Burnley Grammar School

Hi Danny C,

Thank you for your comment.

Just a few final words on the double standard.

I can only conclude that the shorts requirement in infants' school was to cut us young chaps down to size by making us feel vulnerable and undignified. I do not think it can have been an official rule since there was no uniform requirement at that stage. They were absolutely serious about it though. I tried turning up to school in long trousers - after all, trousers were a clothing item traditionally gender-specific to boys and hey, the girls were wearing trousers so why couldn't I?

The second day I did so I got taken aside and shown the school's implement of torture, the so-called 'slipper', which was in fact a large black plimsoll, by my scary class teacher. She turned it this way and that, making sure I got a thorough, unhurried look at it, while she warned me that if I turned up in long trousers again I wouldn't just be staring at the slipper . . . It was a terrifying moment for a five-year-old. It was shorts for me all the way after that. It takes a certain type of specialist to intentionally terrify a five-year-old child but my primary school seemed to have a knack for recruiting such people.

Like I have said, in contrast to your school, it was the girls who often went barefoot in PE and even outdoor games lessons. The difference was, it was through their own free choice - a choice which we boys also had, but chose not to choose. I can even remember the odd woman PE teacher out on the playing fields taking her class in her bare feet.

I think we can all remember being forced out onto the muddy, waterlogged playing field to play football while we froze our nipples off in flimsy nylon tops and shorts during those Siberian winters we got in the UK back in the 1980s . . . only to get back to class afterwards to discover that the girls had spent the same PE period doing a dance class or whatever in the nice warmth of the assembly hall or the gym.

If we forgot our PE/ games kit we were kept in the changing room where we had to write out lines. When the girls forgot theirs they just had to take their shoes and socks off and were allowed to mooch about on the sidelines, chatting to their mates.

First world problems, I know. Well, apart from the shorts thing, I realise many people who read this will think I'm harping on it too much, but I honestly felt half-naked going to school in short trousers. I had been having a hard time adjusting to school as it was and this just made my life unnecessarily difficult and unpleasant. I know every other boy seemed to take it in their stride but really, forcing that on me was just unthinking cruelty.

This was the mid-1970s and the whole culture was totally unreconstructed by today's standards. A child who was resisting wasn't in distress for some personal reason which ought to have been understood, they were just bad and they had to be made to toe the line by whatever means necessary.

Comment by: Charles on 6th November 2024 at 09:51
Danny C (3rd November) – I’m not saying I agree with it, but I can kind of see the argument for removing shoes, socks and shirts for Drama lessons. I am, however, completely puzzled about the three stage shows you had to perform shirtless. Were these plays where it was appropriate for the character you were playing to be shirtless, or some sort of song and dance performances, or what? And were all the boys taking part required to be bare-chested, or just those with certain roles or parts?




Charles - Happy to give you a separate answer to your question from my other comment.

Certainly the main one was very appropriate if you were keeping true to the book. It was a Lord Of The Flies enactment, mirroring the book we were doing in English Literature at much the same time. I was nearly 15 at the time. Although we began fully dressed within about 5 minutes we went behind a curtain and all the boys were down to our underpants and a bit of flimsy cloth to hide them, and not a stitch of anything else. That was ALL the boys, it must have been at least 20, possibly even 30 of us. We then spent the rest of the time on stage like that, for an evening performance in front of all our parents and whoever else was watching us, all shirtless. There was very little female involvement in this one. Our drama teacher of the time would not take no for an answer in terms of involvement in it.

I met this drama teacher again just 4 days ago for the first time in 37 years!

The other two times were a Barnardos childrens home play we did where I played a grubby kid brought in off the street covered in dirt. I was wearing rags, an old oversized shirt of my father. Other boys were the same , about 6 to 8 of us I think, and we had our rags removed for our pretend wash in a silver metal tub pushed on stage. We were in pants, two of the others sat facing each other in the metal tub and splashed what was about two inches of cold water over themselves for effect. The rest of us beasically got our rags taken off us and had to sit down as we were for a bit, shirtless and barefoot in pants, and with painted pretend dirt on our legs, body and faces. I was not quite 13 doing this.

The other time was rather different. An early example of doing something environmental with a message, where five drama class boys were picked out at ransom, me being one of them, oh the luck, and once more ending up in just our pants but this time we were fully body painted in green on our torsos all over and brown for our legs and had to be wound together as one large growing tree. This one was presented to the school, and felt quite different actually. Although wearing little other than basic boy pants of the time and having a bare body the paint on me made me feel I had coverage and felt less obvious compared to normal pasty white skin on show. The green was very helpful in covering things up, but I was still barechetsed all the same. I remember girls smirking faces watching me and wondering what they thought. Once done we had to walk across to the PE block and shower it all off but it was special stuff meant for skin use, not a pot of Dulux.

I did also do another 7 things on the school stage where I did manage to keep things on by the way. I'd hoped to get the suited role in the Barnardos play which meant I could just wear my blazer and shoes but that went to another boy in class and I remember sitting on that stage as we did that, in my pants, everyone watching me and the others like me, made to look a homeless grubby street urchin and thinking what a lucky so and so my classmate Andrew was who looked so smart, and he was one of the sportier self confident ones in school who was full of confidence when it came to PE and all that went with it going barechested and all the rest, so should have had my role instead! But his confidence didn't stretch enough to have the urchin role. From memory nobody chose the grubby urchin roles, they were simply assigned to us without much choice.


