Burnley Grammar School

We also had white shorts which exposed every detail when wet.
My older and younger brothers, and their classmates, also complained about them. Yet they never changed them. Bizarre

Chris H, we also wore those white running shorts at school.Mine were made out of polyester nylon and had a very shiny satin effect and were translucent.When we ran in the rain they were almost see through.,which could be very embarrassing.We often participated in inter-house running events and we provided the girls quite a spectacle.

Comment by: Simon W on 3rd May 2025 at 17:09




".........I'd like to try and understand how those who faced compulsion to shower at school found it, for good or bad, so if anyone would care to share such thoughts I'd like to read them and to know exactly what it was about this that caused anyone's own personal difficulties, or perhaps none at all......."

Hello again, Simon and welcome back, I can only wish you had been my P.E. teacher at school. The great problem I had at school, apart from a P.E. teacher who seemed to have been put on this earth to make everybody's life a misery, (I have discussed him at length previously and will not do so again) was that, before the age of 11, and the world of compulsory showers and near nudity in lessons, I was aware that I was homosexual, which troubled me deeply. It has always been the bane of my life. I loathe it in myself, and had I been aware of conversion therapy -non-religious, - I would probably gone through it, but in school years I was terrified of being found out. Luckily I never was, but of course back then it was illegal for anybody under 21, and there were still very pejorative stories in newspapers, and the lads in our school (a fairly rough area of East London) used the "q" word about everybody, just as often as the "f" word. There was always fear, and all the years I was there it never lessened. It probably got worse, in truth. It didn't help, on the physical level, that the P.E teacher's name for me was "Tin Ribs" - he disliked me as much as I disliked him.

To this day, I am astonished, when reading on here, of how lads were looking at each other (somebody the other week referred to enjoying the "naked camaraderie" of the showers) Our school expected over 30 boys to use those showers at the same time - it was a small area and you were constantly trying to avoid contact. I was very green and unaware at the time, and I would have been mortified to know that there were old men out on their bikes watching us, and enjoying the spectacle. A few years back we had one old man on here who used to drop into a school playing field, on a regular basis, to watch shirtless boys (in December!) and chat to the P.E. teacher. I can't imagine you doing that. It might have been his fantasy, but nevertheless whether it happened or not, that is what he would have LIKED to have done.

The situation for lads like me was bad enough then - imagine what it must have been like pre 1967 when it was illegal full stop.

Not you, as clearly you are cut from a different cloth to the old doctrinaire teachers, but it astonishes me that teachers back then did not realise there would be boys who had similar difficulties, and made no effort to understand it. I am equally astonished at the number of lads who "come out" at school these days. Seriously if they had done so at my school, it would have been very dangerous to do so. You could get beaten up for just having the wrong accent or wrong colour hair - even fights over which computer was best - the Spectrum or the C64 - can you imagine anything more stupid?. most of the violent behaviour happened at the bus stop, but schools should be a safe place where you go to learn, and I never felt safe at mine. Music and electronics, which were an interest from a very young age were non-existent in my school, even though they have continued throughout my life. I still listen to music, even though I ceased playing in my twenties.

Chris1970 I saw you write about the teacher pulling you by the ear and you having to take a going at from him without anything on. I agree that's not the nicest way to treat people but compared to some of the outright beatings, even just with a hand I saw in our school in the 70s that is almost nothing. Our gym saw lots of whackings across bare skin leaving reddened marks. It ranged from just a hand, a plimsoll or at worst a belting proper. Legs, backside or the back. Head clouting was so common in any lesson, but I remember the PE most for it.

Hi Greg2,

That extra detail in your previous post made more sense of your incident. Your PE teacher came in at the crucial moment, caught you violating the girls' private space and feeling obliged to defend them slippered first and asked questions later, since you 'obviously' needed to be temporarily stripped of your boyish exuberance, and touching your toes for his plimsoll was an immediate and effective way of doing it.

'To tell you the truth we seemed to forget about it, or just leave it, which seems odd now.'

You had no choice, did you? You knew what would happen.

'Unlike males, don’t all females like to think they’re entitled to know every detail about everything anyway, which is probably why their female teacher let them continue.'

I'm not sure that's the truth. Both genders have an evolved instinct to 'cut males down to size'. Men because of the adversarial alpha-male instinct. Women because, when you think of it, they are at far more risk of every type of violent offence from men than men ever are from women. Every opportunity to mock and humiliate men is to them is just evening up the score.

Also, both genders mercilessly tease each other at that age, don't they? And not just children. That bullying from your nurses was disgusting and unprofessional but then, hey, you were only a boy after all.

