Hesketh Fletcher Gym Team

Barechested school P.E was a very big deal to a lot of boys. It was to me. It left me feeling very unconfident and dreadfully self conscious. Nobody really knew this at the time though.

Thankyou for your comment Rachael. When my comment to you was finally published I was horrified that it actually looked like I was referring to you directly and considering you the same mild expletive as my former PE teacher, I was not and thankfully you realised.

PE lessons at my school were meant to be boys only and never shared but there were at least two or three times we did share for whatever reason that escapes me with girls up one end of our gym and boys down another. It was quite a big school gym and on a couple of those lessons some if not all of us had no shirts on and although there was nothing obvious during those lessons there were some comments afterwards about what they'd observed, so it comes as no surprise to any man on here that schoolgirls would be distracted by such things and like it.

I remember going to a teenage birthday party when I was 16 around one of these girls homes from my class and the parents clearing off for a couple of hours leaving us to it, big mistake at that age, during which time a number of the boys present, it was probably about 8 of them, ended up showing off and their tops were off deliberately to get reactions from the opposite sex and no other reason. But that was their own choice. In school under a teacher is quite different. Early 90's that was so a full 30 years aqo now.

A couple of those from those days I still know look like they've never set foot inside a gym since their schooldays or done a day's further exercise. I've never understood why some people don't want to make the best of themselves and how they look with a bit of activity they like. School PE should not just be about staying fit and active while a youngster at school but about setting you up to do so for the rest of your adulthood too until you finally drop.

Out of interest, what's the wider opinion on whether female teachers should take all male PE lessons at secondary school level like I was part of in school, or for that matter vice versa should male ones take all female classes?

Hi Luke, thanks for your comments and I can 110% assure everyone I'm most definitely female!! I'll admit I enjoyed watching boys strip off. There it's said! I have 2 younger brothers who were both at the same school from 89-94 and 91-96 and they'd both said they everyone was barechested in the gym throughout school. It was a little different outside where they had a rugby top but even being outside the teachers liked a skins team and it was a coin toss to see who'd strip off. I thought if you wanted two teams simply tell some to pop vests on under their rugby tops at least it's better than nothing on a cold day! Cross country outside school grounds was done without vests until 1991 this was quite controversial and their was a lot of complaints to start with. When they were just running around the school fields then there was a choice barechested or vest.
Athletics started as soon as the track was painted out and it was either vests or skins again.

The classic double standard perfectly illustrated by the previous couple of comments from Gerry and Judith here.

It's basically down to the age old mantra that boys do not require privacy whereas girls must be respected fully at all times.

I think this still holds to some extent nowadays.

I found your comment very interesting Gerry. I was at an all girls school in Bedford at one point in my later education and although we did have many male teachers on a variety of subjects our PE was exclusively taken by women. In principle I would see no objection to having had a male PE teacher at school and it might have proved different in some way but obviously there would never have been any chance of entry into a girls changing room for one moment if we'd had such a teacher, quite rightly. There lies the classic double standard I suppose regarding how privacy issues are thought essential for girls and almost non-relevant for boys, as in your case.

I was sent to an all boys state school in the early 1970's where there was a woman on the PE department, Mrs Gunn, who if I remember correctly also had some kind of medical background as well and could always be relied upon to talk to about health, sickness and injury issues. I thought it was quite unusual to have a woman working in physical education in an all boys school. She would frequently take me and my class for gymnastics and swimming from ages 11 to 13. She had access all areas and after gymnastics could be found in and around our changing room amongst boys getting dressed and nude showered which we all seemed to deal with remarkably maturely at the time. We did our gymnastics lessons with her wearing nothing more than a black pair of shorts, no shoes or socks and no tops. It didn't really leave much time for fretting over how we looked and body self image and all that kind of thing.

Rachael, I presume a female contributor, you remind me of a b*tch of a lady PE teacher of about 30 we used to have take our boys classes for PE when I was 14 & 15 and she always insisted every last boy took his top off and competed in gym full on shirtless for her. Not even all our male PE teachers did that all the time, late eighties, early nineties. I hated having her take PE, she should have stuck to the girls classes.

