Nude Swimming at the YMCA

2/13/02

[pabianice]

All the recent news about pedophiles and child pornography has made me wonder about how our local YMCA was run back when I was a kid (late 1950s - early 1960s). No bathing suits were allowed in the Y pool. We kids (boys only, ages about 8-14) simply swam naked. Seemed a little odd at the time, but kids generally do as adults demand without thinking too much about it. There were men there, too, but they wore bathing suits.

Did anyone else have the same experience at the Y when they were kids? Did naked swimming serve some health purpose, or was advantage being taken of us?

[mseltzer]

I don't know. I used to sneak into the YWCA.

[lady lawyer]

I was a teenager in the 60's. I'm sure our dykey PE teachers' obsession with checking to make sure we were showering had nothing to do with cleanliness.

[breakem]

I remember when you wouldn't get arrested for taking pictures of your kids in the tub.

[twigs]

Well, perhaps not anymore. My husband and I have a family membership at the local YMCA. My husband collects frogs and so has a bag he uses as a gym bag with a painted frog on it. He told me he's been getting such strange and dirty looks that he realized the other men, ah, questioned his manhood. So I just gave him a "Jeep" gym bag a few days ago for his birthday so that he would more like one of the guys! No more questions about manhood. LOL!

[skateman]

I would say that I would have to wonder about that. Why in the world would they not allow bathing suits?

[Big Guy and Rusty 99]

that's gross. At my gym, there was a guy in the hot tub with me who wasn't wearing any trunks. There were two boys about thirteen years old also in there with us. It made me very nervous and I thought it very inappropriate.

The motto of the old YMCA should have been: YMCA - pedophilles welcome.

[Anotherpundit]

It's fun to stay at the Y - M - C - Aaaay

[NYRepublican]

This is still club policy in many of the finer men's clubs here in New York City. I have never understood the reason, I've never been given one, but I seriously doubt it has anything to with Homosexual behaviour. I am also sorry to say that most of these clubs have primarily Republican members, so it definitely is not a New York City liberal thing.

[DonkeyHodee]

I would say that I would have to wonder about that. Why in the world would they not allow bathing suits?

Before girls swimming suits, boys always swam in the buff, for centuries upon centuries. Such a rule in the depression years would have made the pool accessible to the poor who couldn't afford swim suits, or who's underwear might have well caused them ridicule. The question is not really why they did not allow swimsuits, but why you did know.

[Ditto]

I swam naked at the Y and in school back in the 50s and 60s. I even recall a city indoor pool (actually called a bath house) we used to go to in the winter where no trunks were allowed.

I seem to recall the stated reason was hygiene. You had to get a shower before going in the pool and a guy at the door checked for sores and such. I suspect at school they didn't want to put up with wet trunks in lockers, but the nude swim seemed to be SOP in my area. They did issue swimsuits to the girls swim class however. I guess it sort of primed us guys not to be worried about modesty in front of a bunch of other guys which comes in handy a few years later when you were swimming in Uncle Sam's pool. No one ever made any 'passes' at me that I ever noticed.

In my later teens, a friend and I used to go to the Y every Tuesday to work out and play basketball. When we were done, we would take a shower and go directly in the buff into the pool for a few laps before we went home. It was a regular routine. One week we missed our regular night and went the next night instead. My buddy got out of the shower before me and went out and dove in the pool. He had finished his first lap before he noticed a bunch of women in the pool --- it was family night, and no one told us! The poor guy got back in that shower room in record setting time. The next week when we went back, there was a big sign on the shower room door warning the Wednesday was Family Night.

[Slicksadick]

Funny you should mention this. At YMCA summer camp, mid 60's, we boys were directed to swim nude as well. All counselors just stood around watching. I still have that weeks group photo, and the counselors were the most creepy looking characters you could imagine. Of course I didn't notice this back then though.

[Big Guy and Rusty 99]

Actually my gym is where the Orlando Magic practice. NO YMCA for me. that's a good way to get impatego.

[TontoKowalski]

You know, this is an interesting subject. There's a guy at my gym who has a locker next to mine. It never fails that he makes an appearance when I'm dressing, undressing, in the shower, basically any situation in which I'm unclothed. I've been in sports my whole life, so I'm not overly sensitive about nudity, my own or others, but this situation is beginning to bother me.

At first I thought I was being paranoid. But I've given a few experiments: like staying in the showers for a long, long, time, and he'll stay right in there with me. The instant I cut off the water, so does he. If I take a super quick shower, then so does he. I'll just refuse to go to my locker until he is dressed and leaves. Then he "forgets" something and has to return.

Admittedly, none of this would hold up in a court of law, but it has given me the creeps. Bigtime. I have to work out at lunch time, so it can't be solved by going to the gym at a different time. I don't want to confront the guy, because I can't be absolutely certain I'm being "mo'd".

[CholeraJoe]

My mother never would let me swim at the Y because she had "heard that people swam naked there." That was the sixties and turned out to be untrue.

[Travis McGee]

I went to the Baltimore "Y" in the 1960s with my dad, the pool was naked, I was not too cool with it, but didn't think much of it either way at the time.

We know better now, it was probably homo chickenhawk central, but we never thought about such things then. Anyway, my dad was boxer and would have intimidated any pervs from getting near me.

[headsonpikes]

Kemosabe, me think him 'light in moccassins'. ;^)

[Travis McGee]

It was true in Baltimore.