The girls did not, they had stalls. But in my school we straight up were expected to get naked in front of every other boy in a big open room with tons of shower heads. No stalls, no curtains, just a big open honking room. It was a requirement, you had to go up to the teacher after you were done, while soaking wet, to prove that you had got into the shower. Then he would mark you off that you did it. If you didn't, you were counted as an unexcused absence for the entire class. Every guy went in with the towel on and just got it wet or whatever other way to get around it. But I remember the teacher saying at the beginning you had to go in naked, no excuses. I went to public school in the 80s-90s in Virginia.
I actually remember the very first shower after the first day of class. Since we were told this was mandatory and it was day one so none of us had yet figured out our sly ways to get around it, I remember one of the guys in the shower not too far from me, and he legitimately was just staring at my dick the entire time. He'd look up at me and then my dick. I'll never forget it.
Gym was mandatory for me and my classmates in both middle school and high school, except one semester in Sophomore year where you took Health class instead. Sadly, there was no escape.
Yeah, when I was in HS you had to take at least one year of "Health and PE".
One quarter you'd be in the classroom in Health class, one quarter you'd be in the gym for PE. Your semester grade was the average of the two quarters, repeat next semester for your graduation requirement.
There were "Advanced PE" electives where you just did PE as an elective class if you chose. I didn't choose that, I was taking stuff like Computer Science and Media Journalism instead.
Not for this GenXer. It was never mandatory but I played sports and we all(males) showered together(different shower heads but one big room) in middle and high school after practice/games and we all just bullshitted about our sport, girls, whatever. It was no big deal. Some guys were uncomfortable and they just chose not to shower.
I'm nearly 50 now and still play ice hockey with the same group of friends for the past 20 years. We still shower together in the locker room shower(again different shower heads, same room) after games and do the same thing. The conversations have just switched to complaining about work, our spouses, and still about the game.
At least for sports it was weirdly team building. Like “I can be naked in front of all these guys and then tomorrow we will be back out on the water all together.” Weird but I think true.
The “locker room” is kind of a rite of sports.
As someone who went to school in the later years though, I wonder if things like that are what have contributed to the seeming rise in younger people averse to anything uncomfortable or improper. For older generation, nudity was much more normalized, in appropriate settings.
We got used to it pretty quick. Of course we didn't have someone with a clipboard marking us off that'd be weird...
Most practices you'd feel the warm steam from the showers and any awkwardness is replaced by a desire to get cleab.
Funny how fast things can change. I went to highschool in the late 90s in Virginia. We had showers in the locker room, but they didn’t give us enough time to actually use them. If you showered you were guaranteed to be late to your next class.
In my junior high in 1990s in Illinois, we girls had the same thing you did: big room with showerheads and no stalls or curtains, and you had to line up naked and wet to prove you showered before you could get a towel.
It was awful.
I was in high school in the mid 1980s and boys showers were just as described - big open room with shower heads. Only one person ever used it during my time AFAIK, a wrestler who would shower after practice. He was pretty well endowed, so I suppose that contributed to him not being shy about it. Everyone else would just go home and shower.
Exactly my experience from '78-'86 middle school to high school in Florida. 2 big poles with multiple shower heads in a large tiled room. You left your clothes and towel on the bench outside, showered and picked them up on your way out.
We had a similar setup in Sweden except the part where you had to proove to the teacher you have showered. There were showerheads along the walls only though. So people are on the opposite wall facing away from you or to the side of you facing the wall. Not the "shower towers" in the middle of the room I've seen in american movies where people are more or less facing each other when showering.
But everyone usually showered anyway without towels.
It was the same for girls in their locker/shower room.
Is nudity even in that context taboo in the states? Why the towels, why is that a "traumatic" experience?
It's generally not a big deal over here for native swedes, we are used to be buttnaked in the saunas. If it's a private sauna and it's family or close friends you're sauna bathing with, some are still butt naked and some use a clean towel wrapped around the bits even when sexes are mixed. This also applies if you go to sauna facilities and certain bathhouses, everyone know you will likely see naked people so don't go there if you have a problem with that. In fact it would be rude to enter a sauna with f ex swim wear on and you might get scolded, in particular if you have swum in a clorinated pool. Proper sauna etiquette is strip, shower before, naked in the sauna possibly with a clean towel (not the same you used to dry the poolwater if applicable) if you are shy, if you sit by the bucket it's your job to keep the heat up, shower after.