It actually reminds me of an anecdote my mother, who trained as a nurse, once told me about her days on the ward. This male patient came in for an operation and they happened to notice that it was stated in his notes that he suffered from what is nowadays termed 'micropenis', ie, he was unable to father children. They were all curious to check it out and while he was unconscious every single nurse on the ward took a turn tending him - and the male surgeon let them. Afterwards, on their break, they all had a damn good laugh about it. This was the late 1960s and there was a pop song with the lyrics "Willie, can you do the things I ask you?/ Willie, can you do them true?" One nurse sang this lyric before triumphantly hooting, "Willie, can't, can he?" to general laughter.

Although I do know that every salacious rumour at my school seemed to generate from among the girls. Some of them ought to have gone to work for GCHQ.

'there is one other thing I’ve realised since thinking this through again all these years later: we never did try to explain that we were just getting our own back'

Maybe because you all knew he wouldn't give a flying shit. You have mentioned several times how he never stopped his female colleague from entering your male space. He plainly had no regard for your feeling or boundaries, which seems to have been part of the job description for that generation of male PE teachers.

And as I have stated before, it's my belief that, contrary to every assumption and stereotype, it actually boys who are the more compliant gender. Boys find themselves in a world of physical threat, actual or implicit, from day one, while girls are raised to regard their personal boundaries as sacrosanct. For boys the consequences of resisting are potentially greater, as several previous posters here, both male and female, have observed.

A good answer you gave Brian there Neal. Where I was at all my teachers were Brian's though.

I flew to Norway once for a quick two day works trip with my then boss. The only people I saw there were well wrapped up! What is it that makes people from cold nations so easy going on the stripping off.

If anyone can give me the secret to that kind of casual easy confidence to take stuff off and not give a damn then I'm listening intently.

At our school in Wrexham forty or so years ago we had a gym teacher there who had a habit of going all physio on favoured sporty pupils after PE in our changing room and you'd sometimes see him massaging select boys bare legs and manipulating their bare feet too back and forth around the ankles, often after cross country, before or after we'd hit the showers. I never knew quite what to make of it. When they moved PE to last lesson another teacher, not him, started coming into the shower with us from time to time but kept his shorts on. We however could never keep our shorts on to shower, or anything else, getting naked was mandatory for us all.

It's surprising how many films, dramas and documentaries are out there that drop group showering scenes into them, not always adult but also younger persons even with a couple of examples on here and no strategic coverage.

Sometimes they pop up in the most unexpected places. I watched a moving drama one evening on telly about a teenage boy crippled with cancer who could no longer play football when completely without warning there was the abrupt appearance of a changing room with everything out. I'd like to know what this was actually, so if anyone here recognises my description then let me know. I think I watched it in the 90's, and it was a one off like those old Play For Today things of the 70's. I can't recall any of the actors or writers alas.

Hi James,

I don't think my parents intended to humiliate me either, they were just locked into this 'little boys wear shorts' mindset and were seemingly oblivious to my obvious distress.

But that is just the thing, it didn't make it fair at all when the girls were allowed to wear whatever they pleased.

I expect the school's motivation was the same, that boys just look nice and smart in shorts. Although I always wondered if there was a sly disciplinary tactic going on there. As you say, shorts in the seventies were shorter than today and going to school feeling half-stripped made you feel vulnerable and embarrassed and therefore easier to control. Also, having to dress in shorts meant you were aware that you were then under the teacher's authority. Perhaps the shorts were intended as a covert substitute for uniform which didn't come in until junior school. But this is all just my speculation.

I do think that if a child is that obviously reluctant for whatever reason their boundaries should be respected and to an extent kids should be allowed to come to these things in their own time instead of being forced by any means necessary. I did eventually come to relax and accept the shorts and put the unfairness of it to the back of my mind - but then when you discover that your teacher keeps a gym plimsoll for naughty boys a little embarrassment and injustice no longer seem such high priorities.

My parents were quite happy that the nonsense had been knocked out of me and my mum happily bought me several new pairs of short while my treacherous father actually shook that teacher's hand at a subsequent parents' evening.

I do agree with Alan that you should not have been made to wear shorts casually after age eleven but then I understand that was still relatively common practice for boys as late as the 1960s. It actually reminds me of a letter from the problem page of a well-know tabloid when I was a teenager, from a 13-year-old boy who had been put back in shorts by his mother after he had been caught bullying girls. This was obviously intended to humiliate him and judging by his letter it worked!

