WHERE HAVE ALL THE SHOWERS GONE?

By G. Mussell,
Reprinted with permission.

"Standing around together naked?" said Andre Hennig, an 18-year-old senior at McHenry High School in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. "Oh no, man -- people would feel really uncomfortable about that."

Fifty years ago, in many parts of the country, regular physical education classes were taught by a special P.E. teacher rather than by our regular classroom teacher. Classes were separate for girls and boys. If the school had an indoor swimming pool – as many did in the Midwest – the schools combined all the age groups together for “swim class” and the boys were required to swim nude. (Girls in most districts wore a regulation "tank suits” although we heard some schools had required nudity for them also.) Day after day as many as four dozen boys would tussle and push, shove, and kid around by the pool and race, play water polo, enjoy "free play" in the warm water and think nothing of the fact they were naked as the day they were born.

Outside of school at the local YMCA and YWCA, the same rule about requiring nude swimming also applied. Nobody complained. Through the 1960’s, at many colleges including Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Michigan, it was the same story. Many former students recall that during intramural swim meet, attended only by males, some of the male athletes swam the races nude. In the pool at the Michigan Men's Union, swimming was typically nude. Even into the 1980’s, at many private gyms that catered to one sex or the other only, participants were required to swim nude while at others swimsuits were optional. But for many of us who grew up in the decade after World War II, we carry the imprint of 20 years or more of nude swimming. I liked it. I liked the feeling of the water on my body, the feeling of freedom floating unencumbered in the swell. I have always resented swimsuits, uncomfortable, wet, cold, awkward.

All of that changed when physical education became coeducational and athletic facilities at YMCAs and YWCAs, on college and university campuses, and in public schools were opened to both men and women. With co-education, nude recreation ended. Today, youngsters of high school age, who in my generation were required to take group showers after every gym class, now rarely shower together. Even football players apparently wear their uniforms home after a game rather than undress and shower in front of teammates. Another newspaper reports that boys' participation on swim teams has declined because of their objection to wearing brief Speedo swimsuits. Men's swimsuits have become big baggy pants that hang dripping and heavy about the body like some penalty exacted for an unnamed crime.

Students across the United States have abandoned school showers, and their attitudes seem to be much the same whether they live in inner-city high-rises, on suburban cul-de-sacs or in far-flung little towns in cornfield country. And the reasons seem as varied as insecurities about body image, heightened sexual awareness and a lack of time in a busy school schedule. "It's just a new cultural thing," said Judy Young, the executive director of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, an organization of teachers and coaches. "They simply have a different routine than we did."

The antipathy to taking showers after gym class puzzles some teachers and coaches. "These guys don't want to undress in front of each other," said John Wrenn, a teacher at Homewood-Flossmoor High School in suburban Chicago, who can scarcely conceal his contempt for the new sensibilities. "The whole thing is just hard for me to accept." A generation ago, when most schools mandated showers, a teacher would typically monitor students and hand out towels, making sure that proper hygiene was observed by conducting inspections for cleanliness that schools today would not dare allow out of fear of a lawsuit. "We encourage it, we suggest it, we do everything we can," says Gene Alim, veteran athletic director at Otay Ranch. "But the problem is that we're restricted as to what we can enforce."

Students who dreaded showering at school got a boost in 1994 after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to file a lawsuit in federal court over a mandatory shower policy in Hollidaysburg, Pa. The school district dropped its policy. "Unless a student is drawing flies," said David Millstein, the lawyer in the case, who represented a shy, overweight girl who felt humiliated in the showers, "it's none of the school's business. In 25 years of doing ACLU work--cases on prayer in the school, you name it--I had never had any response like this," he added.

“People remembered their own humiliation. I myself remember moving from my little country school to the city school, and being mortified about having to take showers, But in those days, you did what the schools said, you did what the teachers said.”

Modesty among young people today seems, in some ways, out of step in a culture that sells and celebrates the uncovered body in advertisements, on television and in movies. But some health and physical education experts contend that many students withdraw precisely because of the overload of erotic images -- so many perfectly toned bodies cannot help but leave ordinary mortals feeling a bit inadequate.

"It doesn't do any favors for your self-esteem," said Dr. David Bernhardt, a specialist in pediatrics and sports medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Moviemakers remember, too. In popular films, gym showers either overflow with sexuality (boys spied on girls through peepholes in "Porky's") or crawl with psychological trauma (the title character of the Stephen King horror flick "Carrie" is humiliated in a shower room and gets revenge by killing off her classmates). While they don't tend to overreact like Carrie, many teens are clearly mortified by gym showers.

"If you're gay or perceived as gay, you get picked on," Mr. Corbin says. "And boys who don't develop early may be afraid to be seen by others."

And there may be yet another reason kids today are reluctant to undress in front of their peers – cell phone cameras. “Students fear someone may snap their photo when nobody is looking and then post it on an Internet, either deliberately or as a bad joke,” said Jeff Wright a PE teacher in Ohio. “The threat of expulsion is nothing to these kids if they can make a financial killing selling those photos to a kiddy porn web site.”

On the Web Blog for National Association for Sport and Physical Education, one teacher commented that girls in one of her middle school classes go through the daily ritual of put on bathing suits before entering the shower area, then going back to the locker area and changing out of their bathing suit in front of everyone. Another coach wrote it was not uncommon for his 7th graders to go in the shower with their underwear AND their shoes on. Some schools are considering removing showers because they are not used. In thousands of high schools from Texas to Pennsylvania, school boards have made showers voluntary in order to save money and reduce aggravation. In some schools the showers have become rusty with boilers that take up to five minutes to deliver any hot water. Students who did take the time to shower risked always late to class after PE. “Being naked in front of my peers was the least of the annoyances,” one student wrote.

In California, mandatory showers vanished after the legendary Proposition 13 slashed school funding in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and campuses stopped providing clean towels, soap or shampoo to students. "They could bring a towel from home, but most schools thought that policy was a nightmare," says Wilson-Graham, the California consultant. "Wet towels would often get thrown into a locker and left there for a couple days. They became so germ-laden, it was more sanitary for the kids not to shower.”

Today, other than coaches and teachers, few people seem interested in the shower issue. “Honestly, they aren't banging down our door and saying, ‘Fund towels and make our kids take showers,’” says Christina Becker, director of long-range planning at the Cajon Valley Union School District, just east of San Diego. She says coaches ask her to knock out showers to make more space, and she's seen some schools turn showers into storage areas.

New California middle and high schools are required by law to build showers. Districts typically try to build as few as possible, although individual stalls - unlike the "gang" showers of the past - are becoming popular. Charles Corbin, professor of exercise and fitness at Arizona State University wants high schools to coax kids into cleanliness by building fancier locker rooms, providing amenities like hair dryers, and making sure adults prevent horseplay. “If high schools can find money to build huge stadiums,” Corbin adds, “they can manage to afford more appealing locker rooms.”

Whether students take showers or not, something more important than hygiene is at stake, he says. "We don't want them to just be active in school. The goal of people like me is to promote lifetime physical activity. There is an overweight epidemic among young people today. I think one of the reasons is people have lost the habit of physical exercise.”