Hi Tanya, it'll be financial in part. They get paid boatloads for wearing branded everything. John and Rachael do have a point...

When did you last see a male gymnast on TV competing with a bare chest though, why don't they if that's the best way to do stuff in a gymnasium, after all don't top level athletes want to do things in the most effective way possible?

John. I'd hope the top would be for outdoors use only. At that age I'd reasonably expect the boys to be used to exercising barechested in the gym The boys in the photo show how PE should be done.

The sign of an even better PE teacher would have been one who managed to find him something to wear in the first place rather than expect everyone else to follow suit and go skins. I'd have offered and brought along a spare t-shirt of my own for that kid to wear until he got sorted.

The sign of a good PE teacher Brian that he didn't want that kid singled out like that.

When I was twelve years old we had a chap in school whose parents could not afford proper school items and in PE he stood out different to the rest of us when we began because he didn't have the kit to wear properly and so did the lesson without a shirt to wear while the rest of us did. For some reason there was no available item in a lost property box he could wear so after a couple of lessons with no resolution and him standing out our teacher told all the rest of us to come to PE shirtless which we had to do until this one lads parents could finally afford him a proper top to wear, which ended up being about a year later.

My thoughts Neil based on your opening line.

Isn't barechested PE in school meant to have had a deliberate self conscious aspect to it in some way in the first place by making boys aware of their bodies amongst each other and their own one, so that it could act as an incentive to do well, want to keep fit and keep in shape. In that case surely there was a deliberate aspect of mandating that boys must go barechested at the school gym PE lessons to make them self conscious to some extent about their appearance.

PE teachers never seemed to think any boys bothered about how they looked stripped down did they. A one size fits all attitude to everyone.

We knew our teachers would push us hard and being stripped to the waist reinforced that message.

Our teachers also carried over indoor activities out on to the school yard and field and for each outdoor lesson at least half the class were told to strip off removing their vests. Each month there was an expectation by the school for each class of boys to have at least one double fitness session out on the school field with everyone stripped off. Once you were told to strip you were expected to remove your vest quickly and without fuss.

Chris from your post were you expected to show sweat in the gym?

Is that actually a school gym team?

Chests aside, nice looking as they are and very fit and well maintained, look at the state of their socks, all over the place at differing lengths. Actually their socks look thick and capable of being very long which is more in tune with football socks rather than gym style. They just don't look like they are wearing the socks and footwear I'd expect of a gym group, but it's already been pointed out this is now a picture from almost 90 years ago so my logic may be inaccurate to that period.

They do all look very well developed for school age boys and give the appearance of something like naval cadets or something in training.

It's not impossible that one or two of them could still be with us if they managed to stay active, healthy and had good genes and avoided an accident these past 90 years. 16 in 1935 takes them to a doable 104 this year.

Does anyone look at these photos and wonder what became of the individuals in them.

I don't think anybody actually managed to gain a six pack doing PE at school did they, or manage to change their body's physical appearance to any noticeable degree that leaving your shirt/vest off to allow your progress to be seen was worthwhile. Apart from the natural and unavoidable growing process of course.

I don't know what age the ones in the picture are supposed to be, one at the front looks smaller and younger, but it's quite hard to tell ages in such old pictures from a different time like that picture. They look quite mature but cannot be older than 16 can they, or 18 absolute max. Did people even stay at school to 18 in the 30's anyway, didn't some leave earlier than 16 even. None of them look anything like boys I spent time with in PE when I saw their bodies, they all look far more toned and well built. My class often seemed rather weedy in comparison. Is their appearance really down to the exertions of a 30's style physical education regime in school compared to sixty odd years later.

If it was a choice between the PE vests we had to wear or bare-chested I'd have opted for going bare-chested every time. I felt better and think we looked far better as a class doing PE bare-chested compared to rather naff and ill fitting vests. The shame was we didn't do it nearly enough, just for skins v vests and other special reasons a handful of times a year.

Look at the B&W photo above, would they look better in vests posing like that, I don't think so, they look proper and show off the physical attributes that PE entails in the bare-chested state.

The male upper body when kept in shape is actually worth showing off.

