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??

My mum and her mate used to stop at the pie shop when they used to do cross country running. They'd pop in there for a cheese and onion pie, eat it, splash mud on their legs then run back to School

I started secondary school in '94. In my first couple of years we were made to shower but we could shower in our swimming costumes. Anyone who forgot their cossie was made to shower naked but was allowed to wait until everyone else had been (with the threat of it making you late for your next class). They stopped making us shower when I got to year 9 but if I remember rightly I think it was around then that the timetable was changed and they made each lesson shorter, so making us shower would probably have eaten into the actual PE lesson too much.

This sounds horrid. No such hygiene requirements at my 70s convent school. No showers at all in fact. Just change into a different top for pe.

We had to do this, too, flowers - and showers were timed. Something like 90 seconds for getting changed and 3 minutes for shower plus change - we ran through the showers with towels over our heads - it's not like we actually had time to wash and get clean, so all pretty pointless, really. I loved walking home still soaking wet after PE last thing on a Tuesday

Yes it was the same at my school! (Mid 90s). Horrendous. I used to say I was on my period or tell the teacher I'd already been in.

Ironically I didn't start my period until I was 16, by which time I'd stopped compulsory PE lessons.

But yes to the weirdness of the period register!

Oh God I'd forgotten the period register

Used to make them run naked through the showers while they watched to make sure they really did have a shower. Also kept a period diary of every girl.

Yes, this. Only in the mid 80s. PE was torture for me already, without this crap.

We all had to walk through the open row of showers naked too, it was very regimented and embarrassing. I don't remember soap either.The floor and the water was so cold. Our school had a new outdoor unheated swimming pool, some considerable distance from the changing rooms, which to avoid getting floors wet we had to walk around the outside of the building in just our cosies. freezing.It nearly put me off swimming for life (I still avoid swimming pools) I moved areas at 13 and we did not have showers at the new school thankfully. (Late 70s)

There was a long row of showers along one wall of the changing room with a wall low enough for us to see over directly opposite so there was a way in to the actual showers at either end. We had to leave our towels at the "out" end, go round and walk through the showers (naked), wash ourselves as we went then pick our towels up where a teacher would be waiting to make sure we'd actually been in.

This sounds exactly like my old school (grammar school in the Yorkshire Dales) I was there in the mid 70s.

70s convent too and no showering - I remember hiding among the cloakroom coats while changing to prevent anyone (PE teachers) seeing anything.

Communal changing rooms in shops were a real thing then - it's nice now to have a private cubicle.

The shower stories are horrific!

Communal changing rooms in shops were a real thing then - it's nice now to have a private cubicle.

Oh yes! I remember the first time I went into the changeing room in internacionale and it was just a room with loads of women topless or bottomless! I ran back out again. I was about 11.

Same for us. Started secondary in 1996. Red dot by your name the weeks you had AF. Hated it.

My mum was and still is a liberal "we've all got the same" baps out kind of woman so not even any sympathy from home.

I am honestly by all these posts! These days it would be classed as emotional abuse !

I never understand why each year group doesn't just have a whole afternoon each for pe then get sent home smelly. Yr7 Monday, yrs 8 Tuesday etc.

Yes I had the naked communal showers too . Left school in 1992.

Totally humiliating experience.

What happens in school nowadays? My eldest is moving up to secondary school next year and it hasn't even occurred to me that he would suffer the humiliation of showering infront of his teachers and peers. I know some say boys don't care as much but he is a real sensitive soul and I can't see him being too relaxed about it.

It was the same awful showering system at my 80s comp. I was so self conscious - remember somebody pointing at my stretch marks and asking what they were.
Awful memories of PE. I was terrible at games and the teacher hated me. Hated the short skirt and matching knickers too. As a chubby shy teen it was my nightmare.

Well this is a first.
A schooldaze thread without a teacher posting.

Bit ashamed looking back or was it all to "build character".. Do Tell ??

It'll be a question I ask when we go to look around secondaries for the kids. I'd love to send her to my old one for everything bar this. I have my fingers crossed that it has all changed or will do over the next 6 years before we apply!

Be interesting to hear what happened in other countries for PE in previous decades.

80s, communal showers, though was a curtain up from the rest of the room. PE teachers checking people were naked under the towels. I remember one teacher trying to pull the towel off a 13/14 yr old girl: "You're still wearing your knickers" the sadist ranted. "But I'm not wearing my bra!!" the assaulted girl yelped in reply.

Hmmm, also hate sport.

Pardon me barging in but the poxy school i went to to we all had to shower naked together and then one of the PE teachers would inspect our "wedding tackle" as he called it with a cane.

Old bastard is dead now and just as well;(

I'm amazed there isn't some sort of legislation on this. Children should never be forced to be naked in school.

A swimsuit or underwear fine or even a good wash of the armpits whilst in a towel will suffice.

We were even forced into the showers naked if pe was the last lesson of the day. Then back into our uniform for the journey home.

At our school, the boys (we presumed), went through a phase of setting off the school fire alarm, and even once calling in a bomb threat (), a few minutes after the end of pe lessons when they knew most of the girls would either be naked or close to it, whereby we were all forced outside in various states of undress, towels, wet etc. If you were really lucky you might have your shirt on by then. We had to stand, being catcalled and whistled at while freezing our fannies off until the fire service had come and given the all clear. 90-95.

Yeah I had the same 1989-1994 I was at school, communal showers after PE... hated it :(