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.
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.
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.
Nowadays, students take gym in the summer, to avoid the "uncomfortable" locker room situations during the school day. Getting clean en masse would, I'm sure, be considered "gay" by today's insecure youth. In the school where I teach, I doubt the showers have been turned on for 20 years. There were a bunch of old weights and gymnastics mats in the showers last time I looked...
So maybe the old timers are a bit more open-minded, less insecure, and all that. Why do you care?
Word. It's gross to take showers in front of other naked guys. I'll always take my shower at home. And it's not worth it to exercise at lunch if I have to take a shower in front of other guys at the end. I'll just wait until the evening. Middle and high schoolers don't take showers together right? I know I never saw anybody at my school use the showers.
the obvious i suppose wrote:
Nowadays, students take gym in the summer, to avoid the "uncomfortable" locker room situations during the school day. Getting clean en masse would, I'm sure, be considered "gay" by today's insecure youth. In the school where I teach, I doubt the showers have been turned on for 20 years. There were a bunch of old weights and gymnastics mats in the showers last time I looked...
Where do you teach? Students don't take gym in the summer. Most schools don't offer summer gym class.
No one showers after gym class. After they slack off in their PE clothes for 30 minutes they go and change and slather on cologne and deodorant. The ones who actually work up a sweat during gym class are either super fat and smell anyway or the ones who try really hard and don't have friends.
But in college, showering is a rite of passage.
gayguysarecooltoo wrote:
Where do you teach? Students don't take gym in the summer. Most schools don't offer summer gym class. But in college, showering is a rite of passage.
The 'Burbs, USA. Summer gym is all the rage.
I have to agree on the college thing. Nothing like pulling the old, "turn-your-water-to-scalding-while-you're-rinsing-the-shampoo-out-of-your-hair" trick, or the "urinate-on-your-neighbor's-leg-right-before-he's-set-to-get-out" hilarity.
Sophmoric, but bonding.
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.
There was a junior high gym teacher (and football coach) at my school who observed this ritual and used to say, "If you're going to go sliding around the shower all bare-assed, don't come crying to me when you get Athlete's crack"
Just like I find many master's runners pervy, those guys at the gym are beyond the pale.
If you want to shower, fine--go in there, shower, come out, get dressed, whatever.
It's not the fact that they walk around naked--it's HOW they do it.
First of all, they're disgusting. Face it--basically the only guys who look decent above the age of 50--no, 40--no, 30--are gay. They're the only ones who really care, and who make the time to work out. The straight guys are usually totally disgusting, and furthermore, are totally self-unaware.
They're probably unaware of the very fact that they're naked, because their clothes are so awful that they don't make any difference to how disgusting their bodies are.
I know people on this board are runners, and that some are 50-70 yrs old, and are probably not disgusting--but even you guys must get creeped out by those pasty weirdos at the gym.
Whenever I can, I use the teen/boys locker room just to avoid those creeps. Of course, the teen/boys locker room is full of other adults, similarly trying to avoid the pasty naked creeps in the adult locker room.
I think I've posted this before, but at one local YMCA, those pasty naked creeps, after coming out of the shower, SIT AROUND NAKED ON VINYL SOFAS AND WATCH TV TOGETHER!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh My God.
Oh, and let's get this straight--
those guys aren't "nude", which is beautiful--
they are "naked", which is ugly, like a grub.
I don't understand how kids these days can have a PE class and NOT shower. The younger generation's insecurity with their bodies is incredible. Sure you will see some other guys 'junk' when you shower, but so what. Very rarely do you see some guy on his knees plearuring another guy. That, my friends, is the exception not the rule. And some of those other guys are really hung!
Mr. Obvious wrote:
There was a junior high gym teacher (and football coach) at my school who observed this ritual and used to say, "If you're going to go sliding around the shower all bare-assed, don't come crying to me when you get Athlete's crack"
That's a good one. My theory about the older guys is they just don't care - no modesty left at that age and it's a pain to cover up until you get dressed. Older women feel the same way, but when you're at a University gym and there's the possibility of running into students, the more modesty, probably the better.
