Burnley Grammar School

Mr.Dando did not specify in the PE kit what the boys wore instead of tracksuit bottoms, if they wore anything, since it is not specified in the kit requirement, which sounds strange to me.

I have never heard of boys wearing Tracksuit Bottoms for PE. Why would they?

To James and Paul,

I presume that your school was boys only, in spite of female teachers being present.
At least you did not have to suffer the added humiliation of being made to swim nude together with girls in swimsuits as some mention at their schools.

There is also mention that in some schools they had swimming galas where the boys also had to be naked in front of spectators, mainly parents and siblings including sisters.
But I presume that these were only for junior boys up to 12 or 13 at most. I cannot imagine teenage boys made to swim naked in front of girls and women.

SALESIAN SCHOOL

PHYSICAL EDUCATION KIT

GIRLS
Sky blue polo shirt (collared)
School sweatshirt
Sky blue knee-length sports socks
Navy blue tracksuit bottoms


BOYS
Navy blue polo shirt (collared)
Navy blue reversible sports shirt (long-sleeved)
Navy blue football socks
(Boys do not wear tracksuit bottoms)

Despite this been from 1959 it looks to be almost the same as my middle school gym and sports hall from 1997! The kit we wore wasn't too much different either except we were all barefoot for indoor PE lesson wearing white shorts and shirtless.

Danny,
I wholeheartedly agree with you that boys should not have been forced to swim without trunks. If adults wish to swim naked they are able to make that choice.

When I was at Senior School we were forced to shower naked after playing football or going on cross country runs, I felt uncomfortable at first but soon got used to it.

My cousin had to swim naked at his Senior School and said that it never bothered him, he didn’t have any female teachers or spectators though.

Danny, being shy and reserved I found it difficult to come to terms with swimming lessons without wearing my swimming trunks,although it amazed me how some boys were absolutely brazen about the ordeal,especially as we were supervised by two female teachers and one male teacher.
It also reminded me of an incident in the pool when a much stronger boy than myself was holding me under the water to see how long I could go without air.
This was witnessed by one of the female teachers who blew her whistle and signaled the boy to leave the pool.
The punishment was swift and severe and left the boy in tears after he had had his buttocks and the back of his legs smacked.

John,
I did not mean to be offensive in any way when I disagreed with your comparison.
I understand your argument about the freedom of nude swimming, I only objected to the forced nudity of boys during swim classes in schools or adult males displaying themselves naked on public beaches.
In fact in my subsequent post I commented about the custom of males swimming nude on public beaches during Victorian and Edwardian times.

The irony is that this was in the extremely prudish Victorian era whereas it would probably not be acceptable today in our modern and supposedly liberated society, although admittedly this nudity was only confined to swimming places and beaches.

Btw, there seems to be another Danny since the last post under the same name on 12th Sept. is not mine.

Paul - Was swimming naked compulsory or optional? And what about the open dormitories, were PJs required, or was naked sleeping allowed.

You've reminded me of an incident at my prep school, which I attended between 1965 and 1969. We had an outdoor unheated pool which was used during the summer term. One boy was very obviously afraid of going in the water and therefore hated swimming. He was always turning up without his swimming trunks so that he would not be able to go in. We had a very sadistic female teacher - a middle aged spinster who eventually retired some years later after teaching at the school for 44 years. She was taking the class for swimming one day and the boy in question came out with the usual excuse that he had forgotten his trunks, and she had obviously had enough of this and told him he would have to swim in his birthday suit.

Now - here's the amusing part, and the only amusing part of this story - this boy had clearly never heard this expression before, and retorted that he did not have a birthday suit! He wasn't trying to be funny - I think he was way too scared to do this, but it's the one thing about this story which does raise a slight smile.

Well she carried out her threat, and this boy who was very timid and probably eight or nine years old at the time of this story, had to strip naked in front of her and then get in the pool in the nude. I can remember watching him crying as he gingerly lowered himself over the edge.

I don't suppose anything like that would be allowed to happen today and frankly, much as I feel children are mollycoddled far too much these days, I can't help thinking it's a good thing that times have changed.

I should have added to my Sanditon comment that at boarding school (from 7-18) we swam naked. We also slept in dorms with no privacy, showered in communal showers and used toilets that had no doors but a small side partition that didn't come out as far as your knees. This was in the 1960s.

In that world swimming naked was perfectly normal and when at home and going to the pool where trunks had to be worn, I found them most uncomfortable. I wish there was somewhere where I could swim naked today, I still hate trunks.

Danny,
I expressed a personal point of view and whether it ‘holds water’ or not is for people to decide. It is my opinion that many people are too prudish, I fail to see how the human body can be offensive if people are simply going for a swim. Many people take part in the Great British Skinny Dip events and participants often say that it has been good for their mental and physical health.

So often in life people have irrational fears, if possible it is frequently a good idea to confront fears and be able to overcome them.