Comment by: Russ on 1st May 2025 at 22:04

Thanks for the link to the Norwegian film site Russ. It seems an interesting websitewhere I might explore a little more. You also mention a historical films archive site, is this a Norwegian site? i think I remember watching some old footage on such a site some years ago but have since lost the link. I do sometimes watch digitalised old documentary films on the Swedish filmarkivet.se and also the Danish danmarkpaafilm.dk sites, both of which I find very interesting. Also the British Huntley film archive and the bfi are good, from which I posted a link last February showing a boys’ walking race filmed in 1922. Danny C gave an appreciative comment on that post. I hope he can return here sometime.

I decided, just out of curiosity and interest, to have my dna ethnicity checked earlier this year, and it came back telling me my highest ethnicity count being 46% Scandinavian and 30% Eastern European, which is how my family looks I suppose and takes in my Scandinavian surname from my Father’s side, and the Eastern European link covers Eastern Germany where my mother’s family came from. Basically I'm Northern European it seems, which I suppose explains the affinity I’ve always felt to Scandinavia and it’s culture and peoples…not sure I’d be too keen to have a shower like those lads with the corridor door wide open though! Actually, perhaps this might have been part of their changing room area as you can see a mirror on the wall out there.

Thankyou for one or two of the decent comments over my description of school in Maidenhead.

I'm struck by the very real similarities between us both Neal on here. Your choices this week seem perfectly sensible and reasonable and we do similar, and the numbers that opted to go without the PE kit when allowed seems to be what I might have expected. The kit list is specific here and expected to be brought in and worn. When it's not, if the incorrect item, either footwear of a top, the solution is none then, much like you with your tops uniform. If you can't bring the correct one into school then expect to do without whether you like it or not, likewise with any inappropriate footwear. This largely ensures correct kit but not always, never a day goes by without something.

My only obvious difference with you Neal is showering. We do not have any compulsion to do so. We have them and they work, and anyone is free to do so if they ask, but they remain idle other than for after school activity when they get used voluntarily. I think the voluntary arrangement suits me as much as the kids.

In your case Neal you made clear you require this. I'm not dead set against compulsion and if I had to work in a school such as yours I'd see to it if they wanted me to, but I prefer personal choice or encouragement as a rule. How do you find dealing with compulsion in your own case, especially when dealing with new intakes?

I'd like to try and understand how those who faced compulsion to shower at school found it, for good or bad, so if anyone would care to share such thoughts I'd like to read them and to know exactly what it was about this that caused anyone's own personal difficulties, or perhaps none at all.

I've already found the memories surrounding compulsion to do PE lessons in bare chests riveting.

It comes as no surprise to see that Norweigen boys are so relaxed, as seen in the Russ clip, but actually choosing to leave the door wide open onto the outside corridor while you are showering away with each other! That looked somewhat strange to say the very least.

Our changing room door was always flying open while we did our stuff, and was one of those doors that shut very slowly after you went through it, so it's quite conceivable that anyone passing at the right moment who looked in might have caught something they shouldn't have. With the changing room door open, the showers were directly ahead. Many times I came back later than some others from the same class, opened the door and some were showering, so anyone at that door could have seen them or me from the door while open, however briefly. It was one of the changing bench and hooks areas that was actually hidden out of view from the door around a corner, and someone thought that was the best way to design the room.


Peter, you've posed a cheeky question but I can't resist giving you an answer to it on checking others out. I had a friend called Ian who always caught my attention because he was well endowed even quite young, and we would sit on opposing changing room benches getting sorted for PE. The one thing about him was he had this very curly penis that always twisted noticeably to one side very clearly unlike everyone else who just pointed ahead like you expect when out. This never changed and I thought he must have been kicked in the groin at some point and injured the thing. You never dared say anything of course, even to a friend about their penis in a school changing room, just look and maybe judge and keep any thoughts to yourself.

If only we could publish all those thoughts about each other that quietly went through each of our minds it could prove quite entertaining or quite devastating.

I don't know exactly what my weight and height was at a certain age, but I seemed in line with normal looking boys in all departments. I wasn't short but not too tall, not thin but not chubby. Boringly normal. The only thing that was measured frequently was my feet as I worked through shoes. I remember most of my school shoes after about 14 being a size seven, always a popular size in shops that they'd run out of when I liked something and asked.

That was quite an unusual story you tell of a young person coming and measuring you up at school Greg, and you could only guess why he was doing it rather than be told why? I think I would have found that rather intrusive actually. I once picked up a book entitled Curious Facts for Curious People, or a title similar to that and under weird facts about the human anatomy there was one that said nipples on grown men are almost always situated the same distance apart from each other, it gave a figure, and hoping to disprove it I went and checked only to find out I was the same. I think it was 23 centimetres. You are going to check now aren't you.