To end, I just want to mention the question someone asked about how girls treated boys in school who were around them while barechested. For me it was not the PE lessons we did that proved tricky, it was the drama classes we did, because they always involved girls from our immediate form and the class lasted a double period. ALmost half of drama was shirtless boys. Often if we removed shirts and ties at the start we stayed that way for the two hour duration. Very occasionally we could be in shorts only, just like in PE but a lot of the time the boys just removed our blazers if we had one on, our shirt and tie and placed them on hangers in a clothing area of our drama studio or laid somewhere at the side or on a spare chair piled up. Unlike PE, everyone's shoes and socks came off, girls too, so no double standard in drama on that one that I recall. Much of the time this left all the boys sitting around in our dark grey long trousers, barefoot and barechested. It felt odd and unnatural like that. We often did small group drama tasks and girls would be up close and make comments at us, and me, knowing full well that a lot of boys in our class were not really up for haging around girls like this without our tops on, and the girls knowing we had no choice in some cases took advantage to tease and attempt to get reactions. Not many girls, just a very small handful, but that was enough. I actually think some of the nicer and quieter intelligent girls were quite embarrassed to be around a lot of barechested boys during drama like that and may have even had some empathy.

I had a conversation 4 days ago with the very man, my head of drama, that did all this to me and others for three years from 1981 to 1984 when I did drama under him and let's just say in a nutshell he didn't in principle have any issue with any of this whatsoever, and remembered me as being fairly at ease with myself and creative! Perhaps he was pretending to remember. It sort of matched up with one of my report slips of the time but how anyone cannot pick up on awkwardness under his tutoring eyes I do not know when you are telling boys aged 12 to 14 to remove shirts all afternoon among a bunch girls. Of course many of us were awkward, would he not have been if we'd made him and the other men in school sit around the staff room half dressed?

Nice relatable comments Yours Truly. Your own and Simon's comments on double standards ring a big bell with me personally.

At my secondary school the girls PE was done in footwear, mainly plimsolls and short white socks but the boys had to be barefoot for the gym/sports hall activity (as well as barechested) and even for lots of spring/summer activities outside on the grass, sometimes beside plimsolled girls. We didn't share heaps of lessons with girls in secondary, about one in six lessons were a shared boy/girl thing. My timetable never changed much with PE, it was three early morning PE lessons each week at school, sometimes the girls shared a lesson in gym with us as often as once a fortnight. If I'm perfectly honest I don't know why they did when at other times they did things to themselves with their own teacher. We had a huge sports hall and a slightly smaller gym for indoor use, plus four squash courts with a viewing area from above.

Anyway, the girls had their footwear, the boys did not. So when the girls came and joined us in the gym for PE, sometimes under dual instruction from a male and female teacher, at other times our male teacher left the girls teacher in charge of the lot of us, the double standards noticed dramatically. The girls nearly always all wore their plimsolls, yet in the same lesson doing the same things the boys had to be barefooted. Some of us wished to wear trainers or plimsolls and were not allowed to do so, while the girls could. I never understood it. What's the difference, are boys feet tougher and girls more tender, of course not. But this double standard was striking and I was always happiest in footwear doing things. We knew this in school as young schoolboys at the time, this is no being wise after the event years later kind of thinking. The footwear difference for boys and girls was the real weird one. I played squash barefoot and barechested with a girl a few times, while she was in footwear and shorts and polo type top. I even played a female PE teacher in full tracksuit and trainers while I was in just shorts and nothing else. She insisted on playing me, so awkward and must have looked ridiculous to those watching us above. On parents sports days out on the grass in summer each first Monday afternoon in July the boys had to be barefoot all afternoon (4 hours worth) there too but the girls had footwear and socks. But you could make the same point about no tops allowed on boys at mine too, whilst girls had theirs. A boy at my school was not allowed to wear a top of any kind in the school gym/sports hall. That was the blanket rule across all of our gender whatever year you were in, even including boys of the lower and upper sixth who had to do PE in our free periods at least once a week as a condition of staying on to study further.

The way you have articulated the whole attitude to boys in school compared to girls "Yours Truly" is spot on and so well said. No matter how well behaved or how much you tried you could feel the wrath of some staff teachers, or even a caretaker or a matron simply for existing. I saw this happen to others. That's true. Our school had a dedicated librarian middle aged woman who was a right old curmudgeon, always treating some boys like they didn't belong in the school library at any time. I was very well behaved and had friends who were intelligent and well mannered and who did the work, but even so I still had my brushes with a few.

You state one of your worst experiences was your first school shower. This was one of mine too, I related it four years ago on here I think. Basically me and my best friend were caught trying to slope off out the changing room after PE soon after starting secondary at the ages of 12, fully dressed with coats on and bags slung on our shoulders when we got apprehended and accused of not joining the others for our debut secondary school communal shower, which was true, we had tried not to shower. I'm sure there were a couple of others who also didn't but didn't get caught, so we were out of luck. I regretted this almost immediately. Neither of us were very sweaty or dirty from memory. We were nervous about it and shy, hardly a crime for new boys, with a lot of new faces around us, and facing such a new situation but me and my best friend were turned around and while everyone else was done and almost dressed, the two of us had this PE teacher bearing down over us both and made us remove our coats and strip naked for him on the spot before grabbing the two of us together by the back of our necks with each of his hands squeezing tightly and marching us across the large changing room floor stripped off, to the now empty showers and literally threw the two of us in with quite some push. That's 43 years ago now, in September of 1981 and I recall it like it was yesterday.

To this day I would not dream of sharing that event with any family member, although I have done so on here. Now last Friday I attended a school reunion for a Class of 84, my secondary years are actually 1981 to 1987. Although that teacher was not there, another who took me in 1984 and all the other years I was at the school was, and I mentioned this to him and gained a sympathetic hearing and a comment from him telling me he wished I had told him at the time. Telling one teacher what another had done never crossed my mind in those days. Maybe he knew something about this other chap I've no idea, I didn't press the point too much, I wanted a nice evening not a heavy going one, as at the time in the early 1980's I just thought this was the almost normal way boys were expected to be treated at secondary schools at the time, many which came with a reputation ahead of attending them, even the very good ones like the one I was a pupil at, one of the best in my area. But there you have it.

