Just had a flashback to drying ourselves on our own kit if we didn't bring a towel. Grim. We had to drop our towels in a pile at the entrance to the showers, and then rummage through for our own towel when we came out. The floor was filthy from hockey field shoe mud so you could be dirtier after showering than you were before.

I saw my most hated PE teacher at a funeral in my early 20s and I'd have loved to have had it out with her but it wasn't the appropriate time. She took great pleasure in writing on my otherwise academically-great school report that my attitude to PE was "APPALLING". My mum and dad just laughed and I think would've happily framed it.

Yes op at my girls grammar school we had compulsory communal showers circa 1979/1980. We had to run naked to the teacher to get our towels.

There was no justification for this clearly she was s bully and probably s paedophile.

Disgusting and vile. So glad those days are gone.

Anyone else remember the joy of learning it was swimming this half-term, meaning a whole half-term down at the public swimming baths being allowed to shower in our swimming cossies and individual cubicles for changing! It felt like the teachers had less control in this more public environment. I lived next door to the public baths and was a good swimmer, so it was like a little oasis of joy in an otherwise miserable 5 years.

Our school hired the 'group changing' area at the public baths and it was hardly any different, sadly!

Another voice coming in.

Leicestershire, early to mid 80s. Yes to communal showers, no soap (so no point) and towels were meant to be left on your peg. I vaguely remember a period diary, which was a problem for me, due to a non-standard (ie 4-weekly) period of 32 days, that was also very heavy and lasted 8 days.

Supervision from teachers, had to be observed as being wet. And fat shaming. Which on looking back at photos of the time was wrong. I wasn't fat, hell I was even on the hockey team. But I wasn't a skinny body either, just solidly muscled and so bigger round the waist than the dainty girls.

I was never good at running, and got humiliated for that, but I was very much at the top in terms of the strength sports, such as shotputt, discus, javelin.

Communal showering wasn't really the main problem, it was the humiliation and degrading treatment that made it the torture it was.

I mentioned muscles, I was strong for a girl. The fat shaming and humiliation stopped the day the other girls found out I had stood up to one of the male bullies out of school and had beaten him hands down. (He started it, I was just defending myself, and he'd never actually had anyone fight back before and wasn't very good at it.)

I absolutely hated this at my school (early to mid 90s). We had to strip naked, have a communal shower and be ticked off on the register by the teachers who would stand close to the shower to make sure you actually went in. I was very self-conscious (although no-one ever made any unkind remarks to me) and this is one of the reasons why I disliked PE. I don't think I even got very sweaty in PE, and if I did then I think it should have been my choice whether or not to shower afterwards.

If you were on your period, you had to answer "No Miss" when the register was taken at the start of the lesson, and were excused from having a shower. I didn't start my period until the end of Y10, but remember pretending to have done so earlier so I could get out of showers.

I was in first year secondary school 1984. I was chubby, freckly and had auburn hair so I was already subjected to a lot of name calling. I had started my periods during the summer we left primary and so I was already well into puberty.

I hated PE with a vengeance and yes, we had the showers of shame. All of us lining up stark naked, we had passed our towel to the PE teacher waiting at the other end. Running through about 10 shower jets and then grabbing our towel at the other end.

I was the only girl who had started periods, developed a full bust and had pubes. I was so mortified at how different my body was, I took a razor to my pubic area. This resulted in a horrific red angry rash that itched like crazy. The shame!

So then I resorted to developing a sore throat during French which was the lesson before PE each week. My mum was a SAHM and lived locally so I would start putting plans in place during French and then the French teacher would arrange for me to go home. My mum would come and pick me up without question and take me home. ( to an afternoon of Pebble Mill at One and The Sullivans!) I soon realised that the French teacher was a soft touch and so this trick of mine became a regular occurrence. I look back now I cannot believe how many weeks I developed this so called sore throat.. And I cannot believe that my parents didn't clock on that something was very wrong.

I ended up moving schools to a private school ( this was the time when there were a lot of teacher strikes) and as the private school was extremely small, we just went to a local leisure centre we played badminton and didn't have to shower.

I too look back and it is so shocking what they put us through. Why???

Tom totally disgraceful although we are probably the Same age as I loved the Sullivan's but it was a different awful and bloody disgraceful age petal wasn't it?

My youngest dd is 17 now and I would punch the face off any adult treating her like this .

Leicestershire high school aged 11-14 89-92
School nurse check- made to hop on one leg in underwear- felt angry at the time but didn't question
PE teacher was young, blond and sun tanned. The sporty lads loved her. She flirted with them and enjoyed their wolf whistles. She was vile to unsporty girls. In rounders one summer my friend couldn't catch or run quickly so she got the boys to do forward rolls around the pitch to utterly humiliate her
Period check every time
Screamed at in the showers
Utterly hideous
Won't forget Miss Holdsworth, I can't remember half of it as my memory won't let me 😔

Vest and knickers here too for pe in the 80s
Communal showers enforced by a watching teacher in early 90s too.