One thing about being in PE at school and my own body was I felt very sensitive about the possibility anyone might make a comment about how I looked. I had thoughts on my own perceived imperfections but would have been horrified if anyone had said anything that matched what I thought about myself, effectively reinforcing it. Unfortunately I had a teacher, the one I first mentioned on here grabbing my ear, who did pick out things, such as telling me when showing me how to climb and grab a rope that I had small fingers. I looked at my hands after that comment later and wondered what he was talking about and put it down to the fact he must have had massive hands or that the school ropes were thicker than they should have been. His comment did not match one of my perceived imperfections, one of which was having too many moles along one arm.

Alan,I never considered that my parents considered that keeping me in short trousers was a form of humiliation.They enjoyed the look of me wearing shorts and decided to keep me in shorts rather than allowing me to wear long trousers.

Mine was one of those schools in the 70s with one of those you must take off your pants for PE attitudes, thus they came off in the changing room at the start of PE and we slipped on our shorts onto nothing. PE was shirtless and barefoot for gym, so the white shorts were the only item we had on for PE there. About as simple as it gets.

Others ran school cross country shirtless, so did we. , the same gym shorts and no pants. These white shorts, unsure what they were made of to be honest but the material wasn't very thick, but was a touch shiny looking. Nylon? Anyway, the shorts were not very giving, with not a lot of room in them. If you had big thighs they could mark them like socks do at the ankles. When we ran outside in these shorts in cross country and it rained on us, the shorts would get wet through and become horribly see through, it was literally a running joke among us all but nothing was done about it. Black ones would have solved this I think. The wet shorts would cling as well onto the skin so if you were running behind others in the wet shorts they clung to the buttocks and being white on white boys at a quick glance it sometimes looked like no shorts were being worn and they were running naked ahead of you, other than sight of the elastic waist part holding them up. I would have looked the same to anyone behind me I'm sure. The front was not quite so bad but the shape of things became clearer and if you looked properly things were not viewable. Yet all we needed to do was wear pants or change to dark shorts. Luckily were we ran didn't pass too many people and was mainly off road. Rainy cross country in white shorts, trainers and a bare chest were joyless for many and very chilly to do.

Peter, my physique was average build and I was never unhappy with it, no idea what height I was at fourteen, and never measured myself down below but I seemed to be up to standard when it came to checking out against others. You always needed to have reassuring quiet peeks at the competition in the showers at school to see how the race to adulthood was coming along!

Hi Yours Truly,further to my previous message,to attend a school wear short trousers wear compulsory for all boys made it fairer than just a few boys wearing shorts like myself and a few others.We became the objects of fun and teasing by both girls and younger boys.Yes,I do remember the song,'who wear short shorts'which was often sang to me. My parents were always oblivious about my thoughts when I contested wearing shorts all the time and told me that I looked nice in my shorts. Shopping excursions usually involved purchasing new shorts,which I was displeased because I was thirteen,but after visiting several shops,my mother found some Adidas satin shorts that appealed to her and she bought me two pairs in blue.Her clear refusal to allow me to wear long trousers was obvious.

Comment by: James on 3rd May 2025 at 09:44




".........Although I disliked being in the minority my parents relished the spectacle of seeing a teenager getting accustomed to short pants as I grew older........"

Forgive me James, and with all due respect to your parents, why the hell would any reasonable parent want to see their son (or daughter) humiliated like that?. They must have been adherents to the philosophy of Robert Baden-Powell. Given the amount of bullying that goes on in schools (and outside them on the bus to and from school) why would anybody want to make their lives more difficult?. It seems almost as spiteful as sending them to boarding schools.

Yours Truly on 1st May 2025 at 09:43

They may well have continued to check us at times, as they left us with the impression that their teacher didn’t discourage them. To tell you the truth we seemed to forget about it, or just leave it, which seems odd now. What could we do? When you think back to being that age, just one day seems to last so long with lots of things to get through, that even from one week to another seems an age. Perhaps it was a year’s optional, ongoing, observation of interest for them, who knows. Unlike males, don’t all females like to think they’re entitled to know every detail about everything anyway, which is probably why their female teacher let them continue. It still irritates me thinking about it now, but the years have gone by. I always did think their gym teacher was a bit strange though; at least we’d stopped her walking through our rooms…there is one other thing I’ve realised since thinking this through again all these years later: we never did try to explain that we were just getting our own back, but when our gym teacher arrived and caught us, all he would have seen was the door to the girls’ shower open; their showers still going; the girls having vacated the place; a group of us boys still standing by that open door. Perhaps he’d heard their screaming and their door slam. I suppose that’s quite funny.


Tony, thank you for your nice comment at the bottom of your 1st May 2025 at 21:37 post.