The reunion took place in the large sports hall I spent many hours in during the 80's and once inside, with no windows and artificially lit, it could have been all the way back to 1981 again, it was virtually unchanged to look around at, even the basketball nets and benches looked like the same ones to me. I'd already been back two years ago for a previous reunion, Class of 82, and that had been my first step in that place since 1987 and it was a bit like time travelling to the past just looking at the building, before you got to the actual people there.

Another thing: did you ever have to share PE classes with the girls?

Hi Simon,

Thank you for your reply to my post. Yours is far and away the worst example of double standards I have come across on this forum. I felt utterly outraged reading your account. I absolutely hated my secondary school days but, reading the testimonies from other respondents on here, I have come to realise that I didn't actually have it that bad. I was severely shy all through my schooldays and being forced to take PE lessons stripped off as if I were about to go on the beach wouldn't have done anything good for my confidence.

Just a few more details that come to mind.

There was no putative footwear rule at my secondary school, it was purely up to the individual pupil, of either gender, whether they wore footwear or not. It threw up a weird and obscure gender divide whereby the girls often seemed perfectly happy to take their PE lessons barefoot. During any indoor lesson half to maybe 70% of the girls wouldn't have bothered bringing any trainers. I can even remember numerous girls happily playing rounders or performing athletics out on the playing fields during the summer months barefoot. By stark contrast none of us boys ever did the same. I don't know why, it wasn't something I ever discussed with anyone else. I just took the view that the world didn't need to see my feet and, seemingly, every other boy in my year felt the same.

My school had tennis courts, which always seemed an extravagance for a bog-standard comprehensive school in the mid-1980s with acute funding problems courtesy of Maggie. The strangest thing is, they were never used for tennis lessons, apart from one half-term when the girls - only the girls - did tennis. I always wondered what that was about, given that tennis is not a gender-specific sport. I can only assume that the school authorities decided that we boys needed to do team sports for the usual 'character-building' bullshit reasons.

In my final year self-defence classes were introduced - for the girls only. I had always wanted to learn some form of self-defence but had always been too shy to do so. If these classes had been offered to the boys I would have taken them up. I had been badly bullied and wanted to make it stop. But never mind. I was only a boy. I am still angry about this blatant discrimination almost forty years later.

The amusing thing is, the school specified a particular change to the girls' PE kit for these lessons: a loose-fitting top and long trousers/ leggings and bare feet. This more maximalist kit was presumably because the instructors taking these self-defence classes happened to be two fit, good-looking young blokes in their mid-twenties, who by the nature of the activity, were going to be getting 'hands-on' with the girls.

Anyway, that rule went out the window straight away. The girls in my school year being the bolshie lot they were, half of them turned up to the first class in their usual aertex tops and gym knickers. I know this because we boys saw them filing into the assembly hall. Har har, I bet that had the senior staff at my catholic school grinding their teeth in chagrin!

Hi Simon,

Out of interest, did you have any siblings at the same school?

Several people have posted about their experiences with school PE/Cross Country and the limited kit allowed. At my school it was only shorts for a gym detention.

I wondered what sanctions were applied for rule breaking.

With us it ranged for cold showers, up to caning. The most common was to repeat the detention another day. Caning was rare in detentions, but I recall one situation where 2 boys started to push one another/fight – the result was 6 strokes each of the senior cane immediately after the run.

Hi Yours Truly,

I found one sentence in your post particularly interesting: "They see boys as little beasts that need to be put in their place, cut down to size." That perfectly captures what I felt about my school’s approach, especially the PE regime. There seemed to be no real reason to have us lads constantly shirtless and barefoot; it all served as a way to keep us under control, to reinforce a sense of discipline and humility. It often felt less about physical education and more about asserting authority over us.

Thanks for giving voice to a perspective I hadn't heard in a while—it really resonated with me.

As a new poster here I feel I should say a little about my own experiences. So Here goes.

Nothing too traumatic ever happened to me in PE or games lessons, which is why I have never posted here before although I have followed this site for a long time. My particular interest is in the gender discrimination between boys and girls.

This preoccupation was sparked in me during my days in infants' school. There was no uniform requirement until we went up to the juniors but there was an informal rule, vigorously enforced by our teachers - all women - that we boys had to wear shorts to school. I don't know why. There was no practical purpose to it and, cuttingly, there was no equivalent rule imposed on the girls demanding skirts or dresses only. They were free to wear whatever they wanted, including long trousers. I can even remember one girl wearing a short dress over a pair of trousers. Whereas it had been impressed on me by my sinister, menacing primary 2 teacher that if I dared to show up to school in long trousers I would be slippered. It got worse the following year when my eldest sister, two years younger than me, started at the same school and could do so in trousers while I was still in my shorts.

I don't know what purpose it served. It just made me feel more unhappy than I already felt, and I had been struggling with school to start with. It was a catholic school and I think they went by the ethos that above all, before all else, children must be made told to do as they are told, and they regarded that principle as more important than educating or empowering us. It made for a bad time and I remember the years 5-7, years that should be among the best of anyone's life, as being particularly traumatic. I think that women teachers take an instinctively more adversarial approach to boys than to girls: they see boys as little beasts that need to be put in their place, cut down to size, while girls must be nurtured. When my sister started school she was treated as a returning heroine and immediately moved into the top set (yes, they even streamed us in infants' school) while I was regularly shouted and screamed at - and I was not a badly behaved child, I was very shy and timid and nervous, I was too scared to misbehave. But that didn't save me. I was a boy.

