Forced Nudity Growing Up

We had communal showers after school swimming and rugby. The PE teacher would supervise and make sure that all the boys were naked. No swimwear/underwear allowed in the showers. Towels had to be hung on the pegs on the wall outside the shower area.

Annual school medical examinations were mandatory. Underwear was worn for the first part of the exam and removed part way through.

I was only force to get nude once during a physical exam when I was 16.

It wasn’t my usually pediatrician, it was someone different in the same building. The exam started out normal and like always, stripping to my underwear. After he asked me to hop off the table, he told me to take my underwear off……I was naked for the rest of the exam including those exercise stuff they make you do. Sooo embarrassing.

Not really "forced"nudity while growing up. During my early years I had an "aunt" living with my father's brother (years later found they were never married). This woman was special to me since she and her partner had no children. In addition to feeding me, pampering me, etc etc she was a significant influence one my development. I remember sleeping over at their house and insisting that she give me a bath each night, even when I was 10 years old. Always a complete washing of my boy parts and rubbing me dry. Still have fond memories of the attention she paid to my body and how I "was growing up to be a real man". Seems to this day, I am never anxious or embarrassed about a woman seeing me nude. In act I enjoy the opportunity.

As I have mentioned in other posts, I grew up in a very small house (a trailer actually) with just my mom and twin sister. So there was not a lot of privacy or modesty. We were often naked around each other and my sister and I often showered together to save time and hot water since our tank was really small. We were most usually nude for our enemas as well. Outside of that the typical Dr/gynecologist visits but at worst you had a hospital gown on. When I was maybe 20/21 I did a backpacking thing in Europe and some of the hostels had communal showers which coming from what I did, did not bother me at all but you could tell some of the girls were really shy about being nude

Not so much growing up sometimes my sister & I would take a bath together it wasn’t until I was in the Army that I had to learn really quickly to get over being modest since we had one large bay of showers without curtains

I grew up in the fifties and my parents house only had two bedrooms and one bath. Our parents in one bedroom and me and my siblings in the other. We shared a bedroom until our mid to late teens, seeing each other nude most every day. I was the oldest and had a brother a year younger and a sister two years younger. During the summer we slept nude without any cover due to the hot muggy summer nights. When I started Junior High and had PE, we were required to shower at the end of class, no exceptions. So, we saw our friends and classmates naked at the end of each PE class. This wasn’t an issue, and we didn’t think twice about it. Fast forward to High School PE class. It was the same as PE in Junior High, we had to shower at the end of class without exception. Again, no one thought twice about it.

During summer vacation when we spent four to six weeks visiting our grandmother, we shared a bedroom there too. And our young teenage aunts were responding for giving us our evening bath. Grandma had a big downstairs bathroom with a large walk-in dual head shower. Making it convenient for the girls to put us in the shower together, then get in and bathe us while keeping the peace. We not only saw each other naked. We saw our two teenage aunts naked as well. And just before our evening bath was a convenient time for enemas. So, whenever grandma had the girls give us enemas before our bath, we got them laying across the girl's bare lap naked, and they were just as naked as we were. Like sharing a bedroom or taking a shower after PE class in a communal shower, we didn’t think twice about it. It was just part of everyday life. So, what‘s the issue?

I was really only required to be naked for a swimming class. Gang showers in high school were optional, but we did have to change in and out of our jockstraps.

I started middle school (seventh grade) in 1970 and showering after gym class was required, compulsory, or mandatory, but I wouldn’t say it was forced. I never heard of anyone objecting to it or fighting the policy—we just did what we were told to do.

For me, it was a little embarrassing at first because I was small for my age. (In grade school, when we had class pictures, we had to line up tallest to shortest to get the tall kids in the back and the short ones up front. I was always the last one in line or the second to the last, every year in a battle with one particular boy to not be the last one in line. One year I started stuffing cardboard in the heal of my shoe to add some critically needed height). I noticed that most of us smaller boys developed a year or two later than the big boys. I think we all felt embarrassed next to the boys with hair above their much larger bits and under their arms. We truly looked like little boys next to young men. By high school, it didn’t matter anymore because we all had hair there and bigger bits to boot, especially one “small” young man who everyone envied, even the bigger boys, because his was much bigger than theirs.

I went to a boys school. We had a swimming pool.

During swimming class, a couple of the boys swam naked routinely.

One time, however, the teacher made us all take of our swimsuits during class. Maybe he got off on exercising his power to make us do that and see 20 naked boys lined up on the edge of the pool? I guess this would seem to be "forced" nudity.

I did have to be partially naked at some doctor's visits growing up. Luckily never for very long but almost always in the presence of a parent and usually my younger brother too. Of course when I was younger my brother and I would shower together and usually my mom was watching, making sure we were getting clean and all. Sometimes I'd shower with dad if it was just the two of us getting ready to go somewhere.