Danny,I agree there is no comparison with'taking a bath in private and swimming in public'.
I considered it a very unfair discrepancy where boys were not allowed swimming trunks,but girls were allowed to wear swimming costumes.
I found it particularly difficult to come to terms with this unfair, outdated custom,especially going through adolescence.
Why was there one rule for girls and another for boys when we both wanted to conserve our modesty?

Paul said -
"I noted in Sanditon (ITV series) last night that while the women went down to the sea in their bathing machines and were dressed in copious swimming outfits that the men simply stripped and swam naked."

I think that is historically accurate in Victorian times on which this series is based when it was normal and common for males to swim naked on public beaches while women wore copious swimming outfits.
Laws started to be introduced much later by local authorities for males over 16 to wear suits on beaches.
It is interesting that boys up to 16 or so were still allowed to swim nude, which is probably why the tradition of boys swimming nude still went on in schools and other places well into the 29th century.
Obviously, unlike adult males, women saw boys swimming nude as non-offensive, so nobody minded.

John,
People take baths at home in private, not in public, so your comparison does not hold water.
Also the posters who had to be nude for swim classes at school were forced to do it and not something voluntary, whether they liked it or not.
There is also the custom that only boys, not girls, were made to swim nude, often in front of female teachers, spectators and others according to these posters.

Paul,
It would be good if males were still allowed to strip off and swim naked, no one wears clothing to have a bath. Swimwear isn’t necessary really.

Leeds Lad,
I think you had it the right way round.
Mind you I can't think when I have ever been near a river or lake in my PJs!

I noted in Sanditon (ITV series) last night that while the women went down to the sea in their bathing machines and were dressed in copious swimming outfits that the men simply stripped and swam naked.

Imagine that these days!

Briefs for men are far more common for men in continental Europe and in France and Germany they are the requirement for public pools - turn up with shorts and you won't be allowed in though of course in Germany, nude swimming is not unusual.

Andrea, yes those things were all part of the test(s). All I can recall nowadays is that nylon jim-jams were a lot harder to inflate than cotton ones (or was it the other way round?!)

Danny,the swimming classes that I attended were for boys of all ages.
I wore a slip on the first few occasions to help me comply with swimming in the nude,I didn't see any other boys wear them.
It was was customary for all boys to swim nude,irrespective of their age.
The women teachers were there to keep order and were instructors and parents could be spectators if they wished.

James, between what ages were the nude swimming classes?
Were you the only boy who wore the slip?
Were senior boys swim classes also in the nude, or just juniors?
You also said that women teachers attended during your nude swim classes. Were they as spectators or to keep order among the boys or just as instructors?

Thanks to Donald - a most interesting read and I suspect it parallels a lot of the UK experience.

Donald,
Thank you for your very interesting history of nude swimming. Personally I never experienced nude swimming in the UK, the YMCA pool that I could have gone to in my teens had closed down. My school did not have its own pool and so we got bussed to a public pool about once a fortnight and had to wear trunks.

My cousin attended a private school and swam nude from age 11 to 18 and he had no issue with the rule. I would have been happy to have gone to his school and the nude swimming policy would not have concerned me either.This was in the UK in the 1970s.

Boys were required to swim nude in many American high schools for about 65 years—from the building of the first indoor school pool in 1913 to the late 1970s. This remained standard practice in public schools and Catholic schools. Just about any school large enough to have a pool required nude swimming.

I grew up in a Michigan county with little villages and nine high schools—only one of them big enough to have a swimming pool. My uncles (five and six years older than me) swam nude there, so I was always aware of the practice. But I attended a small school with no pool. Years later, I arrived to teach English at Saginaw High School the first year that boys were required to wear suits.

There are deniers who claim such a thing could never have happened in the U.S.A., yet it certainly did. Why?

In Europe, the tradition goes back much earlier. In the 1830s, Dr. Thomas Arnold (father of the poet Matthew Arnold) revived the ancient Greek tradition of a well developed mind in a well developed body at Rugby school. Along with other vigorous sports, the boys swam nude in the river. Of course, Greek boys had attended all of their lessons nude.

In the U.S., the Young Men's Christian Association led the way in swimming. The Brooklyn YMCA built the first indoor pool in America in 1885. All men and boys were expected to swim nude from the beginning—just as they had for thousands of years. The swim suit had been invented just 16 years earlier, in 1869. Women and girls had taken to the clumsy outfits—men only on the most crowded beaches, and boys rarely anywhere.

Mark Twain was writing about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn skinny-dipping in the Mississippi River. Photographs in tourist guidebooks and the paintings of George Bellows frequently showed nude boys frolicking in the polluted waters of New York Harbor. The YMCA was offering slum boys a better place to hang out than pool halls and saloons. None of those boys owned swim suits, or could afford one. Nude swimming was democratic, and could be spontaneous.

Fibers and lint from wool swim suits clogged the early pool filters. Soon, scientists discovered that swimsuits harbored far more germs than freshly scrubbed skin. And so, when questioned about their nudity requirement, Y officials gave three reasons:

1. Cleanliness for the swimmer.
2. Cleanliness of the pool.
3. Encouraging a proper attitude toward the body and life.
The third reason would prove the most enduring.