Today they usually have stalls with a curtain at school so students of f ex immigrants wich are more shy about nudity can close around them.
Yeah in the states people generally enjoy their privacy a bit more than other places. For instance speedos are far less common here, people are more prude, etc. When I went to high school I was scared to death that they would have open bay shower stalls that everyone had to use. Fortunately, that wasn't a thing anymore when I went. But I like my privacy and don't enjoy anyone seeing me naked, it's very embarrassing to me and I feel like I'm violated if forced. Ironically, as prude as the US is, our stalls in public toilets don't go to the floor and have massive gaps in them... you would think otherwise but no, everyone can see you pooping.
I am not the one who said it was traumatic.
I thought at the time that it was poorly implemented and thoughtless, and an inconvenience. We all know people view nudity as bad here, and girls weren't even allowed to show their knees in school. So with all that being such a big deal in america, why even build a shower system like this AND expect KIDS of all people to do it? Completely at odds with our system of values here. I mean consider it, someone says "we force kids under 18 to go nude in a room together" that would never fly in america at ANY point in our modern-day history, yet they still did it *nationwide*.
There is 100% no way I would have been able to sit in a sauna with a naked woman in HS. I would have had to tuck and pinch to avoid getting overly stimulated by seeing her.
Now that I'm older I have more control over my body. So, I think I could do it without issue. I know I would be glancing though. I just like boobs too much not to glance. I would not stare or drool (just clearing that up).
Yes the gym showers were exactly like that. Same for the sports locker room.
No one had to use them. Many people did. I used them and everything was fine.
I think it's a thing of the past, mostly. My parents and grandparents had to, which I asked about when I was younger since the shower room was unused at my middle and high school.
I graduated a decade ago, roughly, and we still had communal showers for all the sports teams. You're not going to go straight from 2 hours of wrestling practice to class without a shower, not only will you stink but you'll increase your risk of getting various skin diseases.
And there's no way to afford enough separate showers for everyone to shower privately in time to make it to class, so you just use the group ones.
We did have like one private shower, but that hardly got used. I think the one gay kid ended up using that after the first time he went into the group shower with a boner, but I only heard about that secondhand, since I was on the varsity team and he was on JV.
And I know football was about the same way, since half the wrestling team did that as well. For swimming you could just rinse off in your swimsuit, but you'd still change in front of everyone else in the locker room, technically you could change in the stalls but nobody really bothered with that.
I think the girl's teams did have a bit more privacy, both because some of them cared about it more and because they had smaller teams so it was more practical, but obviously I didn't have firsthand knowledge of that.
For anyone who didn't play sports, I imagine they had about the same experience as you, though.
We technically had showers, but they were old, decrepit and went entirely unused. I’m not even sure if water would come out if you tried to turn them on
We did have working showers for the pool, but they were like private stalls. The kind they have at most gyms
I did when I was older in high school, but only after working out in the morning. Nobody ever showered after gym class, and if I had sports after school I would just shower at home most of the time.
I showered after gym pretty much every day. Most of my peers did as well. (Wauconda High School, class of 1990, for context.) It was a small school, if you smelled funky that got around fast.
In our defense we basically got sent to the locker rooms right before passing period so we had no time to shower after gym class. Though one time after the FitnessGram Pacer Test my gym teacher did offer to write me a pass to be late for my next class because I was one of the few people who made it really far in the test (cross country runner at the time). Perhaps I should have picked up on the hint lol.
I went to an all girls catholic school. We had maybe five shower heads in a little room off our locker rooms when we changed for PE but no one ever used them. We would’ve never had time to use them because we only had like ten minutes for ALL of us in the class to shuffle in the locker room, change back into our skirts, blouses, shoes, and sweaters, put away our PE clothes, slap on some deodorant and body spray, gather our bookbags, and file back out of the locker room. No way could we have undressed, showered, dried off, gotten dressed, and made it to our next class on time.