Besides the normal times of home life and doctor visits, we would frequent pools and the occasional water park during the summers which meant getting naked - sometimes twice in the same day - in a locker room full of men of all ages and sizes. I remember never really getting over the embarrassment factor as a kid. I've always been small and adult penises definitely didn't help with my self consciousness about mine. Especially as I got a bit older and hadn't hit puberty yet, I was worried not only about my size, but my lack of body hair too. I remember seeing boys who were around my age with full bushes and arm pit hair, while I barely had grown an inch in the last year.

We didn't have to shower at school, but in the sixth grade we went on an overnight field trip where we stayed in a small colleges dorm. The school was pretty old and we had to shower in their communal bathroom. We were told pretty directly to not leave our underwear on, and there were a couple of showers that had curtains. I used one of the showers with the curtain, but it ended up opening on its own and was really flimsy. Just when I thought that I had it closed enough though, another boy pulled it back and showed my naked body to everyone while I was washing. I didn't even think to try to cover myself. Instead I just fought for control of the curtain back and finished my shower as fast as possible.

I grew up in the 80s in Spain. Although it is a more conservative country than others in Europe Nudity is still seen naturally, especially in children. On my beach vacations I always preferred to walk naked or in a brief.

Also, always after swimming classes or a simple trip to the pool, my cousins, friends and brothers along with other men do not bathe before and after swimming.

All natural, without morbidity. To this day I still bathe after the gym here in the USA but with more precautions

Never had to be forced to be nude actually quite the opposite

@Horace said,

One time, however, the teacher made us all take of our swimsuits during class.

In the fifties, when we first started going to the YMCA to swim, there were separate times set aside for boys and separate times for girls. The reason being nudity was required. Bathing suits were not allowed. I don’t recall when that rule changed, but by the time we were in High School, the Y no longer had that requirement.

I wish. My sister and I were forced to have something on at all times, Like PJ's to bed. It was tough on my sister to talk Mom and Dad into letting her wear a bikini. I mean we lived on a lake. If we were caught running across the hall to get our PJs or anything and we were naked we would get yelled at and threatened to get grounded. That is why we stay naked here now. Mom and Dad live six hours away and it is like we are rebelling. There are three of us all the time and sometimes four. Mom and Dad would have a cow if they knew.

It wasn’t forced, except maybe by peer pressure or just wanting to participate in an activity that required nudity. Never felt pressured to swim or shower naked at the Y because I wanted to swim. Same with group showers in Jr and sr high

At camp, the bathroom had a dozen (seemed like it then) toilets lined up without stalls. That made me uncomfortable.

@Tabitha32 said,

If we were caught running across the hall to get our PJs or anything and we were naked we would get yelled at and threatened to get grounded.

Then @Rigel said,

Never felt pressured to swim or shower naked at the Y because I wanted to swim. Same with group showers in Jr and sr high

When my siblings and I were growing up in the fifties and early sixties, mom and dad’s house only had two bedrooms and one bath. So, we shared a bedroom until our mid to late teens and saw each other naked most every day. In the summertime, we normally slept nude because of the hot muggy summer nights. When we first started going to the Y to swim, it required nudity, no bathing suits allowed in the pool. In Junior High, nudity was required for gym class because both the shower and toilet areas were communal… aka open bay military style. And once we got to High School, it was exactly the same as Junior High, nudity required for gym class. The only charge made during that time was the Y. By the time we reached High School, bathing suits were required in the swimming pool. Nudity was no longer allowed in the pool area. That was a real bummer because we enjoyed swimming nude at the Y. For the most part, we simply didn’t give nudity a second thought, because it was part of everyday life.

As part of spankings at home yes.

We had to shower naked when I first started secondary school, which I found mortifying, but then they stopped that not long afterwards.

Have no issues with nudity now though.

Communal dressing rooms at the swimming pool (school).

A friends dad would take a group of boys camping between Christmas & New Years. Half of them were his 3 boys and their 3 cousins along with 2 sets of other brothers. Usually about 10 boys ranging from 11-17 years old. We had to change in front of each other as we stayed in 2 tents. We also skinny dipped every other day in a lake for a bath. This was in Florida, so the temperature was not crazy cold. This was quite embarrassing at first for an 11 year old. But it was much easier as I got older. It helped prepare me for the locker room in High School.

People are talking about Y swimming pools and that all boys required to swim naked. It’s interesting what was behind that. Was it done on purpose to make boys less shy? What could be achieved by making boys less shy?