It was a nice post Tony but I find it a little awkward in answering.

When I wrote about the shower peeping episode, it was really following on from a previous discussion, and I certainly didn’t intend to write about the troubles that seemed to follow, but one then reminded me of the other. It’s odd how such things become so vivid, so that the writing just flows as you recall certain sensibilities from your younger years; you find feelings resurface that you know only belonged to who you were at that young age. At that time I really didn’t have a clue what was happening or why, but all these years later I do now think it was probably because of how I looked I suppose. Similarly, I even think it was why a 14 year old boy kept coming up behind only me when I was only 9, to push me under the water as I was playing about with same age friends in a swimming pool. I was a none swimmer then. If only he knew that he succeeded in putting me off swimming for life by doing that. Despite always being a sporty kid, on dry land, I was always in the none swimming group during school swimming, feeling pretty useless, and always a little humiliated.

My physique? Well I’m speaking about all this starting when still a child really, though moving into teens, so then still just a slim, tallish, sporty kid at that age. I did write on here some time ago about a man who turned up at one gym lesson, who we all thought was a student of some kind. Our usual gym teacher wasn’t present. After getting changed for gym and still all sitting in the changing room, he proceeded to take various measurements of each of us, one after the other, as we stood on the bench before him while he measured the distances between various joints, the width of wrists and limbs, limb and even finger lengths, all while writing this down on a clip board. I’ve mentioned before that I never had to do shirtless gym, as we always were strictly enforced to wear our all white gym kits, but for this we all did have to remove our tops. This must seem odd. I’ve since thought that he must have been a university medical student of some sort who was probably revising for his thesis? When posting of this that last time, I left out that he quietly complimented me at the end of all this, so I do realise I was very lucky that it seems I was well proportioned, or at least as I think he meant, on target to be so as an adult.

This is beginning to sound ever so self-satisfied, which is not how I ever was at all, so now I’ll explain a particularly awkward aspect of my childhood appearance that really did get me down at times, so I might succeed in undoing some of what I’ve just said. I'm going to admit to something! People seemed to identify something about my face when I was a boy that said, ‘girl’ to them. I never really understood it, and I remember complaining to my mother when I spent some time in hospital (see below) but she did explain to me. I don't think I ever behaved in any effeminate way as I grew up, and I certainly can’t begin to explain how much I hated this. I always hoped that when out with friends anywhere, someone didn’t say, or assume, which could have provided a topic for continued ribbing from the others. In fact the last time this did happen is when I was 13, so my voice still unbroken. I’ll give a brief example. I’d gone with a friend of the same age to meet up with others at a campsite; the same place I’d mentioned previously with showers. We had a few tents plus a smaller one used as our larder. I decided there were things I’d like to buy, coffee for instance as I didn’t like tea. So off we all walked to a small store nearby. I collected a few things as the others looked at other shelves elsewhere. I went to the counter to pay. The man said, ‘Oh, I see they let the girl get the food as usual.’ I looked around, saw my friends were out of earshot, and the woman next to me just smiled. I didn’t reply, paid, then we all left. Is having to put up with nonsense like this usual for a boy? I’m not sure whether others ever had this, as it’s yet another unspoken aspect of boyhood that we would never mention to anyone. It would be very interesting if to find this out on here once and for all. Anyone?

I spent 3 months on a children’s ward having fractured my femur when I was 11. This was the very summer from which we all transitioned from junior school to ‘big school’ so I missed that important time shared with your friends, including that first showering experience usually all shared together. I’ve written previously about the double standards issued out to boys regarding lack of privacy while on that ward, so I’m not dragging over all that again, but during all my time in there everyone assumed I was a girl, until newer nurses gave me a bed bath! Probably my unruly mop of hair had grown a bit longer during that time.

I suppose one potentially funny moment could have happened when one young lad came over to my bed and asked, ‘Are you a boy?’ to which I replied, ‘Yes.’ He then undid his pyjama bottoms to show me his appendix scar with stitches. I’ve since wondered how he might have reacted if I'd then said, ‘By the way, no, I’m a girl!” But I wouldn’t have said that at that age.

Hi,Yours Truly, At the school that I attended short trousers were not compulsory,but my parents chose to send me to school wearing shorts trousers.I was eleven at the time and I had been accustomed to wearing shorts both at home and school.Although I disliked being in the minority my parents relished the spectacle of seeing a teenager getting accustomed to short pants as I grew older.When I grew older and satin shorts became fashionable these were purchased for me and I was more embarrassed when wearing them than my ordinary shorts.They were very tight and shiny and just covered my bottom.