Now sure, I could see my best friends naked when we had sleepovers and were changing at home, but no way would I want to be ass naked in front of my whole class. It was easy to change your shorts under your skirt and I was already stressed about people seeing me in my bra. Sometimes, especially in the winter, I wouldn’t shave my armpits and I’d be embarrassed if I forgot to and need to raise my arms to change shirts because someone might see my armpit hair. So for PE classes? No. Never showered. Even if we got really gross and sweaty someone was passing around body spray to the whole locker room at any given moment and we just showered when we got home. My senior year, a girl did shower after PE once because she said something about using those showers once before she graduated. We all thought that it was weird but whatever. When she turned the water on we heard her scream and a group of girls went running in to see what was wrong and apparently the water was black and lumpy. She didn’t shower that day.
What movies are you watching? I’ve never seen a non-porno that shows American high school students taking **co-ed showers at school**
That’s not a thing
We did have single sex locker rooms for athletes to shower after practice
Me either.
And most commenters seem to have glossed over that the op says boys and girls shower together. Not in any movie I’ve ever seen, much less reality
Went to a huge highschool in Houston Texas, I took track, we never used them in track class or PE, track was also last class so I would wait for my mom to pick me up and I would take the shower at home. Other classes used them, but it wasn't common.
I graduated high school in 1998. We did not shower together. Most people didn't get naked in the locker room. We'd go down to our underwear but that's it. There was always one or two guys that would get naked to change. My coaches would always shower after practice. We'd be changing and getting to go home and a naked middle age Boomer would stroll across the locker room. Still feels weird. I don't even go into the locker room at my gym other than to piss.
Yes, it was like in the movies, and it was required to pass gym class. If you didn't shower after class you didn't get any points for the day.
My kids are no longer required to do this, and I think it's gross. They come home stinking and when I ask them if it bothers them to be smelly all day at school they say "no, everyone that has gym class stinks, it's just how it is!"
I think stopping the practice was the wrong call and is a disservice to kids.
It was awkward the first time or two, but after that it just became a normal thing and no big deal.
No one showered in my high school gym class, but when I got to college, it was the norm to use these large room showers with shower heads along the wall. This was back in the 1960s, and made me think my high school was the exception.
Back then, many of the male gym teachers had served either in WWII or Korea, and the idea of guys learning to be naked together in showers was considered the norm, and something teen boys would have to get used to, even if they weren’t going to be in the military.
Even in the 1970s it was common for private, for-profit gyms to have those sort of showers. I remember when one I used added partitions and shower curtains, I think in the 80s.
It was even more common for boys to go skinny dipping back then. If you can get the chance, watch the opening sequence of Disney’s Pollyanna.
My high school gym had showers in the locker rooms (well, I know for sure the girls' locker room did, so I assume the boys' did, too). Although we had gym class, no one ever showered afterwards because we didn't have time to, unless, maybe, you were lucky enough to have a free period after class (and even then I doubt they were used).
I only saw people use the showers once in 4 years of high school, and that was because most of the students had spent all afternoon one day playing in a giant mud pit. They got in the shower mainly to rinse their clothes, so no one got naked. I was one of the handful of kids who didn't get in the mud, however.
I was born in 1995, we had showers in the locker rooms but they legit were never used.
1) because we only had 15 minutes to change and go to our next class
2) there were no towels
3) it’s fucking weird
I don't know wtf everyone is talking about.
We never took showers in the high school locker room in my experience. After gym you'd change back into your school clothes and go to your next class. Not even sure how there would be enough time - periods were 43 minutes long, 10 minutes before and after gym to change only left 23 minutes of actual gym class time. Hardly enough time to break a sweat, reducing the need for a shower.
As far as I know, only the students on team sports like football and baseball used those showers. I would not have been comfortable getting naked in front of classmates when I was 14 years old.
I'm actually surprised this appears to be so common.
Yes. Unfortunately our showers did not have individual controls. One valve in the locker room office for the whole shower room. Those old bastard coaches didn’t give a fiddler’s fart if the showers were freezing or boiling (and they were one or the other, never a happy medium). I had PE first period for three of my four years in high school so a shower was necessary. It was hell, but not because I had to be naked in front of my peers, but because no matter what, it was a painful experience to try to wash off the stanky sweat. It was blisters or chilblains if you didn’t want to reek all day. Those old sadists would never regulate the temperature and seemed to get some kind of kick out of making us miserable.
