What is with the older generation and walking around nude in locker rooms?

Sounds like you need to move to Oklahoma or Texas to be around *real* men who know how sensitive you are and how delicate you deserve to be treated.

dfsfdsds wrote:

I'm not talking about the average person at the gym who does his workout, showers, and changes -- obviously you have to undress for that. I'm talking about the 50-70 year olds who have full-length conversations with each other butt-naked. Is there a reason why this tradition has continued? Was there something about the lives of these people in their youth that required them to be naked a lot? I don't understand it.

What is also interesting is the gender difference. Men seem to have no issue walking around butt naked in a locker room while carrying on conversations, shaving their faces, etc...

But women do not do this, and their locker rooms almost always have separate individual showers.

I belonged to a YMCA in Florida for a couple of years (a very nice YMCA in an upscale area) and there was apparently some women who did walk around the women's locker room naked all the time. Other women started filing complaints with management because it freaked them out so much. YMCA management finally had to confront the woman, but she refused to change her ways, claiming she had every right to hang out naked in her locker room. Management backed off, and I was told some women actually quit that YMCA over it.

Of course, we all want women to hang out naked in the locker room if they're hot.

I think it depends on the locker room - each has its own "culture." When I was in high school, everyone was really prissy about being seen nude. They would go to the locker room to change, but then everyone would go one by one into a stall and change, so that no one would be seen naked. They would even freak out if someone saw them in their underwear. In college, it was totally the opposite. Everyone walked around buck naked like it was no big deal. They would just stand around and have a conversation. They even went on the occasional naked run on the nearby trails.

Flashback: my dad used to take to his gym once in a while, I'd run and lift weights ( I was like 10). I was intimidated by the sizes of the various members in the locker room and I thought "mine gets bigger if I think about naked women". So, I tried to think about that when I went to the locker room. Thank God it didn't work.

it's "buck naked," not "butt naked!"

this attitude reflects a self-hating, anti body attitude. very strange how rapidly these views change. not that I want to see any of that but why do we have gender specific locker rooms in the first place? because it's socially acceptable to change and take showers around your own gender. but that's obviously broken down and the reason for it (the anti body thing: the body is disgusting, etc., and you must be gay if you are naked around people of your own gender) is pretty stupid and unnecessary. It's a strange society that we live in, puritanical and self-hating in public and onanistic and exhibitionist in the quasi private of our homes, video cameras, and computer screens.

wow...I was wondering the same thing, in reverse after observing high school to mid 20s aged guys wearing their underwear IN to the shower! I kid you not. I think as others have pointed out, it all revolves around what we grew up with. In the 'old days', there was junior high, from 7th thru 9th grade. 7th grade was where you were first exposed to being nude around others and showering in a big shower room with 15 shower heads. So, by the time you were in high school, it was old hat, where you never gave it another thought. This continued in high school and through college (for those of us who ran x-c and track). Conversely, (as I was shocked to learn); the kids in high school these days, do NOT take showers after gym. Unbelievable. Can you imagine going to class the rest of the day with no shower? Anyway..that is why you see these uptight younger people wearing their clothes into the shower..very weird.

70S GUY. I'm with you. We showered sans clothing in jr high, high school and college. It was routine and no one that I know of thought anything about it.

I didn't realize there is a problem now with young people showering nude..

Old Geezer, you seem to have some pretty serious hang-ups.

Now if these older men are giving you the "stare" or running around with woodies then I can understand your concern.

It is disgusting behavior. It's being lazy. It could be they're perv's. But most of all it's the lowest common denominator attitude.

the obvious i suppose wrote:

Back in the day, middle and high school kids showered together after PE class. It was required, and a rite of passage of sorts. I remember clogging the drains of my old middle school shower, and then runnind and sliding across the water-soaked tiles butt nekked, before crashing into the far wall. Good times.

9th grade basketball team. We did this until a very unfortionate member of the team got his sack caught in a drain. It got ugly after that.

As a woman,I experience the other end of the spectrum. My work has an onsite gym and locker room. I get undressed, take a quick shower, and dress quickly. Try to hold the towel around me for a bit of modesty but just don't call attention to myself. All the showers have stalls so no one is running around flashing their nudity. However we have some women who are so painfully shy about their bodies that they won't even change into their workout clothes in the regular area; they will go into a shower stall to do so! I think that is a little weird.

You delicate little boys would no doubt break out in cold tremors at a Japanese sento.

When did Americans turn into a nation of whimpering gymnophobes?

Like most people right around 50 or older, I showered after gym class and after baseball. My future brother in law at that time went to Lane Tech High School, the largest public high school in Illinois at the time. Gym class included nude swimming.

During freshman year at an academically accomplished high school (read that as lots of nerds), the gym teacher stood at the entrance to the showers, making sure everyone showered. This was at the beginning of the year and, as far as I could tell, everyone adjusted and practiced basic hygiene.

At some point this changed. When I returned to coach high school a few years ago, I was very surprised to see that the showers didn't even work. They were used as storage. This is an athletic powerhouse. The kids (boys and girls) work very hard and sweat profusely, but they don't shower before they put their street clothes back on?