Comment by: Neal Wilkinson on 2nd May 2025 at 20:12


"Brian, I saw your message late last night and did not follow your advice,......

I like working with those I'm in charge of, not against them."


Neal, Your messages and that of Simon a week or so back really gives me hope that the bully is departing from school gyms, and decent and considerate men are taking over.

Those last twelve words of yours are a great credit to you and I sincerely hope many more are following your example in your profession.

I had my own particular reasons for dreading having to take part in PE lessons more than half naked, as some of my classmates did, for different reasons. Just because people like me and Brian had to go through the minimal kit routine, I wouldn't wish it on modern lads. It always concerns me why so many middle-aged men like Brian have such a prurient interest in lads wearing as little as possible.

OK men, boys. Describe all these bare chested bodies you talk about from your youth.

Age 14 is a good median to pick.

I was barely 7 stone, 5 foot 8 inches tall, waist was about 26/28 inches max, chest about 35/6 inches, and my biceps...what biceps!

I remember my PE teacher telling me "there's nothing of you" and "what are we gonna do with you" as I presented my slight frame to the class in PE lessons, shown up by the required need of PE to deny me clothing on top.

I didn't dislike being shirtless but I did dislike being quite so slight. I ate anything put in front of me and never gained weight, was the same until I left school. I was always wanting a bigger chest to at least reach the dizzying heights of being a medium in tops.

But I had the biggest willy in the showers so all was not lost! That's true by the way, sorry to brag. Feel free to compare. Where were you in the pecker order, that's a school days showers phrase we used against each other, and I was clearly number one when lined up along the shower tiles.

Suddenly from 22 to 24 I achieved a body more like I wanted, and without even trying to get it. My slightness of frame simply filled in. Too late, it should have done it when I was in school being called Master of the Puniverse by the comedian who took our PE without tops on in gym.

I'm now 59 and 15 stone. Our bodies can play cruel tricks on us sometimes. Now I need to lose some weight!

I'm sure we called the one the boy is upside down on a horse at school, I don't recall it being known as any other name. As for the other with legs, it's also a kind of horse too isn't it, as has been said, the word pommell rings a bell with that. So are they both just different types of horse? I see the confusion now I think about it. Google imaging up 'gym horse' bring pictures of both items.

It only took closing in on 7600 comments to question the gym equipment in that photo!

In school from 1986-89 shirts came off near constantly in PE during gym time, and sometimes for outdoor games. But officially for my secondary there is not the slightest suggestion that any physical education was done in bare chests or that anyone would ask us to do that, but turning up it was quite a different matter altogether. I've gone through everything I kept about my school and everything it says about school uniforms, school PE uniforms, the lot of it. They don't even mention the showers we had, there's a couple of words that just say 'towel required' leaving the reader to deduce the reason for that. It's almost as though it was a dirty little secret not to shout about!

I may be wrong, but I believe that the boys are sitting on a "Pommel Horse" and the vaulter is on a "Box".

Brian, I saw your message late last night and did not follow your advice, are you a teacher? While we do have a non-negotiable all encompassing full showering mandate and we do a bare chest sanction to those who do not bring the correct top into PE, I'd have no great enthusiasm to go further than that like you suggest. Our rules work well and are effective and just once in a while we relax them a little and suggest a bare chest option purely in terms of heat comfort for anyone who would like to. I think we cover all bases quite sensibly in that regard.

I like working with those I'm in charge of, not against them.

First time post, fab discussion. I've been reading page after page of these memories over the week since I found this here.

One thing though, what do people here call each of those two pieces of gym equipment, the one the boy is doing a handstand on with the teacher, and also the one to the right with legs that the boys are sitting on. I ask because I have a feeling I may have been using the wrong name for a lifetime for at least one of them.

I think many of us when we went to our upper schools at eleven or twelve felt a little overwhelmed and insecure and possibly quite powerless, feeling a need to simply comply with everything and anything, and to use a PE style phrase, we were expected to hit the ground running on arrival.

I'd class myself as nothing more than an average boy, with average ability, with average looks and an average body to match, at a mid range average middle England comprehensive school of the very late sixties and mainly seventies, there from autumn 69 to summer 75. I hope and think that I've been a better than average adult though in my post school lifetime these last fifty years.

Someone once asked me in a job interview what teachers had inspired me at school and I really struggled with that one to come up with a fitting answer. I remember a PE teacher popping into my mind in that moment and opted to use him as my inspiration, but not in the way they expected. I was being interviewed at a book publishing company by a man and woman. I told them he'd inspired me because he'd made me do things as a boy that I would never have done otherwise. One of these things was about being more of a team player, believing in my own ability as an individual, realising I was better at some things than I thought I was, endurance running for one, aka the cross country, and allowing me to become comfortable in my own skin which I'd only done because this man and his PE colleagues made me do my PE in ways that initially I really wasn't keen at all on, going shirtless around others. But I have to admit to myself that it was the being made to do it that helped out, and with that I include the showering mandate too. Some people, and I have to say I was clearly one of them, do actually respond well to such rules being imposed even when uncomfortable at first.