Anyway, on to secondary school. The PE and games kits weren't anything traumatic, to be fair. In the gym it was shorts and a vest and footwear was allowed, outside, it was a rugby-type top and shorts if football, or the indoor gym kit if it was athletics. None of the shorts-only rules or being slippered in the changing room that previous posters here suffered.

We had the inevitable communal showers, of course, and I can still remember my first one, which also happened to be the very first shower I had ever had in my life. (My family were poor and working-class and growing up showers just seemed like a middle-class thing). I still remember it as one of the lowest moments of my life and I am not exaggerating. The girls had to shower as well, which is fairer than some of the schools referenced here where showering was apparently enforced only for the boys.

To be fair, looking back, I think the girls got it worse with PE kit. They had the infamous 'gym knickers', which were only marginally more inclusive than swimming trunks, and those ubiquitous aertex polo-style tops, which are fine for an 11-year-old but less so for a self-conscious, developing 14-year-old who is getting lewd comments from the boys. I can also remember, owing to a classroom shortage, we boys taking lessons in the dining hall, which was situated between the changing rooms and the assembly hall, where the girls would sometimes take their lessons, which meant they had to parade before us in their PE kits. They would be treated to a rousing chorus of catcalls and wolf-whistles from the boys (not me!).

There is one caveat to all this. The girls' PE teacher was always keen to enlist a group of boys to carry the gym mats back into the girls' changing room (why couldn't they do it themselves?) and one time I was one of the conscripts, which meant I got to have a ganders' at the girls, changing room.

It looked identical to ours . . .

. . . Apart from the fact that they had partitions in their showers. For us it was the ubiquitous bare balls, pants off and into that shower or else! thing, glowered over by our stereotypically tyrannical games teacher, who seemed to be moved by some inner baleful rage. That got me and it still does.

The girls always seemed happier in their PE lessons, such as we boys saw of them pout on the fields. There seemed to be an air of genial authority and a collabrorative air between them and their teachers which was in complete contrast to how we boys were treated. (I may be wrong about this. My sister has told me about a bullying PE teacher she encountered; but generally I think I am right: girls just were treated easier).

Anyway, that is that. That is what I had to say. I hope I didn't go on too long or was too boring, but I needed to say this. Sex discrimination has always affected us men just as much as it has affected women and I make no apology for stating this obvious truth.

There was a very clear double standard in the dress code, all based on the assumption that boys were more forgetful and needed fewer items to remember. Girls could wear plimsolls inside, trainers and tracksuits outside, but boys were limited to just one item: white shorts. The thinking was that by having only shorts to remember, boys would have an easier time, with no shirt or footwear needed, so there’d be less to forget.

Even if boys did forget their shorts, they could simply borrow a pair from the spare kit box, since that’s all they ever needed. Meanwhile, girls had more options for different situations, like footwear choices and warmer clothing for outdoor activities.

Interestingly, my parents—like most others—were fully supportive of the bare chest and bare feet rule for boys. They seemed to believe that it was a good way to keep things simple and thought it would toughen us up by having us exposed to the elements. The school seemed happy to reinforce this, which only added to the sense of unequal treatment.

From over the pond where it's just about midnight. I saw Jason's post from this side of the water so feel able to intrude on you English gentlemen.

I'm a high school biology teacher aged 60.

My mother went to Junior high and High school in the 50s. She did the naked communal showering then. I went to Junior high and high school in the 70s and I did the communal naked showering. In junior high, PE was still segregated by sex. After class, the coach brought us into the locker room and was there as we undressed and made sure we all took our showers and used soap. If a boy did not, he was helped by the other coaches. No parent ever complained. It was for sanitation. Nobody, us kids and the teachers wanted to be around the kid that was stinky and smelly after participating in PE. Participation was mandatory, unlike today. Back then, I do not remember any student not participating, we all enjoyed sports and we got to be active rather than sitting for an hour. Us boys got to do things like play tackle football. It was flag football supposedly but we were typical boys and the coaches let us be boys.

I lived, and still do, in the Central Valley of CA and it can get hot in late spring and the fall months. We did PE when it was over 100 outside and nobody cared. We would rather be outside. Our school had no other AC other than open windows. I did not know how hot it was outside until my parents bought the first window AC unit for our house.

To this day, I am almost 60, I still work outside in the summer on hot days with no problems. Last year, we had an addition built onto our house during the summer. I was working with the contractor and his crew even on days when it was 110.

I am a teacher and have students who faint if the classroom is above 72.

When I moved to the high school, the district went to co-ed PE. With that, they instituted co-ed locker rooms. This was the time of the ERA (the time there was a push to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed and a discussion of equal rights for women). So for schools, boys and girls were to be treated equal, even in the locker rooms. We dressed for PE and showered together in the same communal showers and after the first awkward week, we all got over it.

Many of us had seen the opposite sex naked on many occasions. Nude co-ed swimming was still a thing at some YMCAs. Many had hippy parents or been to the nude beaches that dotted coastal CA. In the CA Delta were a few islands that were famous for their nude beaches and party atmosphere (underage drinking) that many teens had been to. My friends and I did a lot of backpacking and in the 70s, many backpackers went nude or partially nude in the backcountry.

Now, I teach a recently built high school. It has private shower stalls at the request of parents. We cannot have kids seeing each other naked because even students of the same sex might have something that others have not seen before. (Sarcasm for those that do not recognize it).

I am a biologist and I tell students all time, we are human and we all have a naked body under our clothes. We come in two styles, male and female. If that were not the case, I would not have a job because I would have no students and none of us would be here.

Every year when I have to teach human anatomy I still get parents requesting I not teach about penises and vaginas because they do not want their 16 year old students to know about those or see pictures or drawings of them, even the ones in their textbook. Too late, they all have looked them up on the school issued laptop.

