Clitheroe Royal Grammar School

That was a real interesting comment Simon and what made it so was the completely unexpected last line you signed it off with.

One aspect of my own PE lessons (1980-84) that stays with me was how we would sometimes have a lesson wearing the usual regulation school issue top, just a red and white vest in my case, but in the final 10 minutes of the lesson we would all be ordered to strip off our tops rapidly and cast them aside and given a skipping rope task to all start skipping individually, getting faster and faster. This would often happen if our teachers, and more than one did this to us, thought we had not made much effort. So we would skip away ever faster, shirtless and with our PE teacher walking among us and he's not be happy until he could see plenty of sweat dripping down our bodies as we started to overheat and get breathless with it and quite possibly rather red. It definitely felt like a punishment.

When we finished we had to walk the school English block corridor from our gym to our changing room as for some reason it was designed this strange way separately. We'd be told not to waste time putting our tops back on and just pick them up and get back for showers. This meant sweaty lads being seen in one of the main school corridors. I remember being sniggered at a couple of times on this walk back by some girls in that corridor. Our PE teacher knew just what he was doing.

As you say, I never saw any of my PE teachers without a top on. I'm sure a couple of them were not much more than ten or twelve years older than us, although another one seemed old enough to be my grandad at the time!

One of my PE teachers had the dreadfully annoying habit of watching us change and taking us down to the gym and immediatly we all entered the gym telling us to remove our tops for the entire lesson. I wondered why he made us put them on in the first place. It wasn't because he was concerned about us walking down the English block corridor being seen as we had to walk back shirtless at the end.

Footwear was always strictly prohibited in our gym PE lesson even though we did officially have white soled plimsolls on our kit list. None of our PE teachers allowed us anything other than our bare feet. Yet the teachers themselves had socks and trainers every time. I got so fed up bringing plimsolls I was never allowed to put on.

Every six months or so we would sit along the edge of the gym before a lesson and there would be a PE teacher and the school nurse/matron as she was called and we would all have them go along the line checking our feet out and we'd have to lift them off the floor to be seen underneath too. It lasted a couple of minutes. I often wondered just waht they were looking for. One from my PE class got accused of having turned up without admitting to an infection, a verucca I think, which drew a shocking amount of anger from our PE teacher who grabbed a nearby bat and whacked the bottom of the offending foot very hard indeed before he was instantly dismissed from class to follow the school nurse to the medical room.

School showering was compulsory for everyone. Our school PE had something known as a shower register and we would all get ticked in on our PE teacher's clip board. We already had a general PE register for the beginning of the lesson to make sure everyone who should be at PE was there. Not everyone could fit in the school showers at the same time. They could manage about 20 in one go. Often this left another 5 or 10 boys waiting their turn. It was all done under very close supervision. We only came out when we were told to. You could never escape the school showers and it was as if this was the most important part of the whole PE lesson for my PE teachers. Communal group nudity like that felt a bit like it was meant to be a full part of the learning process to me. You didn't dare dissent openly on that part of things. 80's schools didn't go big on privacy concerns that's for sure. It seemed like a complete irrelevance, introvert, extravert, shy, outgoing, thin, fat, short, tall, developed, undeveloped, you did all these things and were not expected to show any hesistancy about it.

I have conflicting feelings looking back to my own PE lessons and some of the treatment dished out and manner of how it was done.

I completely agree with Luke, shirtless PE is about power and punishment. I went to a Northern comprehensive school from 1983 to 1989 where all PE, athletics and sports apart from cricket and rugby was done in shorts only. At no moment was there a boy with a shirt or a vest to be seen, strictly bare chests for all boys, skinny or fat, inside or outside, winter or summer.
It was of course about control; the power teachers were given over us who themselves were obviously never shirtless whereas us boys were near naked with only white shorts allowed inside plus plimsoles outside. This was part of a whole set of rules for teachers to lay down their law with and to command over us, like the gauntlet punishment for the poor two last boys to emerge from the changing rooms, like completely forbidding us from talking during PE, like using the whistle to convey orders instead of talking to us, like hanging from the wall bars for slacking, like the always cold showers, like the cruelling PE detentions, like mocking the least physically able pupil which was especially effectful in a mixed lesson, like having us run cross country during a hail storm, etc, etc
It was truly an experience from hell which did indeed forge your character just because you needed to get through the PE lesson without being noticed, without complaining, without being seen to be weak, cold or exhausted. We were conditioned to be treated like cattle and came to accept it but the weird thing is that to this day I find some strange and possibly misplaced pride in having been given a physical education that did treat us like the men we were about to become and not the boys we actually were