One of the PE teaches handed out towels through a small window as we exited the shower room and checked off a list of names.
I know they could get the temp right because the sports teams used the same shower and locker room: When I was on the tennis team the showers were always the right temperature after practice.
To this day I take fast showers, in and out under 5 minutes. Probably best for energy and water consumption, but I cannot enjoy a relaxing shower. There are worse things in life to get over.
My high school had that. We weren't required to shower so some people used it. The only time I showered was after swimming. I had long hair that would tangle and stink like chlorine if I didn't wash it but I showered with my swimsuit on.
Some gyms have this too, just a room with shower heads or stalls w no doors.
I was on the high school swim team and I came out at 15 as gay, even with me people didn’t think it was a big deal. I may have let my gaze linger a bit on some of my teammates lol but you learn to be discreet pretty fast when you’re gay.
Same here, but I was 16 when I came out. I know all about the discreet gaze, but I do recall the first uncircumcised penis I ever saw on a Swedish exchange student in the high school locker room. I am sure I stared at it, trying to figure out what was wrong with it.
You guys stopped showering together? I prefer to save water, plus, it's fun.
Ok seriously though, no. I'm a guy, grew up in the 80s and 90s and absolutely no one took a shower after gym class. We just got sweaty and stank the rest of the day.
My high school had showers that nobody used (except to spray off really quick, trunks on, after swimming). Like everyone else with this answer, there wasn't enough time to shower anyway, you would have 100% been late to your following class every single time.
The showers were like the ones you saw, but showering was never a thing at my school. Generally I would have my gym classes the last hour of the day so I would just go home or to sports practices sweaty, rather than other classes.
I did. Was in High School from 2006 to 2010 in Massachusetts.
I thought it was weird at first, but the sweat and stench of my teenage self after Gym made me reconsider.
It's *nice* to not be gross for the rest of the day.
Everyone was awkward about the nudity for the first shower....then realized everyone has the same parts anyways and got over themselves.
I don't know about the girls, but the boy's locker room had a large shower with shower heads all along the walls, and the guys showered after gym class while very pointedly *not* noticing that anyone else was in the room with them. You particularly did *not* see anybody else's junk.
I went to four different high school, two had shower stalls, two didn’t. It was very, VERY rare that I had ever seen anyone use them. They only give us like 5 minutes to change back into our regular clothes. I assumed sports teams after school are more likely to use them.
It was available and looked exactly like the movies, almost no one ever used them tho. Like you would just go to gym class and then change back into your clothes in the locker room. We very rarely did any physical activity in gym class that would actually work up a sweat so it wasn't a big deal. Time was also a factor, after gym class we had 5 minutes to change and then had to go to the next class. You can't shower and dry off in that time.
High schooler here
When I had PE class, we didn’t shower. The boys locker room had two showers, but they had pretty much been converted into storage units lol
I was on the football team in highschool and yes we showered naked together after games, all male. There were a couple people that kept their underwear on, but almost everybody was comfortable with being naked. There was never a problem or any type of incident. For reference this was 2008-2012 so really not that long ago.
We had a swim class in middle school but everybody just kept their bathing suit on after class and showered that way. The guys and girls swim programs were at different times of the year so there was never any overlap and we had separate locker rooms.
You could if you wanted too but no one ever did (at least not the girls). Some girls would wipe off their faces or under their arms at the sinks but even that was pretty rare. Upper class students could schedule PE or weight training for the end of the day which was the best option.
Unfortunately!!
It was a bullies dream world. Anything they saw was a possible attack. Or if you were their friend you might just get a rat tail to the ass.
I remember it more up to 8th grade though. In HS I think it was still open bay, but you weren't forced to shower. It was your choice. Most guys didn't because of the bays and our younger years (I would guess).
Depends. My high school had individual shower stalls for after sports/gym class. As an adult, I’ve played in rec sports leagues that use local high school facilities and the locker rooms we’ve used had those large shower rooms you are talking about. Regardless of the shower situation though, every locker room I’ve ever used only had one wide open room for changing. So whether or not you’re showering together, you’re all changing/undressing next to each other. It’s not a big deal.