It might seem a little odd to some on here to read me saying I was inspired by a teacher, and others, who told me I had to be shirtless for gym and then naked for showers at school but it worked to demystify my own and others physical attributes. This, along with developing my team player skills and other strengths.

Don't get me wrong, I can cite as many less great points as anyone else, we had a PE teacher who I disliked because he only ever criticised and hardly ever praised. I saw that as his failing, not mine though. You can never please some people in this life and shouldn't keep trying to. Another lesson learned early on.

I got the book job and the interviewers seemed to really like my school teacher inspiration explanation. Without the PE teacher I'd have been stumped to find another teacher to call even remotely inspiring, they were all just doing their day jobs to me, many looking bored sometimes. The PE teachers at least never looked bored.

The chatter on double standards is a fab one too. An early one of mine goes back to being six years old in a painting class. What a horrible paint bullying story a day or two ago that was by the way. I don't know what kind of paint it was, except it was very messy and came in many colours. There were large bits of paper over the floor of the classroom and we had to do hand and foot painting, or rather the boys did. The girls were doing hand painting only but all the boys had to take shoes and socks off and dip bare feet into trays of paint and walk onto the paper, as well as do hands. The girls didn't have to. Even at the age of six I thought what a stupid silly thing to make us do. The resulting pictures just a mess. To do this on our hands and to keep our school shirt clean the boys had to do this with top removed, the girls did not. Once that was done we had to sit on a side unit and stick our feet in a sink under running water while our teacher made sure our feet were properly clean again, I even remember her touching me and checking between my toes for left over paint that I'd missed, while looking down at the paper on the floor with various girls hand prints and boys footprints everywhere. Then it was all screwed up and thrown away at the end of the day.

Boys are expected to get messy and not care but some boys aren't up for all that, while some girls would love to get stuck into it. Just so stereotypical of the genders right from age six.

I'm full of opinions and stories of school but won't overdo it.

The older boys at the Queensbury Academy here in Bedfordshire have been going out group running from that place again late this morning in their usual sized group of about twenty I've seen before and this time the whole lot of them were bare chested, I didn't spot one with a top today, whereas when I've seen them a couple of times before on my drive past there have been four or five with tops on, not today though. They went off into their usual running track off road near the school which is quite private and leafy after you leave the quite busy road they have to go along first to get there. I was out of the van walking to deliver some flowers and they were the opposite side of the road to me and looked quite focussed on themselves and nobody else. I doubt any of them were being made to run that way, it just gives the impression of being their own choice but I could be wrong. An older guy was running with them in shorts and T-shirt, one of the gym teachers I should imagine.

Whatever you think of it, there is definitely something that looks more impressive when you see a group running in their bare chests like that as opposed to a random collection of tops they threw on with sweat stains back and front. It sort of looks business like and gives off a disciplined sense of the whole group to me, and the weather is great so why not. A couple of years ago I saw something similar and it was the opposite time of the year to now and a lot less warm.

Comment by: Brian on 1st May 2025 at 19:36



"Neal how about you tell them all to remove tops and conduct PE barechested tomorrow instead, and see what the reaction is to that. You should use this opportunity just to try out standardised shirtless PE lessons for once. I support you allowing them to do PE shirtless, and why not, now you should just drag the other third along to the concept of the proper barechested PE lesson that you have decided they will do and get the whole lot doing so.........."

WHY???

I always find comments like that a little bit concerning.

Comment by: Andrew K on 1st May 2025 at 12:33
Mike F having always played football as skins vs vests at school i think it was a good idea on your teacher's part to switch teams at halftime and have everyone go barechested at some point. Our teachers never chose to do that.Once your vest came off that was it. Little wonder the girls thought we were mad.




Why did they think that Andrew. I concur with you though, if we took our stuff off it stayed off for the duration.

I've actually played shirts versus skins tops against a team of girls who were the shirts at school a couple of times. 43 year ago this month to be precise - May 1982. We rarely mingled outside for PE and just did our own things away from each other with our respective teachers.

One games lesson a lot of boys got chosen and pushed into doing a game of field hockey against the girls. We were already outside and some boys were shirtless and others not, common practice when we were doing athletics which we began after Easter going into summer.