I don't believe a word of what that blogger says Gary.

Simon Cates on 21st September 2022 at 03:07

Interesting what you say about your PE teachers Simon. I went to a boys grammar school, starting in 1961 until 1968. PE kit for us was white shorts and plimsolls, no vests were included on the list, for rugby there was the standard boots, socks, shorts and school jersey but you only needed them if you were picked, the school had it's own pool and swimming was naked.

The huge difference to your account is that the three masters who took PE didn't wear shirts either, they wore shorts and plimsolls just like we did and you only saw them with a shirt on if they were around the school, never outside or in the gym. They wore the same shorts while we swam though I did see one of them take them off to get in the water to help a lad in trouble.

Each lunch time a group of lads could use the pool. That was supervised by a range of masters as part of the rota they did for lunch times. Some of them wore their suits on the poolside, they were mostly the older men, some wore shorts and some got in the water naked as we were - usually the younger ones. In about 1966 trunks were added to the uniform list and it was noticeable that only the younger lads started to wear them, after naked swimming for years, it didn't bother the older lads and most of us never wore trunks at school though I had a pair for going to the public pool.

Take a look at this blog from a couple of years back that I stumbled over. I don't know if this is meant to be genuinely serious and authentic or something else motivated the blogger, you judge. This apparent family man uses clothing loss against his children for his own ends. If this blogger is genuine then his behaviour crosses a big line into outright abuse.

I've cut and pasted one of the comments, but here's the link to the rest of it.

http://shirtlessbarefoot.blogspot.com/


Some of you may still have sons who are resistant to being barefoot and shirtless beyond what is normal for a kid. A situation like this is not good because their avoidance can cause low self esteem and even potentially later cause body issues. To try to get rid of it, one thing to do is to say to your sons that, barring special circumstances, that during the summer they have to be barefoot and shirtless under threat of punishment. You should take most of their clothes, leaving the bare minimum of a few shorts and put the rest into a locked place so that your boys can’t wear more than shorts without your explicit approval, meaning you have full control over when and where they can wear shirts or shoes. If they continually resist, you may even need to take extreme measures, such as taking all of your sons’ shirts and footwear, then donating them all. Most kids have grown out of their old clothes by the start of the school year anyway, so it to apply this regiment of being barefoot and shirtless. Luckily I never needed to use this on my boys, and my younger son even wanted to donate most of his shirts and shoes. Conveniently, he is growing so quick that we pretty much need to buy him new clothes at the start of each school year, so it works out. This approach isn’t something you should just jump to immediatly however, as it can cause a decent amount of negative tension. One great way to lessen the chance of it though is to avoid seeming like a hypocrite and stay barefoot and shirtless at home as well. This will help show your sons that what you’re doing is in their best interests. If they feel that you don’t need a shirt or shoes, they are more likely to feel they don’t either.


Another thing that you can do to really push this is to get your sons to take summer jobs that are commonly done barefoot and shirtless. While my older son during the summer works at McDonalds (although in the hottest part of the summer, his boss lets the cashiers work shirtless because the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” rule is completely ignored by pretty much everyone that goes there), my younger son is in training to be a lifeguard and plans to start as soon as he’s old enough. This means that he can continue his lifestyle of staying barefoot and shirtless for sometimes up to two straight weeks at a time during the summer. This is really important, as your boys getting a job like being a lifeguard means that they can often spend their entire day barefoot and shirtless, which will make them increasingly more comfortable.