The private shower stalls has had an unintended consequence (I did bring this up when they were proposed but I was told it would not happen). Students are using them to have sex. If students are caught having sex in the bathrooms regularly, why would they not use the private shower stalls for this also. By the way, the student restrooms are just filthy because of what students do to them and the last place I would ever consider ever having sex at.

I know teens have sex, but if they do it at school, the school has to suspend them. The problem is made worse by the girls caught prostituting themselves and then we have to call the police. We have female students that will give BJs for $5.

Communal showers stop this, wash off all the sweat, grime and stink that builds up during vigorous exercise, and teach kids good hygiene in social settings. We have students that because of their living situation rarely have a chance to bathe. With the American fear of having other see their naked bodies that is not part of most other cultures world-wide, we are teaching our children our bodies are something to be shameful of.

This is why body shaming is common now and why young ladies are committing suicide because they do not have the perfect body. I am sorry, no woman will ever have the perfect body because there is no perfect female body. Each woman is unique just like each man is unique. It is our genetics.

Being exposed to as many naked bodies as I was I learned this. We are so intent on protecting our children’s feelings that parents are even now protesting when medical personnel need their children to undress for exams. Is a human body so shameful that it is to remain covered up even when there is a medical necessity to determine was is wrong to undress for an examination?

Hope this gave a fresh view from my side of things over here.

New poster here.

Hi Simon,

Out of interest, were the girls in your mixed comprehensive made to do PE barefoot as well, or were they allowed to wear footwear?

Ross, yes, it was insanely strict, at least for us lads. Our regular PE lessons were conducted in complete silence, with no talking allowed, and the teacher relied on his whistle to keep us organized—calling us to attention, starting or stopping activities, and so on. On the rare occasions when we shared the gym with the girls and were supervised by a female member of staff because our usual male teacher was absent, their routine seemed noticeably more relaxed. However, it always felt like the female teacher had been specifically instructed to be extra strict with the boys, making sure those sessions were just as intense as our regular ones!

James your experience of being the only one going shirtless because you forgot your kit mirrors me slightly. I'd come into school at 12 years of age with swanky new gym trainers to wear in our sports hall which was a light cream coloured floor. My trainers had black plastic soles on them and my PE teacher went mad at me when he saw me walking the floor in them. I'd forgotten we had to have non dark trainer soles. He shouted at me to get them off IMMEDIATELY. I took them off and he took them off me and walked off with them and stuck them in a corner. I kept my short white socks on hoping they would be okay, knowing they'd be a bit slippy, but he came back at me asking what I thought I was doing and made me lift my legs up and yanked each sock off my feet and told me I was now doing the lesson in my bare feet which couldn't mark the floor or make me slide dangerously - he shouted 'BARE FEET LAD, COME ON GET ON WITH IT!'. I'd tried to keep my socks on because I wasn't up for going barefoot at all but now I was the only one in the whole class going around in my bare feet like that. Now although I still had shorts and a shirt on, just being barefoot like that made me feel incredibly naked and exposed and I was no fan of going barefoot. Did anyone else have this sensation like that when the school made them do their PE barefoot even if they kept their shirt on?

I tried to get my parents to buy me another pair of compliant trainers that were okay for school PE but they wouldn't buy them and so my teacher made me the only one in PE for a few months always going barefoot in his lessons and this made me feel like I came from some kind of poor family that couldn't afford things which wasn't the case. One kid even accused me of being too poor to afford proper shoes. I told my old folks at home this but they thought I was a fusspot and doing PE without shoes and socks on was fine, even if I was the only one like it.

I eventually saved up some birthday cash and bought myself some new trainers that complied with PE rules, only to start the next school year a few months later and get a new PE teacher when the old one left and his methods were completely different and we could no longer wear trainers at all and everyone was told to get to sports hall barefoot on the gym days, and all of a sudden at age 13 he inflicted the bare chest PE uniform on the lot of us quite unexpectedly. I'd never done it that way before. Well at least I was not alone like it. At my school it just seemd to be down to the personal taste of the PE teacher how we were expected to turn out, not any set standard school rules about it. I think I heard someone complain about it and just get a 'my class my rules' response.

Simon your school sounds like it had a strict PE teacher.
For us PE, games and cross country shirtless and barefoot was normal but we could at least talk when playing games or out on a run.

At 14, I once forgot to bring my PE kit for a lesson, and my teacher made me participate shirtless. It was embarrassing at first, but I got used to it as the lesson went on.

That year, in 1991, was my first experience being the only one shirtless in a PE lesson, and I found I actually enjoyed it. I decided to “forget” my kit on purpose the next lesson, and this time another boy forgot his as well, so we both attended shirtless.

Afterwards, our teacher called us to the front of the class and announced that he only allowed boys to forget their kit twice a year. He put his hand on my shoulder and told me that if I forgot a third time, I’d have to be shirtless in all future PE lessons that year. My heart raced at the thought.

Later, I spoke with my classmates. I was too shy to admit that part of me wanted to be shirtless in PE permanently. Some of the girls said they’d remind me to bring my kit, while others teased me. Eventually, I decided to bring my top to the next lesson.

During that third lesson, another boy, Pete, forgot his kit but was too embarrassed to go shirtless. He asked Bobby, who’d been shirtless once, if he could borrow his PE shirt, but Bobby refused, worried that he might end up permanently shirtless himself. Pete even offered Bobby £5, but Bobby still wouldn’t lend him his shirt.

Seeing Pete getting desperate, I offered to help him out. Pete reminded me I’d already forgotten my kit twice and asked if I was sure. I joked that the teacher was probably just kidding and agreed to help, partly because I wanted the £5. So, I attended the third lesson shirtless.

At the end of the lesson, our teacher called me to the front and announced to the class that from then on, I’d always attend PE shirtless. There was a lot of surprise, but secretly, I felt a strange sense of happiness.

