[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[colorado tanker]

"Have you ever seen a man naked?" The Captain in "Airplane."

[Godfollow]

Ya... when I was in high school, 60's and 70's, all guys gym classes swam naked. And your right, I've often wondered the same thing.

[Atlantian]

My husband swam "nekkid" at his Georgia Tech swimming classes in the 60s. He didn't think anything of it.

[cynicom]

That was the rule back in the 40s. We were always warned to stay away by parents. Regardless of the reason offered then or now, my opinion is that hygiene was a cover only.

[kennyo]

I never swam at the Y,but my dad belonged to the Downtown Athletic Club in NYC(awarder of the Heisman Trophy),and I took a scuba class there in the late 60's.The rule was to swim in the nude.I was a bit embarrassed at first(I was about 14),but got over it and never gave it another though. We even played water polo,which can be quite physical.

[Prodigal Son]

I never knew that. It's very common in Europe for small children to swim nude but usually they begin wearing bathing suits well before puberty. Topless doens't so much as turn a head here(except mine) of course but it more seems to be what one feels comfortable with and I have rarely seen total nudity among adolescents/adults at a German Schwimmbad or Schwimhalle. That with the YMCA does give one a little chill or at least a nervous smile when one recalls the Village People's ode to the place.

[b4its2late]

Nope. No nude swimming at the Y when I was there. But we did have some yuks on the high school swim team....

The pool would go from 4 feet shallow end to 12 feet, and there was quite a slope on the bottom of the pool. Everyone wore speedo goggles (and speedo suits, of course).... makes it easier to see the wall..

A few of us would go to the bottom of 12 feet, remain there a bit (a good set of lungs was a prerequisite), and drop trough. The ones on the deck would see someone doing laps pull up quick in the lane and start laughing-choking due to the "moons" that would be observed rising as the swimmer swam, on the surface of the pool, over the slope that went from the 4 foot side to the 12 foot side......

Oh well.

[stlrocket]

In the late 50's & early 60's, it was not only at the YMCA - but at High School as well (1964)

I didn't realize how "advanced" and "free" we were back then!

[HamiltonJay]

Most public pools men swam nude up until the 20s and 30s of this century.