My last piece of advice is that during the warmer half of the year, you should outright ban your sons from wearing socks. There are many reasons why you should do this. For one, the socks are pointless. If some kind of footwear is needed, shoes alone can do the job perfectly fine. The socks will only make your sons’ feet hotter, which will make their shoes smell more. Your sons’ feet not being as warm will also make them feel more comfortable, which a big part of the barefoot and shirtless lifestyle. As well, no socks means cutting down on laundry, which is always a good thing. Both of these reasons are good to use as reasons to tell your children when you make it mandatory. But drawing from my knowledge on boys, you will have no problem convincing them to not wear socks anyway.

With these measures, and anything else you might think is good to do, you will hopefully get the results you want.

Most shirtless PE at school has two points to it, power and punishment.

Most boys secretly hated being told to do it at school because 10 to 18 is probably the most self conscious age in our lives.

John, my reaction was just one of exasperation and annoyance that such behaviour is being justified in that classroom. It's worth remembering that most schools have dress and appearance codes, some stricter than others, and yet the teacher in this story seems able to break them and any sense of common decency and respect for those he/she/they are there to teach. The school students in this instance probably have to obey many dress/appearance rules that clearly don't apply to their own teacher. Just the very tight hotpants alone were bad enough before you get to the rest. Imagine what would get said to any of the girls in that school if they wore those to school. Just two weeks ago my neighbour was forced to get her eleven year old son's long hair cut very short before his first day at his new school. That school is indulging that person in a quite misguided and deeply inappropriate way.

Why did that teacher need such big fake breasts and why the need to make them with nipples so prominent. Just pervy.

I had an interesting reaction to that video. Initial disbelief, then bemusement, then laughter followed by anger.

Last night on this news channel here Jason, six minutes in.

If nothing else, how can this teacher be taken seriously and respected. I'll keep further thoughts to myself.

https://youtu.be/cPC8Am83WXQ?t=356

I think the correct acronym for this is WTAF.

We hear a lot on this site about bare chests in school. Nobody ever saw anything like this.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11235121/Canadian-high-school-says-ILLEGAL-criticize-trans-teacher-huge-prosthetic-breasts.html

This relates to my time at my comprehensive school in years 1975 to 1977 at ages 14 to 16.

I had no problem being in the gym at school without a top on if I was told to do so, which was much of the time, but I did have a massive problem with a pair of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do male PE staff who made us older school years run cross country together and always made us get outside to do it barechested even throughout some of the winter months of January and February while tagging alongside us all in long jogging bottoms while we had bare legs, multi layered tops and jackets while we were bare on top, sometimes in freezing cold rain and wind on runs lasting a minimum of half an hour and often longer, amounting to somewhere between 3 and possibly 5 miles around the school locality. It's amazing none of us ever came back suffering hypothermia on some of these days and even more amazing they ever got away with sending us out like that, sometimes up to 40 or even 50 shirt free boys from across multiple forms. One of the PE staff said to us it discouraged dawdling slowly along and made us run faster, what an idiot. On one of these runs our head joined us for some inexplicable reason that was never explained and he seemed nonchalent at the sight of us all having been denied our tops to go running for PE. When he showed up I hoped and almost expected he'd say something but he didn't.

It was often noticeable that there would be one or two boys absent from school off sick on PE days that had a cross country especially over winter time and I remember going down with a couple of nasty colds with bad sore throats within two or three days of a couple of these freezing barechested cross country runs I was put through over the colder months. Yet we were assured we were all being very healthy.

But haven't so many teachers always been massive hypocrites with their own classes and PE like that shows a great example of it. What teacher would ever get away with conducting his class like that nowadays.

During the couple of years before topless PE was introduced throughout the school, I can only recall one or two occasions when we had vests and skins, rather than the customary coloured sashes, for team games, both being when we were outside in warm sunshine. I have no memory of anyone in either team feeling picked-on, and in fact I think the vests were rather jealous of the skins. Not long afterwards, of course, we were all skins together anyway, and I don't remember anyone complaining about the new arrangement. On the contrary, I think we all enjoyed the sense of freedom that accompanied not wearing a vest. That being said, there were still occasions when I would have preferred to be anywhere else but in the gym, my pet hates being forward circles on the beam, and "tightrope" walking along the flat side of the beam at head-height or higher.