In contrast, the Young Women's Christian Association neither encouraged nor discouraged nude swimming. In 1918, the official policy at the Pawtucket, Rhode Island YWCA was "bathing suits permitted." One YWCA in Vermont even offered beginning swim classes for prepubescent nude boys (taught by a woman in swimsuit).

In 1913, New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Illinois opened the first high school indoor pool. During the 1920s, several of the bigger high schools in the northern states began building indoor swimming pools for all-weather instruction. Smaller schools never had them. Since drowning ranked as the second-highest cause of death (after disease) among teenage boys, swimming seemed a good physical exercise to teach—far more practical than football or basketball or baseball. But swimming almost never became a school subject in the southeastern states.

With the number of pools increasing, the American Public Health Association in 1926 issued its first guidelines for maintaining sanitation in school pools. They recommended that all boys swim nude, but conceded that the insignificant number of girls might wear simple costumes of undyed cotton. Usually, these were ill-fitting baggy affairs owned and laundered by the school after each use. Some schools left the suits optional for girls. All classes were single-sex.

How could anyone question the morality of a practice already endorsed for 40 years by the Young Men's Christian Association? By 1937, the Administration of Health and Physical Recreation training manual stated, "Nude bathing for boys is practiced universally; in a few schools girls may swim nude and this is the most sanitary method."

During the Depression years, the affordability of birthday suits again became an important point.

With material shortages during World War II, the saving of cloth became a proud patriotic duty. YMCA camps and countless Boy Scout camps required nude swimming even in the lake. One man from Schenectedy NY remembered, "The summer of 1940 I went to YMCA camp on the eastern shore of Lake George. We swam nude, and every morning at about 6 AM, the entire camp, including all the adults, traipsed nude through the camp site and had a nude morning swim." A few rare schools even allowed the girls to wear skimpier two-piece bathing suits. Many teachers came out of their war experience, convinced that communal nudity was good preparation for the expectations of military service.

During the post-war years, it occurred to some people that saving girls from drowning might also be a good idea. Junior high, and even elementary schools built pools, and required all students to participate—especially in the Great Lakes states. Again, they were single-sex classes, the boys nude, girls clothed. Some schools without pools arranged for their students to take swimming instruction at a nearby YMCA or YWCA. Countless junior highs, high schools, and colleges demanded that all entering students pass a swimming test (the boys nude of course).

Reading the post by Leeds Lad brought back memories of doing the Bronze Personal Survival test in the early 1970s.

I can't remember a lot of the details except having to make a float by tying a knot in the legs of a pair of pyjama bottoms and then inflating them to make a float.
Was there also something about swimming through a hoop and possibly retrieving a rubber brick from the bottom of the pool, or were they separate activities?

Reading the comments about how much flesh should be exposed when swimming,I am from an era when brief type swimming trunks were the normal and perhaps only style of swimwear for males of all ages. I do not know why it is no longer "correct" for this style to be worn. Having just returned from a hot sunny holiday on a Spanish Island, I saw many men and boys (not British ) wearing briefs both on the beach and by the pool.
There were many British lads wearing swim shorts with underwear which seems odd The waist band clear advertised their preferred brand of underwear. Why is this? It cannot be for support because swim shorts have netting inside for that reason, and if they do not like the feel of "briefs" that is what the netting is.
Also what I think is odd, it is frowned upon for men in this country to wear brief swimming wear, yet ladies can expose as much flesh and wear as brief swimwear as they like irrespective of size. This is a case of double standards.

My school is a boys only school and if we forget our sports kit we have to do it in our underwear and this includes swimming. I go commando and sometimes this meant having to swim naked because I had no underwear to use. The first time the teacher was not sure but after that he took it in his stride especially when others claimed the same "problem".

George Spelvin,I agree it was a matter how 'conforming with my contemporaries rather than how much skin is showing'.
Wearing short pants was seen as a symbol of boys'junior status and therefor I was subjected to a considerable amount of teasing.
It was my parents'preference to keep me in short pants and school uniform requirements permitted this abomination.

Thanks again, James!

I find it interesting that your male classmates teased you for coming to school showing your legs, whereas they attended swim class showing a great deal more than that.
That indicates that the important factor is not how much or how little skin one is showing,but rather how well one is conforming with everyone else.
I am reminded of an evening when I was attending a nudist camp.
I decided to take a walk outside the camp, so I put on a T-shirt and shorts.
When I came back, everyone else was gathered around a campfire, and there wasn't a stitch of clothes between all of them.
I felt self-conscious because I wasn't naked.

It is more than 30 years since I left school and I am glad communal naked showers are now a thing of the past. When I think if gymnastics were cancelled we were forced to do swimming in white transparent shorts or if we forgot our white tops we were made to do gymnastics topless. This form of child abuse would not have been permitted for girls and should not have been allowed for boys. Houndsdown school you should be ashamed of yourself. It is time we ended all forms of sexual exploitation by the state.