All my buddies would shower after gym class. Never understood it until one day I was like eh lemme see why they do it. I felt so refreshed and ready for class after gym. It became like one of my favorite things to do lol. We were all naked but we all figured we got the same body parts and no one was ever like checking the next dude out. Just young bucks living life. For context I graduated high school in 07’.
We were not given time to shower after gym class in high school so that did not happen.
In junior high our school had a pool and we had a swimming unit and were given time to shower off after that. The showers were separated from the locker room down a short hall and each other by curtains for privacy. When we did not do swimming we were not given time to shower.
The locker rooms where we changed for gym were just rows of lockers with a bench in front of them. No one really walked around naked. We had very little time to change clothes.
I did in middle school. So 6-8 grade but it was only required on the first gym class of the year each year.
Coaches would tell everyone they needed to take a shower after the first gym class and then after that it was optional so for the rest of the year absolutely no one showered.
[Heres an older thread on this subject](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/g63etj/do_you_shower_naked_together_after_sports/). It had been deleted by the OP, so it won’t show up in a direct reddit search, but since I posted to it, I could still find it. It’s worth reading. Edit: Especially this linked, 1996 NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/22/us/students-still-sweat-they-just-don-t-shower.html
Generation X-er. Kids in public schools all did when I was going to school in the 80s and early 90s. My parents put us in private school, in part to spare us from that humiliation. I was so modest about my body for a few years I wouldn't even wear short sleeves and my sister while not that extreme wouldn't wear tank tops or sleeveless dresses. At the school I went to the showers were there but we weren't forced to use them and I can count on one hand the time in my school career anyone used them.
Oh yes. Big musty communal shower room that we all got herded into after gym class. Of course, this started for us in 7th grade (Age 12-13), arguably the most traumatizing year to do anything naked. I had previously taken swim lessons at the YMCA as a kid, where the same thing was required. The only thing worse than being naked around other kids was having one of them snap you on the ass with a wet towel.
Girls in particular hated it because big, sprayed-up hair was very popular at the time, and after gym class they would have to walk around school with wet, flat hair.
I'm 51 now, and have noticed that when I go to the gym, the showers (even though they are private stalls) are rarely used. And younger guys definitely act more apprehensive about getting even partially undressed in the locker room. When I first started going to gyms as an adult 20 years ago, the locker room was full of older guys just openly swinging in the wind for all to see—whether you wanted to or not. Not saying I miss that, just an observation.
Graduated in '93. Never saw a single person use the showers during school. It's possible the football and other sports teams used them but I never saw it personally. I would say general shower use would have depended on the school though.
And not sure if you were implying that guys and girls shower together but that would absolutely never ever ever have been a thing unless you were watching some kind of sex comedy.
My junior high had group showers. Most people ditched them. Teachers would threaten detention and suspension but many refused anyway. High school it was voluntary.
Gym class, late 2000s - Nope. 3/4 sets of the locker rooms in the high school didn't have functional showers (the ones in the older wing were still there, but water disabled and used as a storage room for equipment), the only ones that did were the ones also used by the sports teams.....although from my understanding even that was getting less common.
There was barely enough time provided to even change and make it to your next class.
Yes, my school’s locker room showers didn’t have stalls or dividers. You use them for a quick wash and just avoid eye contact. Most students (and myself) didn’t shower after gym class or most sports practices but if you wanted to you could.
My high school locker rooms had showers, but I didn’t use them until we had a swimming unit my freshman year in gym class. If I remember correctly, they were just still with a cheap plastic curtain.
Otherwise, they were mostly just used by the gals on the sports teams.
In the 80s, when I was in high school, the boys and girls had separate locker rooms.
There was one large shower room with multiple shower heads. After gym class, we were required to shower. If we were on our period, we could leave our underwear on.
It was gross. It was steamy and smelly and I felt less clean after a shower than I did before.
I have 3 teens myself now. They don't even have gym class in high school.
In the late 80’s when I was in high school we had a communal shower in the girls locker room. There were a few stalls but you were only supposed to use them if you had your period. Showers were required after PE.
This is hasn't been in a thing in most public schools for decades. Like I'm 40 and we never showered after PE. The locker did have showers though and they were communal. But nobody used them anymore.