Some of the girls later told me they thought the teacher might have been joking and urged me to bring my kit next time. So, I told them that I didn't mind either way, wanting to appear cool and in control.

For the fourth lesson, which was outisde, I brought my kit, dressed in the changing room and left for the school sports field with the others. But as soon as the teacher spotted me, he told me to take off my shirt and hand it over. My classmates went silent, realising he was serious. When I asked for my shirt back at the end, he said my father would need to come and collect it. I didn’t want to tell him, so I was left without my PE shirt.

Eventually, my mother noticed it was missing. I explained what happened, she was annoyed and said she would go speak to the teacher herself. I was mortified at the thought of my friends seeing her at school, thinking I was too afraid to be shirtless.

When my father came home that evening, he wasn’t impressed. After my mother explained the situation, he decided that as a consequence for losing my PE shirt, I’d now remain shirtless at home too, at least until I learned to take better care of my things. I didn’t dare protest.

The teacher stuck to his word and I ended up doing all lessons that year shirtless but I also ended up not wearing a top at home for most of the time to the delight of my mother when she realised she had less washing to do for me.

Hi Ross, what you are describing as your punishment regime was normality for us lads in the early 1980ies. In my mixed comprehensive, for boys, it was white shorts only, nothing else allowed, for PE, athletics and cross-country. This minimal kit was stricty enforced by all teachers. I never saw a boy with any kind of top covering his chest or anything other than bare feet. It was quite simply unimaginable. Talking was strctly banned in the sports hall and theoretically also outdoors even if it was more difficult to impose this rule there.

Ross - I agree completely - bare feet and top were just normal kit for cross country and other p.e. It seems rather a shame to use lack of top or footwear as part of a punishment as I rather enjoyed things that way most of the time. Running barefoot was common sense - plimsolls were likely to come off on our muddy runs and muddy feet are a lot easier to clean than muddy plimsolls.

Ross

We had class room based detentions, which were reasonably common, as in most schools at the time. Caning was used, but really only for serious offences.

As a sports mad school, and a traditional one at that, a gym detention was the most serious non caning punishment - it was meant to show you up in front of other boys and punish you.

In the gym and for the run, ONLY shorts were allowed (no vest, bare feet), and this was strictly enforced The run was on tracks/fields, bit still was much worse than wearing plimsolls - the whole thing was strict, so no talking to other boys, do as ordered immediately and so on.

My parents fully supported me being punished like this, as did the vast majority of parents.

Charles, I remember occasions at my junior school in 1994 and 1995 when boys took part in performances in front of the school bare-chested, though only when reasonably relevant to the part.

I mentioned in an old post (28th Feb 2024 if you wish to scroll back) my teacher arranging for our class of nine-year-olds to re-enact an Aztec human sacrifice as part of our topic; the boy playing the "victim" wore only PE shorts. I and another boy playing the guards wore PE shorts and curtains.

The following year, the eleven-year-olds about to leave the school starred in a production, watched by parents, about the Greek hero Perseus who slew Medusa the Gorgon - whose gaze could turn you to stone. The boys playing Hermes, messenger of the gods, and Atlas, holding up the world, and possibly other boys as well, were bare-chested.

I and a few classmates, a year younger than the actors, had just a very small job to do in that performance, shaking maracas at the rear of the stage at appropriate moments. There were dozens of children involved, senior and junior choirs, dancers, several teachers taking care of lighting, scenery, costumes, script. One interesting detail, looking at the programme which I still have: Perseus was played by a girl.

Comment by: Lawrence on 8th November 2024 at 10:14


I think girls still get the kid glove treatment. I went to an all boys school, but from time to time if I have to use a bus during the time when pupils are coming out of school, I am struck by the gobby foul-mouthed language that comes out of their mouths.

This is, in part, I suspect, the general attitude much fostered by the advertising industry that women are little heroes who work far harder, and are much more clever than men (just look at some of the TV adverts that depict the male as an idiot). You only have to look at the current nondescript cabinet to see that.

I suspect the teachers couldn't be bothered to chastise the girls, and today they would dare. The girls would all be writing to Jess Phillips and the BBC to complain about their "trauma"

Over the years several comments have mentioned schools forcing boys to be shirtless around girls, and many of these comments complained about girls making boys uncomfortable about their state of undress. Few of these comments elaborate on what the girls actually did or said, and whether the teachers knew or cared or did anything about the girls' behaviour.

Steve... no, it wasn't a shock, because many of us at my primary school had friends or siblings who'd gone up to the Grammar School and knew the rule. Also, there were no shirts or plimsolls on the PE kit list our parents were given before we started.
And, yes, the rule was strictly enforced by the P.E. staff - although the girls were allowed tops, of course!

Danny C (3rd November) – I’m not saying I agree with it, but I can kind of see the argument for removing shoes, socks and shirts for Drama lessons. I am, however, completely puzzled about the three stage shows you had to perform shirtless. Were these plays where it was appropriate for the character you were playing to be shirtless, or some sort of song and dance performances, or what? And were all the boys taking part required to be bare-chested, or just those with certain roles or parts?

Steve, interesting to read that your school used bare feet as a kind of punishment. Was it really part of the punishment or was it that the boys had Detention but obviously didn't bring suitable footwear to run in?

Doing PE and XC barefoot fir me was never thought of as punishment or harsh it was normal and sometimes quite fun plus I never had the added baggage of carrying around muddy trainers after a xc run.

My claim to fame, if you can call it that, was that our PE teacher used to stand shamelessly nude in the shower with our naked class last lesson of the day on Friday, and I once felt his bare foot kick me right up my bare arse crack for using a swear word. That swear word I think was 'bloody'. He was fond of kicking lads backsides, on the playing field and the changing room, like a karate move. Such was school in 1975.