Many PE kit requirements didn't seem to last far into school year at upper school level. I remember having a very specific list of items to bring on various days dependant on what we were doing on those days. Despite all this there were 80s PE teachers who just disregarded it all and did what they liked it seemed to me. Like so many others have said before, some teachers just seemed determined they would do things their way and so often it was those ones who had the desire for seeing their PE class stripped further down for gym than was actually called for by the school uniform requirement list. In my case the indoors gym kit list was virtually meaningless ninety percent of the time. Often this meant the oh so predictable not wearing any shirt tops in gym. I don't know why they didn't just state that was how we should turn out in the first place instead of saying we wore shirts for PE when we hardly ever did in practice inside.

Much like Ivan, we knew what to expect when we moved up to senior school if only because we had a daytrip 'taster day' at to our new school while still at the previous school. We took our middle school kit with us but we're told to attended the sample gym lesson in only shorts!
Oddly, on transferring to the new school the kit list said vests were to be worn, which initially was the case but that didn't last as the year progressed.

Yes as Eddie said, tough love is a good way to describe it. Given the option as a shy 13-year-old, I would have chosen to keep my vest on for PE and most likely never have progressed to taking it off. This way I had to adapt to being barechested in the gym and personally I think that was better for me. Making it compulsory meant that in time I learned to see it as normal that my PE kit included nothing above the waist. Having that as a general rule also meant it was exactly the same for each boy in the class. I've seen some people have described being picked to do PE barechested while other boys kept their tops on, didn't that seem quite unfair?

Re my last posting. Of course I should have written shorts with NO pants.
The first time it seemed strange, but after that as the modern phrase is nowadays. For us it became "it is what it is"

I have to say I was aware that when I went to Secondary school P E would be no tops and no underpants because my older brother was already going their.
So the no tops rule was not a problem after all at the seaside in summer we never wore tops. But what did feel strange was wearing shorts with pants. Although I soon got used to it.

Julian nails it and Josh confirms what Julian says perfectly.

Boys did used to get forced in PE into going barechested, we all did to some degree, if you are over a certain age, although I'm sure many schools do PE right in the here and now where boys are told to as well.

Even if you're shy, bashful, unconfident, a funny shape, a bit thin, a bit fat, pale, dark, spotty, freckly, have some hair, a birthmark, weedy or muscly, I don't think that ever gave anyone an excuse not to do a PE lesson in their bare chest and of course teachers wouldn't have let it either. There is nothing to be shy or embarrassed about doing PE with a bare chest and no top, in front of other boys, other girls, the teachers or watching parents for that matter.

Infact compulsory barechestedness in PE on the unconfident shy types is a good example of tough love and Josh your comment rather proves it would you not agree.

Agree with Julian's comment. I certainly wasn't a confident boy at 13 and when my new PE teacher ordered us all to take our vests off it came as quite a shock. I remember a lot of horrified expressions on boys' faces (probably mine included) when he announced that from now on our kit would be 'shorts, socks, plimsolls. Nothing else'.
At first it felt so strange being barechested for every lesson, but you soon learned you had to get used to it. I think most of us worked harder in PE than we had done before and probably behaved better too, maybe subconsciously we felt more exposed and less sure of ourselves? I'm not sure but I think it led to better results. Speaking personally, I think knowing I'd have to be barechested every time in the gym, in front of an audience, influenced me to work harder and make sure my body looked OK and that in turn increased my confidence.

If you strip the tops from boys in the gym P.E it makes them face up to being more confident even if they don't start out that way. I'm all for it.

Boys in large groups together barechested usually work better, bond together better and behave better, that's a fact.

Keiran, PE/Games usually meant we'd all be showing sweat at least by mid point. Far more practical to be stripped off and sweat freely than have a soaking vest/t-shirt cling to your upper body.

Why did it?

No way is shirtless PE good for everyone's wellbeing, it actually affected some guys for the worse.

The bare chested boys in this photo look great and very fit. This is why all PE should be done this way. It shows what can be achieved by keeping fit. They certainly look a lot fitter than the grammar boys I saw in my PE years ago. The shorts look a bit oversized though. This style of PE should be good for anyone's physical and mental wellbeing.