To answer Jason - yes you're right, getting out of one PE lesson by faking sickness didn't actually achieve much!
What made me nervous was basically that I'd never experienced group sports with my shirt off until that point (I was actually 14 at the time). I'm sure if I'd been used to it from a younger age it would have seemed less of an issue.
Perhaps I'd also have felt different if it had been standard for every boy to do PE with a bare top. It seemed quite unfair that the teacher could just pick out certain boys and make them skins but not others.

Glenn - I once read a story about a boy and his father walking across a field to go to a fun-fair. The boy was walking along quite happily carrying his shirt. As they approached the crowds the father told his son to "put your shirt on - no-one wants to see that." I don't think the boy had anything other than a normal body for his age but a comment like that can leave a lasting impression even after the actual words have been forgotten. Unfortunate remarks can lead to a boy being shy about taking his shirt off in front of others even if he has a perfectly normal body. Parents can do a lot of damage if they say silly things without thinking.

Never understood boys in school (and there were a few at mine) who got so worked up at the prospect of having no piece of fabric covering their top half in a PE lesson when a teacher said so. How can anyone be made anxious by their own bare chest? I've read a couple of comments in archive older posts elsewhere on here where the now adults admit to this despite then saying they actually had normal or even nice looking bodies, so what was the problem then. Is it comparable to an actual phobia or what. If anyone would like to give a decent answer I'll give it a sympathetic read.

Is there even a name for a bare chest phobia or does it just come under body dysmorphia, or is it just an extreme shyness thing, or just about self esteem issues? It seems like there is a trigger point in some people or something that suddenly comes over them, kids of 6 or 7 almost never care about it but then by 13 or 14 they do.

So what was it about being a so called 'skin' that made you so fearful Richard?

In the end you were still forced to get on with it as you say and surely that just made things worse than if you'd just done it in the first place don't you think.

Having read Rob's post, I will own up to being one of those boys who faked feeling sick in order to avoid shirts v skins in PE! It worked in the short term, the teacher allowed me to go to the school nurse and I missed the lesson. However, in the long run it didn't work all that well... the teacher made me a skin for the next few lessons!

The lengths some people will go to get out of being a skin in skins v shirts. I saw something very similar to this once myself. Boy suddenly started complaining of a belly ache just as he, myself and half of us had to lose our tops to become skins and our PE tutor smacked a ball hard into his belly and gave him something to complain about for real. He was then given a ten second countdown to become a skin or else. My main PE teacher was always a bit of a bully in class like that. Same year as this clip it happened coincidentally, in 1985. We were 14.

https://youtu.be/fMwIYmgviP0

Like other commentators on this discussion I am in agreement with the concern about a still quite young child in school making what at face value sounds like a mildly homophobic comment just because teacher took him and his class for a games lesson barechested. It's clearly playing to a fear of some kind and his dislike of it.

In this day and age I find it very surprising. At my own school in the late 70s - early 80s my games lesson in the school gymnasium up to spring term of fifth form was always to turn up ready for it never wearing a top. For three and a half years of games classes in gym that was the rule for me, my mates and all the others. Those were far less enlightened times regarding bigotry of all kinds but nobody made any kinds of connection between us all being together in games not being allowed to wear our tops and being shirtless among each other, to being gay, and in our games lessons we would have some physical skin on skin touching of each other during some lessons, normal conduct of the class to me.

But I'll go further because as I got older in school I was aware there were a couple of chaps in my class who I thought might be potentially gay when we were about fifteen years old. Just a hunch, nothing more. I later found out that both of them indeed were gay and when I met one in his twenties he had a male partner in tow. It didn't seem to give them problems at school, either doing games without tops and I never heard anyone make any gay comments at them either. One of them was infact quite tubby in an age when most boys showed up quite skinny. He might have had a couple of reasons there to feel unhappy with his lot but it never showed and I knew him well.