Looking back, I wonder what would have happened if I'd just refused to have a shower. I don't think this even have occurred to me, as I wasn't one to argue with teachers. I could also have asked my mum to complain about it, but she's always been totally unfazed by public changing rooms. At least we just had to hang our towels on a row of pegs right in front of the shower, so we didn't have to walk across the changing rooms naked.

Have things changed nowadays? My children have swimming lessons at a high school pool, and they've recently refurbished the changing rooms and put individual shower cubicles in.

This is one of my bad memories from school too. I started secondary school in 1981 and we were made to shower in pairs after PE.

We were made to undress in the changing room and queue up naked in pairs. Towels were not allowed until we were back in the changing room.

Some girls were already well into puberty but were mocked by the teacher if they tried to cover they're bodies with the hands.

You had to share a tiny cubicle with another girl before walking dripping wet back to the freezing cold changing room to dry off.

Horrific really and we all hated sports because of it.

What good did this behaviour achieve exactly? The only upside I can see is a power kick for the Pe teacher and the chance for them to emulate a lieutenant in a particularly nasty repressive regime. The downside for the rest of us, body issues and being put off sport for life. Result

The only possible benefit, as referenced upthread by a few posters, is the opportunity for the staff to see parts of the children's bodies which are usually covered, to check for bruising etc.

But tbh I think that's a pretty tenuous thing and just as easily achieved by having a member of staff loosely supervising the changing, as realistically the torso is bare at that point and bruising to genitals wouldn't show even when uncovered.

The only possible benefit, as referenced upthread by a few posters, is the opportunity for the staff to see parts of the children's bodies which are usually covered, to check for bruising etc

which back in those days no one was interested in. So that can't have been the reason.

Snort at our horrendous PE staff noticing or particularly caring about bruises or safeguarding issues. Anyway if this was the case why has viewing children naked been pretty much universally phased out?

Yes thinking about it, the main PE teacher also taught English but spent all her time in her PE skirt, bending over in front of the boys, idolised girls who were good at (particularly her chosen) sport and humiliated the ones who weren't.

I remember a friend and I campaigning like crazy for badminton sessions in the hall at lunchtime. We had the gear, were old enough not to need supervision and would have packed everything away after. She wasn't interested because we weren't her pets and badminton wasn't a sport she was interested in. 85% of the girls hated her, all the boys loved her.

State comprehensive late 70s/early 80s .... and the single most memory I carry from school is the vile PE/showers arrangement.

Like so many others, communal shower area, slimy and cold ... no privacy at all. Teachers checking you'd showered, when in reality, the single minute you were given to shower before being shrieked at to get a move on, wouldn't have been enough to properly wash in any case.

Changing area far too small for the number of girls in the class meaning we were all falling over each other, bumping bodies, not enough space to sit (where you could preserve your modesty slightly better), clothes falling off pegs onto a dirty wet floor - and of course no security for your belongings which meant it was a bullies' field day if they got in first and hid' stuff. Teachers didn't give a shit.

The worst of it though was the changing area had an entrance directly onto the playing fields ..... there was NO consideration given by teachers who'd come in and out with abandon, exposing us to other classes - and boys, outside.

Yes - the fucking dreaded period diary ... complete with scathing remarks about your cycle if you were irregular and/or had long periods. This was from women FFS who must have known periods aren't one size fits all but who nonetheless took great pleasure in interrogating you - loudly - with no discretion.

And yes, 'PE shorts' which were actually thick knickers that were cold and unforgiving. So so humiliating when pads could clearly be seen and when you were terrified of leaking with exertion. Why the fuck did this go on? What was the fucking point ? ..... unless it was deliberate humiliation and sadism.

I'm thankful that I was never aware of any overt perving but still, the total disregard for our privacy was disgusting and the casual exposure of our developing bodies, e.g. by leaving the changing room door open and by making us prance about in front of boys wearing ridiculously little meant we did get cat called and had personal remarks chucked at us by some boys, who were rarely properly told off at all.

Not surprisingly I did everything I could to avoid PE including bunking off and making up illnesses. I had a wonderful art teacher who I'll forever be grateful to who wangled it for a couple of years for me to help in her class as I was considering an art career, thus missing PE .... but she couldn't do that for everyone obviously and I was lucky to have a genuine get out like that.

As a result I hate most sport ..... the disregard and humiliation totally overruled any benefit or desire to try when all you could think of was the various forms of 'shame' it made you feel. I still don't understand the 'logic' behind it ..... the 'showers' where you didn't have enough time to shower, the stupid knickers, being turned out in barely anything in the depths of winter and remaining blue no matter how much you ran about. Was it designed to 'put us in our place' as females ?

Yes this happened at my school too. Open area for showers so zero privacy and you weren't allowed to leave your towel at the entrance to the shower area so you had to do a long walk naked back to your place in the changing room. Two PE teachers sat at a desk watching everyone. I found it mortifying and completely humiliating. It was known by everyone that this was how it was done. There was a register where periods were marked down to check you weren't lying about it. Also, I remember tampons being held up and an explanation given followed by an invitation to go into the back room to be given further 'help' with this. I wasn't aware of anyone taking up this offer. Gym knickers too. State school in 80s.

Thank goodness we escaped this... Everyone was convinced our showers were haunted (they were definitely haunted.)