People are talking about Y swimming pools and that all boys required to swim naked. It’s interesting what was behind that. Was it done on purpose to make boys less shy? What could be achieved by making boys less shy?

Shyness in and of itself is not really a virtue. For many people it can be a curse and hinder 'normal' social interactions. Anything to help people overcome shyness is a benefit I would think.

But in the context of YMCA nude swimming, it wasn't so much about overcoming shyness. There were other factors involved.

When first founded and the Y started the swimming programs, many people were poor, not even able to afford swimming apparel for children. It was an extravagance for many, especially the more impoverished sections of society the Y was trying to outreach to. So eliminating the cost of swimming trunks helped attract more members.

There was also the wool/filters argument. Older swim trunks were made of wool, which would shed fibers in the water and then clogging water filters. Expensive to repair.

And besides, skinny dipping in ponds or lakes was common enough prior to WWI. Nudity when swimming as such was not really an issue unless in mixed gender company.

Then, after WWI and WWII, public nudity among men was seen as a way to prepare youngsters for their (inevitable) military service. Get them used to nudity and once in the service, there would be less shyness and reticence about showering and using toilet facilities. In the field, during military operations, there is really no place for shyness about the body. Sneaking into the woods because you are too shy to use an open toilet is a good way to get yourself killed during a shooting war, which btw almost everybody expected to happen sooner or later anyway. WWIII was on people's minds back in the 50-60-70s.

All of these reasons are imminently sensible. It's really a shame nude swimming is no longer common in schools or YMCAs. People are presently too snowflaky when it comes to nudity. It might not be a bad idea to make excursions to nudist beaches mandatory and help people get over their unnecessary notions of prudery and shyness.

@agracier , yes it all makes sense. However, returning back to those days customs is impossible in the near future. The societies in most countries changed and a new renaissance is not on horizon.

I dont consider it to be enforced nudity but back in the secondary and grammar schools in the Uk in the 1960s, many pupils would probably take comunal showers after PE or games lessons.

Only school showers. We had a PE teacher called Mrs DEATH. I kid you not! That was her actual name. She pronounced it DEETH ha ha but she was not fooling any of us. I don't think she was actually allowed to force us to shower naked but we knew there would be a 'concerned conversation' and possibly a discussion with our parents if we were not showering after PE.

However, returning back to those days customs is impossible in the near future. The societies in most countries changed and a new renaissance is not on horizon.

Not to be pessimistic or optimistic, but social change can always occur and often faster than one can imagine. To those of us who grew up during the Flower Power/Counter Cultural era, the present day backsliding into prudery and sexual shyness seemed unthinkable. We thought that once our freedoms were won back then, they would be permanent.

But, apparently all it takes is some terrorist attacks, a war or two and other kinds of Grand Anxieties (eco?) and good ol' fashioned prudery and (religious inspired or not) condemnation of sexual activity outside of the bonds of matrimony is back in vogue again. I never thought I'd live to see the day.

But yet it happened and who knows how far and in which direction the pendulum will swing in the future.

who knows how far and in which direction the pendulum will swing in the future.

We see IT expands in our life at unprecedented way. AI technologies just started and it will not take too long when they become widespread. This will isolate individuals even more. Less face to face interaction will lead to ever more prudery.

Even now I can see how younger generation is much more shy in the changing rooms and that’s the opposite to what was in 60s.

@JSChallenger I had communal showers all the way through school during the 1970s to mid 80s. We took them after PE and as it was boarding school, every evening.

In my high school PE the showers were communal and in swimming class nudity was required (for boys). the girls locker room had stall showers and the girls wore swim suits for their swimming class. the local YMCA had relaxed the "nudity required" for the swimming pool although nearly all the men swam naked.

I remember when I was 6 or 7 years old having 5 or 6 neighborhood friends (both boys and girls) running through lawn sprinklers on hot summer days, wearing just white panties. When we all got soaked, there there was nothing left to the imagination as to how the boys and girls were different!

@agracier said,

All of these reasons are imminently sensible. It's really a shame nude swimming is no longer common in schools or YMCAs. People are presently too snowflaky when it comes to nudity. It might not be a bad idea to make excursions to nudist beaches mandatory and help people get over their unnecessary notions of prudery and shyness.

I totally agree with your above statement. It’s very sad to see young people today growing up in a close-minded society when it comes to nudity and sexuality. I grew up in an open family free of the condemnation nonsense about nudity or sexuality. This was due in part, to my grandmother, who was a retired registered nurse.

Then said,

To those of us who grew up during the Flower Power/Counter Cultural era, the present day backsliding into prudery and sexual shyness seemed unthinkable. We thought that once our freedoms were won back then, they would be permanent.

Like you, I never thought I would see the day when things would backslide so much. It’s absolutely senseless.