What seems to be a big deal to some boys just isn't to others. But it's definitely worth a chat with the child who made the gay comment to discover the cause. It may seem like a throwaway childish comment but there's clearly more to it for him to have said it aloud.

Completely disagree Fiona with that second Out Front magazine article which says gay men love taking their shirts off on hot summer days. That is definitely a straight man thing surely.

Has anybody gay actually written on this site, or somebody who knew they were at school or slowly realised. I can't imagine how that might affect somebody who has to endure shirtless lessons and showers, or perhaps such things and PE lessons seeing others in various kits, or lack of and states of undress acted as the catalyst for realising their sexuality. Is anyone prepared to admit it. I'm straight so can't oblige on that one I'm afraid.

Thanks Alan.

Jenny - This might not be particularly helpful in the circumstances, but a bit of Googling alongside my post-lunch coffee reveals that there is actually a culture of not wearing a shirt amongst gay men, particularly at public events such as clubs, parties, parades etc. See, for example:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbkd5q/why-shirts-off-matters-at-queer-parties
https://www.outfrontmagazine.com/stuff-gay-people-like-being-shirtless/

That having been said, however, there is a rather longer-standing culture of males, of all ages, conditions and inclinations, going shirt-less for all forms of vigorous activity, physical exercise, impromptu sports, gardening and the like, especially in hot weather. Has your son shown any inclination to strip to the waist over the summer? In recent months, my son has spent much of his out-of-school time in shorts, minus a shirt, both inside and outside the house, as have my brother, his sons and my father, none of whom would regard themselves as gay. And, as I have said, he and his schoolmates almost universally, and by choice, dispense with shirts entirely during indoor PE lessons, and regularly complain about having to wear a shirt when PE takes them outside in fine weather. But "them's the rules", and by and large they stick to them. And finally, if you were to ask your son's classmates if they ever wear a top to sleep in, I expect that the majority would say that they never do. After all, the transition from two-piece pyjamas to bare-chest and boxers is a well-documented rite of passage for many, if not most, pubescent boys, as I know from experience; teen sleep-overs in our house can be very revealing at times.

So, I think you are wise to just let things ride for a bit, and keep you eye out for how things settle down in the gym. A discrete sniff-test of his vest sounds like a good rough-and-ready indicator. It's important to keep sending him to school each PE day with the specified kit, just in case anyone ever questions missing items - read these threads for numerous historical case studies!. Bring them to your son's attention even. Equally important is not to dismiss his concerns as "silly".. He's in a new situation, with a lot of boys similarly placed, many of whom probably have similar fears.

A message to Martin;

I was in complete agreement with everything you said when I followed up your comment of last week with my one. Nothing you said would I argue with.

I have not the slightest idea why you chose to attack me personally for my follow up to you. I thought I was backing you up rather well infact, in my own way. Clearly something got lost in translation. I'm pleased other thread readers understood my point.

Looking at what Jenny has written on here brings back thoughts of my time in school from 1972-77 at my secondary modern.

PE could be okay half the time, a nightmare the other half. It depended who you got taking it, what you were doing and where. PE teachers all seemed to think every boy in school loved football, rugby or any other outside team game. If you didn't you were looked at like you were a freak. They didn't seem to make any allowances for those who lacked aptitude for some of these things.

When you mix up the ultra competitive boys along with the ones who try hard but are never going to make the grade then it's a recipe for trouble. The ones who are good get frustrated, and so do the PE teachers who should know better, and the ones who do their best feel, well, second class members of the class.

I was crushingly self conscious. I always disliked intensely when someone would watch me closely doing something in PE and just the act of watching me personally would have the effect of making me do whatever it was, worse.

Another thing, I was at a school where PE an awful lot of the time was a stripped off to the waist lesson, inside or out on the personal choice of whichever teacher you had for PE lessons. I was never a fan of strutting about like that because I was so self conscious about myself. When we had to do PE classes like that I instantly felt my self confidence diminish somewhat and would start focussing on what I looked like. I'd go as far as saying feelings of embarrassment would come across me. It was even more so with showering which I often tried to evade and would get in trouble for. I wasn't alone, there was a small gang of us who did the same.