Good morning from here in the United States, my perspective compared to Brits. I was a mid 80's school kid who never forgets things easy and put this on my personal blog just recent in 2022.

Has anyone over there read or heard about Harris's plan to allow trans people and those of a different biological sex into school campus open plan changing and group communal shower areas here if they re-identify themselves and their change pronouns?

This is effectively mixed gendering our private areas for young males and females. On some school campuses now they actually allow you to decide your gender from day to day and accept this as real and there have been cases where those with predatory behaviour or even just jokers have been enabled because the system in some parts will not make waves for fear of litigation and so big majorities of people have to suffer the consquences and be made uncomfortable just to make one person more comfortable.


To my piece about me;

We were forced to get naked in junior high. Mandatory showering after P.E was bullshit.

One thing about my awkward junior high years I’ll never understand was being forced to shower after class in P.E. At the height of our 6th and 7th-grade insecurity, someone on the school board thought, “Hey, how can we make these kids’ awkwardness any worse? Oh yeah, let’s force them to get naked and shower in front of each other.”

We had big communal shower rooms in junior high, they could take in 60 naked guys a go and sometimes did. What a sight and sound! We had to shower before and after the swim class too.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no prude. But what in the actual f**k was the reasoning behind forcing 12 and 13-year-old kids to shower in a communal shower, like prisoners in some gangster movie? Body image, what was that? We were such young kids and it could be scary. A guy in my grade was known for coming up and feeling boys balls for hair in the shower and shaming them for things beyond their control.

Most guys had our boundaries but some did not. Even some of our gym coaches were know to objectify what we looked like and pass judgement. The communal shower was a noisy place, a hotbed of stange tensions from large numbers of reluctantly naked boys put in there by our school P.E coaches.

I can hear the sound of the place, the hollering, the water, the feel and color of the tiles, the wet floor underfoot and the sight of those I was forced to share the naked time with, the sight of many of the peckers we pretended not to notice but were forced to confront and check out time after time.

Mom once said don't show you're too scared to shower Jason, it'll make you a target of the others. Except most of them were also too scared to shower and trying not to show it too! Like little lambs to the slaughter we all got sent in accepting our fate like good young kids.

I didn’t stutter. We did not enjoy the single, modern day gym showers with a curtain you can pull for privacy. We’re talking about a single large shower area with likely 40-60 or so shower heads and as many boys. No privacy whatsoever. It was big. It was wet. It was hot. It was steamy, unless the ice cold shower trick came along or the hot water was off. We still had to shower, just quicker and keep the noise down from the shock of the cold. Once in a while came a cold shower on purpose, the dreaded whole class punishing scam. A quick cold shower that made us screach was deemed the quickest and most effective option. It happened 5 times and I remember each and every one of them perfectly, "Harmless" said the P.E coach as we took 2 minutes to cool down, or freeze, noticing how that situation had affected our peckers when out.

Nobody there but you, God, and 60 naked kids who I am somewhat sure wanted no part of this, as I didn’t. Hopefully not some pervert sicko P.E. teacher spying around the corner. Thank f*ck we didn’t have cell phones back in 1986. Ugh. I imagine trying to see this now for real as it was then and it would seem startling to view. One or sometimes more, gym teachers, with so much power over the privacy choices of so many young kids in one go, where else can you go and force 60 people to get naked immediately and not take no for an answer. School, that safe and secure place of course.

I remember the first day of 6th grade as if it was yesterday. Sitting through the first class, our last names inked onto our government issue junior high uniforms. "Provencio" barely fitted into the box. Still, I was excited. I loved P.E. Until this year, anyway.

Mr. Greeno was one of our stocky, middle aged P.E. teachers and after school coaches. Picture Richard Dawson from Family Feud if you know it, but in somewhat better shape. Thank Buddha he didn’t try to kiss any of us like his Family Feud doppelganger. But I did have to show him my white aching bare ass up close once after a racquetball hit and felt his hand brush the right cheek, as if that changed anything. Ray in class had hit me in anger. The bruise was yet to show anyway, till next shower time when it was there on view for comment.

It didn’t even have to do with the prison style showering. I was playing some sort of racquetball against Ray Williams. He didn’t like that I beat him on a point or didn’t agree with my call on a point. He whacked me on the butt with the wooden paddles we used.

That shit stung. I either went after him or Greeno saw us. Regardless, we ended up in his office.

“All right, men. What is this shit? Tell me why we’re here.” I answered quickly. “Yeah, Ray HIT me with the paddle.” Ray, eyes brimming with big ol’ crocodile tears, “Go ahead. BELIEVE HIM, Mr. Greeno!” Little manipulator. God, what a little asshole. I wasn’t putting up with this shit. I dropped my gym shorts for Greeno to see my lower butt cheek. I didn’t want this to get weird like. I was invited to pick up the racquet and do the same back but declined, although he deserved it and I wanted his ass to sting like mine too.

Yeah, and that was that. I felt vindication. Ray was shipped off to a Russian penal colony, the punishment room to work extra hours. Win-win. He might have preferred a quick cold shower instead.

Next time Ray was made to run a few extra laps and had to sweep the gym in the buff while we laughed. Greeno was fair if he was anything and it was kind of amusing and fun for us to watch. At least I never saw him creeping on us while we were showering but we had permission to creep out and enjoy Ray's gym sweep task, as my ass still ached three days later along that bench.

I used to worry SO MUCH about the whole showering thing. Mr. Greeno told us on Day 1 in no uncertain terms that we’d all be required to shower after each class. Non-negotiable, no refusals and no get out notes accepted from anyone. A sikh with a turban had his religious sensitivies brushed aside and had to shower with us and we got used to seeing him completely naked apart from his blue turban wrapped over his head and trying hard not to get the thing wet. This was tricky, the shower heads were above head height, the rest of us had to wet our hair. Eventually the sikh, Hanspal, gave up and after a few months actually removed the turban to shower and revealed amazingly long back shiny hair to his waist. He still tried hard not to get it too wet, it would have taken all day to dry I think. Hanspal had the tiniest smooth pecker I ever saw on anyone I saw naked in school P.E class, but he made up for it with the biggest hair.