I'm guessing the change slowly began after I graduated from high school and happened over a time period of more than a decade. Maybe this is a reach, but I think one of the reasons is the erosion of the taboo of homosexuality.

I know that the few (two?) kids in high school who were suspected of being gay, and almost surely were, were ostracized and somewhat picked on. Those kids somehow avoided the mandatory shower rule.

In my college locker room after football or baseball, any "serious" queer indication was unthinkable. I felt very comfortable in a crowded shower - we were just men completely unattracted to one another trying to get clean quickly before the dining hall closed.

I imagine there were closeted gays that I didn't know about, but since they gave no indication of their inclinations, it didn't affect me and I simply showered every time I worked out or practiced.

In the early 80's, I worked out in a gym that had some serious bodybuilders and a few pro athletes. I heard guys talk about their use of steroids and for the first time felt uncomfortable several times in the shower. I had a running back's body, not a distance runner's (300 bench with a 29 inch waist.)

Two separate times, I had a guy follow me into the empty shower in the early afternoon (I worked nights that summer.) Both guys said nothing, but I felt creeped out and got a vibe that they were checking me out. I started showering at home.

A few years later, I would play basketball at my buddy's trendy health club. One night, we were going to hit the bars afterwards, but my friend told me not to shower there. He pointed to a guy hanging out in the free weight section, bs ing way more than lifting. He told me that guy would go in the shower if we did, and that he was always trying to get the teenage boys to lift with him, then go in the hot tub to "rejuvenate." It was just less hassle to go home, shower there, then go out. But it certainly wasn't quicker or more convenient.

As society became hyper sexualized, previously innocuous activities somehow became infused with a sexual overtone. Worse, overt (homo)sexuality began to become more open in places NO sexuality is appropriate - like bathrooms and locker rooms.

You nailed it. Homosexuality is now so mainstream that there are enough formerly closeted gays who now troll on or openly check out straights in the shower, and it's made straights paranoid about getting naked/showering in front of them.

This is interesting. I am 51 and when I was in HS, the girls' locker room had stall showers, but they were turned off (or at least, they only had cold water), so no one showered after gym class.

The guys, however, had mandatory showering after class and some guys could do make up or extra credit for taking "extra showers". (I am not sure how this worked, since what I observed was a kid coming out to see the PE teacher, wet hair, obviously showered and dressed. Then he'd get the okay from the teacher. I think they could do it more than once in a row to get credit. Never figured out why.

In college, we had separate stall showers for one semester and then our team got moved to another building, where we were assigned to an old men's locker room. This had one big "gang" shower with rows of shower heads on each side of the tiled room. No privacy there, but after a bit of attitude adjustment, most of the women on the team showered in there.

In most of the older HS buildings, the girls locker rooms still have those group showers, although most newer schools and colleges (and health clubs) have stall showers. Maybe younger people are more modest/prudish.

Sprint Geezer wrote:

I dislike the fact that some men prematurely assume some sort of license to be excused from vulgarity.

All of a sudden, they think they can make off-color comments to women, pass gas, ignore basic hygiene, engage in unchallenged vitriol and hyperbole, and other behaviors that are normally considered as uncivil.

That type of license is EARNED as a result of diminished capacity to govern one's own conduct, and is not to be ASSUMED by someone who is too much of a bum or a-hole to bother caring about anybody else around them.

It is GRANTED, not TAKEN.

It is too much ego, likely a manifestation of some sort of over-compensation for having "paid their dues", that leads to the type of situation the original poster described.

Again, it's not WHAT they're doing, it's HOW they do it.

Look Buddy, it's a generational thing - do you not understand? Pretty much anyone under 40 is going to have issues with group showers. It was common AND mandatory in the 70's and prior to take showers after Phys Ed class. Phys Ed used to be pretty much non-stop calisthenics for 30 minutes and then a particular activity. Believe me, afterwards you needed a shower. Anyone 45 and older is probably going to be comfortable with nudity. I realize times have changed, but don't be dissing on the old guys because your generation's values are different.

monkey in the middle wrote:

In Jr High in the 60s, we used to grab the smallest kid in the shower, rape him and throw him outside all nekkid and bewildered. Coach Douche used to join in sometimes too. Ahh good times.

Ahh, the good old days.

Group showers in "old school" gyms don't bother me as much as bathroom stalls with no doors....CREEPY!!!!!

Why have a stall (3 sides) if it doesn't have a door?????

I bet womens bathrooms had doors.

I remember one time going to the gym and while I was changing in the locker room there was this older naked guy who appeared to have just gotten out of the shower. I changed and went off to do my workout. After completing my workout I returned to the locker room to get my bag and that guy was still hanging around the locker room naked! I don't think there is ever a reason to be hanging around naked in the locker room for an hour.

you always have to be aware of the people who stay in the locker rooms a little longer than everybody else...

Smelly wrote:

I remember one time going to the gym and while I was changing in the locker room there was this older naked guy who appeared to have just gotten out of the shower. I changed and went off to do my workout. After completing my workout I returned to the locker room to get my bag and that guy was still hanging around the locker room naked! I don't think there is ever a reason to be hanging around naked in the locker room for an hour.