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??

I agree that ritual humiliation probably was the reason - rite of passage stuff. But you asked what possible benefit could there have been and a pp offered the example of hidden bruises being seen on an abused child, leading to action.

As I said, I think the fact of changing for PE/Games probably allows enough opportunity for that kind of discreet check without needing the children to get naked, which is probably why it's out of fashion now.

Mrs Hathaway
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.

This can't be it, I remember going in for PE with bruises up and down my back, roughly plug shaped, my back hurt to fuck, all the other girls were shocked to see the bruises, yet not one PE teacher said a word, those bruises were with me for weeks as well, slowly changing colour.

It was soon after this that I stopped going at all to PE. I did about a year of forging notes, then I got a real note from my mother about the burns on my hand, I was made to do PE anyway, with the burns having turned to massive blisters, and teacher making me climb a rope. After that I thought fuck it I will do the detention rather than this, never once got detention.

MNHQ can we move this to classics or somewhere appropriate to keep it as a testimonial?

I think it needs to be somewhere it can be pointed to - someone upthread mentioned how the (my) generation with kids that age now somehow fail our children by allowing them to question authority (or be 'entitled') - when the reality is we went through low/medium level disrespect and contempt through our millions of adolescences and we want our kids to speak up when we didn't.

I went to several secondary schools. At the northern comp we were subjected to naked showering, yet at the southern grammar school I went to later on in my school career, I can't recall there being showers so we certainly didn't undergo that weekly humiliation (thank goodness).

I'm shocked at some of these stories. The showers in my comprehensive school were never used, we just used to stink instead or not work very hard at PE.

Forgot to add that I was at school in the 80s.

Oh Domini that's awful and all those adults who could have done something but didn't: Bastards.

We had PE at least 2 usually 3 times a week, and expected to shower after each session.

Another voice remembering the same.

I was at secondary school in the late seventies, and have vivid memories of the horror of the communal showers.

Cold and slimy tiles, tepid water, the humiliation of leaving my towel outside on the chair and having to walk through naked.

The teacher would insist we thoroughly wet our hair, which was awful at this time of the year, with no way of drying it. There were a handful of body-confident girls who would just go for it, but most of us were desperately trying to cover ourselves with our hands.

I mean, there was no soap and no shampoo, so how were we supposed to be cleaning ourselves anyway?

And yes to the period register in red pen, and short shorts which showed bulky sanitary towels.

And also, upthread, there was talk about the annual medicals. I also clearly remember the doctor at secondary school, each year putting his hand between my legs and telling me to cough I had never really thought about it before, but what could he possibly have been checking for? That sounds so bad in hindsight.

The whole medical thing was awful though - we had to go into an empty class and take off our knickers, blouse and bra, stuff them in our school bags and sit in the corridor unsupervised with other kids on our year.

Some of the boys would hassle and grab us, trying to pull our skirts up and our cardigans undone. It was shocking, thinking about it.

My daughter was at a different secondary in the late nineties but never had school showers there. She would shower at home after school (and was never whiffy, anyway)

Oh Domini that's awful and all those adults who could have done something but didn't: Bastards

But back then nothing was ever done about any abuse. Hence all these old cases coming out now. You simply lived with it knowing that even if you told nothing would be done, the abuser was then free to ramp it up cos they had got away with it this far. I can't imagine the timid me making any waves about communal showering in case I made it even worse,not just for me but all of us.

As a result of growing too fast as a teenager I had/have sort of horizontal stretch marks across my back. I distinctly remember standing in the changing room getting changed and my friends gathering round saying "It properly looks like you've been whipped" (not in a mean way, just in a shocked way) and the PE teacher standing nearby not giving two hoots.

So YY to previous posters assertion that none of it was because they were supposed to 'care' about us, and in fact quite the opposite.

scrappy the doctors with the hands and the coughing was for boys to check their testicles had dropped - if you had that happen as a girl I'd say that was sexual assault

That's what I was thinking - but there was a female nurse in the room and she seemed to be ok with it, so i have no idea. I assume it was done to all the girls.

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.)

Great for you raspberry overload! I too was bullied at school all i wanted to do was just get on and learn being more interested in science rather than football and that was why i was picked on. One day the big bully had a go at me and i lost my rag big time I think a lot of anger just welled up and i hit him hard on the nose which was broken he was out cold for a little while. I was given a right rollicking by the games master the old pervey one! but i was never ever picked on again all the time I was there, they saw what I could unleash and I'm bloody glad i did that just the once.

I left school in 81 and thank goodness we didn't have shower. However if we forgot kit even as teenagers we had to do it in our Knickers

I left in 91 and it was the same for us, even in a mixed lesson. Fucking just my jumper and knickers, just for not having my PE kit, with 16/7 year old boys ogling me. Humiliating.

I know in years previous to mine it was literally girls just bra/knickers for no kit, and boys just pants/boxers. I only forgot my PE kit once - that was enough! Lol

Did no one else have to do it in their underwear just for forgetting their kit? Or was it just me with a perverted school?

Feel so angry when reading this. Just because we were children some adults thought it was ok to treat us like this 😡

Early '80s. We all used to huddle in a far corner to avoid the teacher eyeballing us too closely. Really nasty experience.

Still flabberghasted and horrified that this went on. No showers and no PE in underwear in any of my schools, primary or secondary. Really, really shocking that it went on elsewhere, so much.

I didn't have to shower after PE, and I am so grateful for that. Changing in front of other people was bad enough.
As for the study that shows kids who don't shower after PE are less fit, that doesn't mean that making kids shower will make them more fit. It's possible that the less fit kids have less body confidence, which makes them unwilling to shower where others could see them. This thread has plenty of evidence that forcing people to use communal showers doesn't build body confidence.

We had this. 98-03 and it was horrifying. And the period register too. Luckily for me I was a bit of a bugger with a attitude.

My mum stuck up for me after I told them to get to fuck! Never would I have got away with that but she remembered from her school days how awful it was.

My dd is moving to secondary we will have to choose this year and this would be a deal breaker for me.

I turned 16 and left secondary school in 1985 and this thread has bought awful memories back for me. I desperately used to try to avoid being forced naked into the showers at school in front of everyone, received zero sympathy from my parents when I told them and could cry at the memory of one girl who had her towel & clothes hidden by a bunch of other girls so she came out of the shower naked and had to wander round for ages with everyone looking at her - the teacher didn't intervene just stood & watched the whole thing. Just awful.

Oh gawd, yes, my school too! (Late 70s/early 80s). No sensitivity as to the embarrassment/body image issues of adolescent girls. I was all too aware of being the 'one' who rather than getting a nice womanly shape just looked like a fat child when puberty hit. Likewise there was a degree of dubious and possibly unhealthy scrutiny by the teacher too. Loathed PE but for other reasons than showering, but it sure didn't help! Feeling everyone's retrospective pain!

mustard