What the f*ck I thought on first showers at 12. It was uncharted territory for most of us 6th graders. Public nudity? Most of us didn’t yet even have hair on our balls. What would my dad say about this I thought?

He laughed when I told him. Big time laughed. He didn’t take my request to transfer schools seriously at all when I had a bit of a new boy panic. He didn’t have my back on this in any way. That’s why he’s going into a 1-star old folks home, once we reach that stage. Non-negotiable. Moving schools wouldn't have been the answer anyway, they were all doing the same public nudity across state, giving everyone else the same naked peckers-on-parade in schools everywhere you looked.

I thought this had to be illegal. Kids my age like me being forced against their will naked together with a gym teacher somewhere in the general area gazing on over us all? Sadly, it was the mid-80s. Evidently, there were no laws regarding this immoral bullshit, as I saw it then and see it now.

It's still a thing if you're unlucky to go to the wrong places. But then it was a thing everywhere all the time then. We should have had a choice. If we wanted to just use a bunch of deodorant or even choose to stink in class, who cares? Some of us were NOT comfortable with this arrangement.

I observed a kid named Tyson becoming the first casualty of the new year in P.E. After having to shower one of the first few days, we all hauled ass back to our lockers to at least throw our drawers on. A bigger kid named Ashby walked into the locker room from the showers. Tyson was likely tired. He seemed to be staring off into space until Ashby walked right into his space. Tyson sadly didn’t immediately look away. Ashby noticed this overlong look at his groin and had to publicly shame him for it.

“HEY! What you lookin’ at? What you wish you had?”

This was met with a loud round of laughter and snickering. Shit, we were all just glad we weren’t the ones getting called out by Naked Ashby. Tyson became the victim, for at least that P.E. class. I felt for him but was relieved it wasn’t me that was targeted. I was so paranoid after Tyson was targeted by Ashby. Christ, what if we god forbid got a hard-on in the middle of showering, or even a half chub? When you’re a newly minted teenage boy, just about anything can set you off and I was easy to. There were definitely half masts going on but you got away with those.

I was pretty certain I wasn’t gay. Daisy Duke in the early to mid-80s on the Dukes of Hazzard had me fairly convinced. Still, I was a bit paranoid about the worst that could happen. I’d have to catch a train and become a hobo if that shit happened and it probably did somewhere, the law of averages and all that with all that weekly mass school nudity taking place through the showers.

Fortunately, it never did to me. The showering thing became less and less of a big deal the more we were forced to do it. It still always felt awkward and horrible, but we all dealt with it in our own ways. But I never accepted it or consented to any of it. I am no prude, just my private personal choice that I was not allowed to make at the time.

I remember wondering if the girls felt as bad about it as most of us boys did. I can’t imagine they felt any less insecure than we did as early teenagers. I still don’t get the logic behind forcing kids to shower together in a group setting at ages when we were unbelievably sensitive about how we looked even with all our clothing on, let alone on view to everyone we knew in our raw bare assed pecker swinging naked form.

Well the world kept spinning, I’m still alive and survived it, and our teachers didn’t have to smell B.O. during math and science classes after P.E. Win-win, huh? At least I was able to repay Ray back with a well-timed snap of my wet towel after his teacher punishment and humiliation. Enjoy that welt on your own ass Ray, wherever you now are.

Come to think about it, towel whipping by naked boys was one of the more fun "unofficial" sports we got up to. What was it about being naked and having a towel that made us want to flick it at everyone else's asses! Some of those towels were lethal weapons in disguise.

Comment by: Oliver on 5th November 2024 at 02:00


No Oliver, it makes you quite a normal modest bloke. Be prepared though you will probably get some backlash from some of the more "traditional" posters here. I, too, never ran around half naked at home, and when I was playing music I always went dressed for the occasion.

I always deeply resented having to remove my clothes at school all the time in all PE lessons, simply because one was aware that our sports master was a bit. "odd"......... if you take my meaning. I was slightly luckier in that mine was an all boys school. Reading some of the earlier messages on here from pupils from mixed schools, including some women, some girls enjoyed the sight and discomfiture of half naked boys as much as the teacher.

I never understood the necessity of it, except for swimming.

We don't all want to display ourselves starked b@llock naked either as boys or men.

May I ask what type of school you went to, and in what part of the country?.

I can't even be shirtless in front of my parents around the home, and I'm 24, does that make me weird? The last time mum or dad saw me shirtless was maybe when I was ten. I go out of my way to avoid it. I only did a very small amount of skins and shirts at school and never showered. Taking my shirt off is something that comes very hard for me in front of others. I would have freaked out big time if I'd gone to some of the schools you others here went to where you did shirtless PE all the time and they forced you to shower naked, and I can't believe some people had to go and do drama shirtless too, that's awful, it really is. That would have scared the living daylights out of me being shirtless so much and up beside girls who could see me. I'm pleased I wasn't born a few years earlier than I was.

I can remember being in my last year at junior school thinking how "grown up" the boys were at senior school, and how it would be great to be like that !

We lived close to the secondary school, so saw boys out doing cross country or running immediately after school.

Boys always ran shirtless, and some groups barefoot (always the ones I saw after school - I later discovered this was a punishment, when they wore only shorts as part of the detention).

Even when I was wearing multiple layers of clothing due to it being freezing cold, I still wanted to grown up like them ! Later when it was me doing the run in freezing weather, I changed my mind.