Just the sight of the school showers scared the life out of me at first.

I remember playing up so many times when PE lessons came along during one especially intense period at school over a few months. Making out I hadn't got kit, firing excuses off and bringing faked notes and generally frustrating various PE teachers. On one occasion I actually held the lesson up for what must have been ten minutes when he sent the class off to the gym without me and was at the end of his tether in the changing room, hopping mad with me as I stood there fully dressed and not changing when I'd not brought any kit in.

I never said a word to anyone back at home how I was behaving or what I felt. Never. I suppose the only clue would have been in some of the comments written on the school report but I don't remember them being dreadfully critical despite my behaviour other than using the usual teacher cliches.

But you know something, I have enormous regret about being in school and acting up like that looking backwards to it and so wish I could change what I was like at the time and just embrace it for what it was. Sometimes in our lives we are our own worst enemy and PE at school is one of those times when I most definitely was in my life.

Fully agree with you Graham.

I re-read the thoughtful post from Steven a number of times trying to fathom out why it illicited the amateur psychology comment, and was none the wiser for doing so. It made no sense other than being deliberately provocative in my opinion. I'm afraid I along with some others tend to the view that the history site is being plagued by a single disrupter. I've seen the comment last week on the Burnley thread where four comments made by somebody were picked out as being written by artifical intelligence! Clearly preposterous nonsense. Luckily on there it has been completely ignored as it should have been. To be honest I wonder if I should have written this on here but this will be my only word on the matter.


A very interesting couple of pieces by Jenny I found. But like Paul has said, I agree with his comment about what your son said. That's worth getting to the root of why he would think along those lines. There is nothing 'gay' about men or boys being together without shirts on. Are beaches considerewd gay, no, so why does he think the gym is in school if he's asked to be the same. In these more enlightened times ask him why he thinks that. Back years ago with more archaic views I never heard anyone make the slightest hint of comments like that when we were together much the same in school for PE, with most, if not all our clothes off. What about swimming for instance, has he ever done that at school or will he be doing and does he think swimming together is 'gay' too.

Don't worry about his lesson requirement. That's normal, or was until not that long ago anyway. It sounds like he's not comfortable in the requirement he was asked last week and maybe that is his rather cackhanded way of admitting it to you. You know your own son and if that's likely. Is he shy and likely to be about such things?

I hope you come back and let us know.

Jenny - It's way back in the mists of time now, but my parents would have sympathised with you on the disparity between theory and practice for school sports kit. When I went away to a boarding school at age 15, the kit list specified the usual PE shorts/vest/plimsolls, which we did actually wear all the time, but also such exotic items as cricket boots, white trousers and white sweater (summer term only), none of which I actually ever wore as I opted for tennis in the summer. The boot had ben on the other foot, so to speak, at my previous school, because while PE shorts and vest were specified, in practice, any old white top was deemed acceptable, and most of us just wore our everyday underwear vests - yes, it was that long ago! When topless PE was introduced after I had been there a couple of years, there were very few parents to be heard complaining about unused PE kit, but quite a lot complaining that their sons had stopped wearing vests at all, even in the winter.

Jenny, You might find the comment made by Giles Ames on 15th August in the Burnley Grammar string interesting. I replied on 24th August about the change in attitudes over the years towards male non-sexual nudity.

Martin, Bob, Jason, Andy and others:

Give us a break from all the bickering, please. It's getting somewhat tedious, not to mention disruptive to the more on-topic discussions trying to take pace on all of these pages.

Really troubling to hear that a kid of just 12 thinks it's a bit gay to be in a group of boys in the gym while shirtless doing a PE class in school. You need to get to the bottom of his thinking and where that came from. Going nude into the school showers with other boys his age or taking his top off to do a PE class should not bother you at all but the gay comment he made to you really should give rise for concern about where he developed that thought at such a young age from.