A number of boys picked to play the girls at hockey were already shirtless so those others who were not had to take our tops off to make up the team "colours". There were about 10 or 12 of us, we played the girls and lost, they always played hockey, we rarely did.

Someone on our side asked for a rematch and we were promised we could have one next week again with the exact same boys team. When we came to it the next week we were all outside in tops and the girls acted all disappointed we weren't skins like last week, kind of jokingly. They'd obviously enjoyed playing a bunch of bare chested boys and it was certainly a novelty for all of us. The girls teacher was nearby and decided it was up to the boys what we did, and the usual suspects who went skins any excuse in PE got their tops off kind of showing off a bit in front of girls and that made the rest of us feel we had no choice but to do the same as they were not intending to put them back on again. I remember a few girl 'come on, come on' comments to those who were dragging their feet about taking their tops off but we all did it and played them a second time, losing yet again. We never played them again. I was not into hockey for boys anyway. Their teacher watched us play and seemed enthusiastic about us playing them as skins. Our own male teacher who had chosen who was going to peel off to play the girls the previous week was with the others boys doing their more usual things.

Now it's always presumed that only men wolf whistle at women or girls but this is just not true. I remember some of the girls clearly wolf whistling at us boys aiming for reactions on both occasions we faced them as skins for field hockey against them. Half our boys team felt pressured into it. There were a couple of girls on their side who fancied boys on our side, one liked me a lot, and they were clearly over the moon to get a chance to play boys like us without our shirts on for a bit, and we were fifteen year olds at the time.

I had no problem taking things off in front of boys, but taking things off in front of girls like that, especially some you know might like you a lot, made me feel very sheepish.

After PE everyone, boys and girls went for showers. You could easily hear the girls in their showers from our changing rooms not far away, and in their area there was a thin frosted window often open a couple of inches. We sometimes wondered if the showers were beside that window but it was impossible to see in even with it open a couple of inches, the angle to look in was just not there. I used to think about what it might be like if they suddenly made us all share and I think I had a dream about it.

Comment by: Greg2 on 1st May 2025 at 11:51

I quite like Scandanavian and European cinema and a lot gets shown on Saturday nights on BBC Four, often subtitled. I think the one being talked about is Swedish maybe? They are so easy going on all things showers and taking clothes off it's unreal at times. I bet most school still showers over there.

Here's a good example from a nine parter called Skaidi, this was shown on BBC Four a few years ago now, it looks a lot more recent than it is, I think it's from the 90s. It's very nicely made. In it from 8 minutes there is the almost must have full on shower scene that many of these dramas from there seem to stick in. But the great bit about this if you watch from 8 minutes is the part at 8 minutes 21 seconds and you notice these boys are so relaxed they are even having a communal shower with each other with the door wide open out onto the corridor for anyone to look in on, as one of their mates fully clothed is, who then starts a fight, sound familiar Greg! Here in the UK we boys would all definitely have closed that door!

https://tv.nrk.no/serie/skaidi/sesong/1/episode/FBUB10000994

The NRK website is quite good and you can watch a lot of Scandanavian Norweigen programming on it without a login which is unusual. There is also a similar historical films archive site with a similar name with content going back over 80 years.

Comment by: Matt C on 1st May 2025 at 02:44

I'm genuinely unsure what to think about your prefect age difference with you. If you're a twelve year old with a seventeen year old in school, is that really so bad to share if you are all genuine school pupils at the same place doing the same thing. If I had been a sixth form prefect, I never was, I'd not have chosen to do that myself. It just shows that everyone's comfort level is different.

I loved the 'I suppose these are no longer our private parts' comment. That is the kind of thinking that could only come out of the mouth of children.

Looking at the peeping girls film, I know they are actors and it was fiction but nudity is nudity and it reminded me of the real life one from schools TV, I was surprised to see a sudden close up as the camera lowered down on one of them, but this must have been trying to convey the girls eyes from the viewer perspective. I agree it is quite brave for child actors to do things like that knowing they will always be available, and that film wasn't even that old was it.

The closest example in reverse I can think of is only with adult men peeping at women in Porky's from the eighties, done for comedy value, and the joke ends up being on the males anyway when one of them pokes his appendage through the peep hole and one of the girls grabs it and won't let go!

There are not many of us, male or female, who wouldn't peep if we knew there was a group of our friends of the opposite sex taking a naked shower and we could watch incognito. Maybe Alan wouldn't but the rest of us would and don't lie and say no.

Greg I really find your own thoughts on being peeped at and then what happened afterwards all quite compelling. You sound like a nice guy and I'm sorry you lost the fight. Did your good looks match up with a good physique? Maybe there was a lot of jealousy over you.