One more thing--
I once observed one of these conversations between two pasty naked creeps in a locker room at a suburban Y--it was weird enough, until one of the still-dripping pasty naked creeps cracked a (wet) fart in mid-sentence.
He went right on talking as if nothing had happened, as did his "friend".
I don't think he even knew what he'd just done.
F-ING DISGUSTING!
I have never, ever, returned to that Y.
And let me tell you, I have NO problem with normal shower activity--I shower after I work out, and I'm usually the only straight guy around--it IS a YMCA, after all.
BTW, at the track, nobody showers--probably because it seems like they have absolutely no heat in there--you can crank the water as hot as you want, and all that happens is that the part of your body hit by the water gets scalded, while the rest of you freezes. Nice.
So where on earth will you go if you won't go back to a place where someone farted? I guess you could head to the country if you don't count animal farts, but short of that, you're not going to be able to exist in a fart-free zone.
As to guys having conversations while being naked, never really bothered me. I run to and from work, as does a colleague, and we routinely talk in the locker room as we're getting dressed. I have no idea if we're getting dressed quickly enough to satisfy the original poster, but then again, never bothered to think about it. I really don't care whether someone is clothed or naked in a locker room.
The nastiest thing I ever saw was at the university shower when I was a kid (my Mom worked there and we had a family membership). The showers were attached to cylindrical metal columns so that there were 3 or 4 showers per column. Some 70ish-year-old guy was washing his butt crack and was repeatedly bending over and spreading his ass cheeks with his hands to let the water hit him. Unfortunately, because of the set-up of the showers, he was also oriented in such a way that every time he bent over, his butt was right in my line of sight while he spread his ass-cheeks. Frickin' disgusting!
I was around 12 at the time so I wonder if the guy was just completely unaware of what he was doing or if he was some kind of perv.
Like I said, it's not really WHAT they do, but HOW they do it.
If the guy who farted had been at least somewhat embarrassed, or if his friend had at least expressed some shock if not disgust, then it wouldn't have been as bad.
I don't think the guy TRIED not to fart, and I think they just accepted it as normal and unremarkable.
Either totally self-unaware, or totally ego-centric, as if they were going to do what they were going to do, and the rest of the world be damned.
Again, there is nothing wrong with talking while getting dressed, or even showering, per se...it is the WAY in which they do it that is creepy and/or disgusting.
Like many things, it is simply a question of style.
That is, they have none.
They should stick to their weirdo handball and racquetball clubs.
Unless a guy's over 80. I think that by that time, a person has usually earned the right to be cut a lot of slack.
Base-10 baby!
Mrs. M wrote:
That's a good one. My theory about the older guys is they just don't care - no modesty left at that age and it's a pain to cover up until you get dressed. Older women feel the same way, but when you're at a University gym and there's the possibility of running into students, the more modesty, probably the better.
Don't care what other people think of them.
Secure in who they are.
Not freaked out by nakedness in general. We all have the same parts (in the single-sex locker room).
I am a bit disturbed that Sprint Geezer finds it acceptable to go hang out in the young boys locker room because the old guy's bodies are too disgusting for him.
Naked doesn't bother me, but spitting and pissing in the shower does.
They're not secure, they're oblivious.
It's not old guy's bodies, it's pervy old guy's CONDUCT.
It's only AFTER one is conditioned by their aberrant conduct that one perceives their bodies, rightly or wrongly, to be similarly unpalatable.
Look, there are 2 kinds of old guys in the change room--those who are OK, and those who aren't.
Like I said, there are 70-year-olds who use the same changerooms that I use, and for the same reasons.
It's because nobody reasonable wants the quality of their life's experience lowered by remaining in the avoidable presence of the unpalatable.
Exactly.
"Nude" and "natural" transform to "naked" and "disgusting" in the presence of vulgarity.
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.
This is an age specific conduct and not generational. When I was a kid in the 70s/80s, I noticed the same thing when ever I went to play racquetball with my dad at his club. Old dudes would sit in the sauna with their junk in full view, just carrying on like they were talking at the local pizza place. I think once your body starts to deteriorate, you lose all sense of shame that normally comes with nudity.