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??

Justaboy, wtaf was his justification for 'inspecting' you? For what??

Oh god the horror of communal changing rooms in shops! Was at secondary between 73 - 79 and we had cubicles, but when you were in the shower the lesbian teacher would yank the curtain across shouting 'hurry up!' whilst giving you a good look up and down. Never happened to me until I was 15 and the g-cups had come along. Funny that. She was the only one out of the three teachers who ever did that.

I remember a friend of mine telling me that at her school, a teacher would 'help' the y7 girl who'd had early puberty to get dry by making her open her legs and scrubbing the towel back and forth.

WhereTheFuckIsMyFuckingCoat God alone knows we weren't to question the likes of him, loved using his cane on our backsides too! was what we'd now call a sexual predator I suppose.

We knew no different, we thought it was normal can you believe!

ShotgunNotDoingThePans et al. Can you wonder why the public hasn't much enthusiasm for doing sport, it put me off such activities!.

The sadistic perverts at my school would stand amd watch you and if they didn't think you made enough effort they would turn a hose on you.
Male teachers were always 'accidentally' walking in and sometimes for fun they would snatch a towel off you and not give it back because air drying is healthy or some other such shit.
It was like borstal

Oldlaundbooth

I went to school in NZ.

When we were 10/11 (intermediate, separate school for upper juniors) our uniform included knickers, normal fitted girls knickers matching the uniform & had to be bought from the school shop. Several times a week we were taken into the library, stood in a line, all facing the front (like a cabaret line up) and had to stand there holding up our dresses and show our knickers. Not even a quick flash, but stand there while they inspected each girl. Fucking pervy.

I have to say, other than thinking they were utterly over the top about uniform, it didn't bother me at the time. I guess I spent so much time in a swimming costume that it didn't seem much different?!

Senior school - same deal as most of the above. Compulsory showers. Two PE teachers, the young one was nice but the older one was a BITCH (in every aspect of PE - i.e. Make us run a couple of miles to the beach , swim, then run back soaking wet. She would drive down & Mark us off after the swim. (But only done in the WINTER & never allowed in the summer). She was a lesbian and visibly salivated watching us in the showers. The young one used to try to distract her. Grim.

Wow.
We had showers in school but never used them 03-08. We did have communal change though and I used to wear a skirt that day so I could put my tracksuit bottoms underneath before taking off the skirt.
My mum was also someone that would say "we all have the same thing".
Now I am more comfortable with my body but growing up people shouldn't be forced to be comfortable.

This is making me remember the host of sexually predatory teachers at my school in the early nineties, and not just pe ones.

I had my backside squeezed, and my breasts 'accidentally' brushed up against too many times to count.

There was also a teacher who made me climb on his desk and other desks to open the high windows while he stood below me to 'make sure I didn't fall'. Ugh.

We had to walk slowly through the showers to make sure we got wet. Anyone dashing through had to go through again. We weren't allowed towels near the shower to cover up with. Some girls cried, loads got hang ups. We were in junior school. We were only 10 at the most.

In senior school we were treated with more respect and could choose whether to shower. Any of my body hang ups come from when I was under 10 years old.

I never thought of it until now. This was late 1980's.

This is making me remember the host of sexually predatory teachers at my school in the early nineties

Yep, me too.

My school was posh but liberal. Didn't make for too many boundaries, looking back.

A retired PE teacher from a school near me was jailed recently. Child abuse images, or so I heard. She was known for staying in the room while the girls were getting changed, and flicking towels at them. There are weirdos out there folks!

Happy to say we were never made to take showers in my day (mid-2000s), but you could if you wanted to. Having to walk up shamefacedly with a note if on one's period was still a thing though.

A male pe teacher from my school went to prison as well
He was taking boys out on school trips that weren't real and taking them on holiday with him

(that was in the 70s/80s right enough...)

I started secondary school in 1987 and the whole shower experience after PE was just horrendous. We had to strip off while the PE teacher watched us avidly to make sure we had all taken all our clothes off, We then had to go into communal showers whilst the teacher watched to make sure we had all adequately washed ourselves. If any of us didn't stand for a decent amount of time to wash, she called us back to make sure we did. I hated every second of it. It is just wrong to subject young girls who are either about to or are going through puberty, when they are so self conscious about their bodies, to that humiliating experience.

I went to that Prestatyn camp, but it would have been late 80s. Showering wasn't enforced or supervised. Most of us didn't bother to shower at all other than to wash our hair.

School showers were rarely used, liberal school allowed us to wear swimsuits. The boys, however, according to my friends, all went in naked and didn't think much of it. Not supervised or checked though!

The gym knickers were only worn under skirts in our school. Cycling shorts later on. Older girls wore tracksuit bottoms

Although it's a pity about inappropriate behaviour we were subjected to elsewhere from teachers and other visitors to the school in positions of responsibility.

Yes to period register and dash of shame. Exercise to me equated with body shame - I was good at gymnastics but stopped when my blue leotard could not contain the tiniest of whispey bikini lines ( I had NO idea about what a bikini line was back then but just thought it was ugly and had NO idea what to do about it!) I went to a Catholic secondary school - don't know if that makes a difference? BUT I was 17 when I first visited Amsterdam and Holland and was totally amazed about how unconscious many young girls were about their bodies. My friend and I went camping and were all furtively getting changed in the toilet cubicles while our Dutch peers were topless at the sinks washing so gloriously un self-consciously. I remember feeling so envious of their carefree, unphased attitude. Maybe the failing back in our schools then was in creating a good body attitude and confidence rather than mass perviness on the part of PE teachers?

We had to prove we were wet too after a shower. We used to run through the middle of the communal showers which was considered acceptable, we didn't actually have to wash!

All the boys at DHs school had to swim naked in the school pool, no swimming trunks allowed until aged 13.

Early 80s.

We couldn't shower after PE, we must have all smelled. We had to shower after swimming, but we did it in our swimsuits in a communal shower.

Looking back on it most of the PE teachers just went through the motions of enforcing showers. Only one was an enthusiastic enforcer of the showering rule.

All the little humiliations and erosion of boundaries did give the small number of perverts an opportunity to hide in plain sight.

The breaking scandal of sports coaches doesnt surprise me.

Yes it was the same for us, hated the showers - downright humiliating at that age for everybody.

Wow this is revolting. I am from the US, went to school in the 70s and don't know anyone who was made to shower. Our PE teachers wouldn't have come into the changing rooms. We didn't have a uniform and could just wear any plain coloured shorts and t-shirts we liked. On the down side, our PE was crap and we didn't really get much exercise.

I didn't realise this fucking awful thing was so common. I don't remember high school but I was at middle school in the early 80s.

The communal shower was an L shape and you entered on the short leg of the L. You hung your towel up on rails on the short leg, dashed naked through the corridor of shower heads on the long leg of the L then ran naked back to get your towel. Completely useless and totally humiliating.

We had this too-Until year 11, which was 1996.
I hated it.
I can't believe no one questioned it more at the time.

All girls school early 80s here, we also had communal showers and had to prove wetness, which usually meant wetting your head and shoulders whilst wrapped in a towel. When we got into fifth form (year 11) we had a much nicer PE teacher who had grown up daughters, she didn't make us shower and said if we wanted to smell all day that was up to us. Since most of us (me) did at little as possible to take part I certainly never smelt.

Another one reading who'd forgotten about the showers, I left school mid 1990s.

These are horrible. I didn't like the showers but I'm thankful that I had a really nice PE teacher for upper years, who used to tell us that the school had told her that getting into the showers was mandatory... but they hadn't told her anything about running the water once we were in

So she allowed us to walk into the shower fully clothed, walk out again and we'd get a tick in the register on that basis.

Thanks Miss Enwright!