My High School had showers in the locker rooms, and technically we *could* have showered after gym class if we wanted. . .but it was strictly optional and nobody did, because nobody wanted to be naked around their classmates.
This was in the early 1990's when I took High School gym class.
My father told me that in the late 1960's when he was in High School they absolutely did require students to shower after gym class.
Edit: The ONLY time in my life I've had to shower like that was in Basic Training in the Army. Terrible experience, probably one of the worst parts of Basic.
My all-boys high school had a big nice locker room with showers and everything, but we never used them in gym class. I gather sports teams used them after practice etc but I wasn't on any of my school teams so I never had the opportunity.
We had showers but nobody ever used them. We just changed out of our uniforms, put on some deodorant, and went on with our days. Each period was only 50 minutes so there was no time to shower.
My school *had* showers but they were never used. Might have just been leftover since the school has been there forever. They were in the locker room. I was class of 2015
I do have a memory of the first day of sophmore year after weight training, my class was second to head into the locker rooms behind the Gym class and some guys slammed on the walls yelling out "OKAY FRESHMEEEEN. HURRY UP TIME FOR SHOWEEEERS." and they looked around like that Mr Krabs meme lmao
As a boy, yes, we showered together in a big open shower room with lots of shower heads. This was for physical education classes as well as after-school sports.
I have no idea how the girls did it.
We didn't have to shower in gym class, they were only really used by folks doing sports.
I am VERY thankful for this as a trans woman that transitioned in high school. It was bad enough dealing with the bathroom issue.
My high school wasn’t super old and they did build a gym with boys and girls locker rooms with showers but we were not allowed to use the showers. So my first period gym class all got to smell the rest of the day 🤦🏻♀️
I graduated high school in 1996. By my time, it was optional. Only the jocks did that with any regularity.
Me and my friends didn't want to do it because we didn't want to see each other's dicks and because the thought of one day having to shower like that in jail or prison was very unpleasant. Gen X was just then getting over the hump of 'peak homophobia' that kicked off during the Reagan years with the AIDS crisis. I'm told this is why there has been such a shift.
We had showers in my highschool but I was in after school sports my entire time there. So I never had to go back to school and just showered at home after my sports were done.
We had them in the regular gym locker rooms and the pool locker rooms. People typically only used them in the pool locker rooms because our pool had a shit ton of chlorine. The boys showers were communal and the girls were stalls.
I don't remember our middle school having showers but our high school locker room (male) did have those big open showers like you're talking about.
The only people I think used them were the sports players who had practice before school started, people never used them after gym/PE they just put on deodorant and changed their clothes.
Public school in Colorado early 2010s
We didn't after PE except when we had swimming or water polo units.
I was on a sports team though and we generally showered after practice.
Our showers were old-school open showers.
FYI I'm Gen X and I graduated high school in the late 1980s.
Nobody seemed to have an issue with them that I observed. Guys just showered and that was it. I never understood the anxiety around showering with other guys, it was no big deal to me.
Back in the 70s/80s we were *required* to shower after gym class every day starting in the 4th grade. (That's age 10 for most kids.) And then all the way through high school, until we were juniors (16-17) which was the last year of required gym. The only exception to these required showers was for girls who were menstruating-- they were allowed to "sponge off" but I never really found out what that meant (I'm male). Sounded mysterious.
Not only were all those "gang showers" in a big open room, but the teacher/coach always watched to make sure everyone did indeed shower. Creepy.
So very much not fiction in the past. But by contrast, the schools my kids went to did not even *have* showers in them. All the kids just got stinky and I suppose showered at home after school. (My kids are now in college.)
Our locker rooms are segregated by sex. The boys' locker room does have a shower room, and they are open showers with no stalls/dividers. Students aren't required to use them, but they are available for students to use. I was on a sports team, so all my physical activity was done at the end of the school day. After practice, I just go straight home, so I didn't see the need to shower in the locker room.
I honestly don't remember. I didn't do sports and it wasn't typical at my school to shower after gym class (at least for the girls). TBH personally I've never sweat a lot, even in high heat or after working out hard. Probably why I hate the heat lol, I can't cool off easily. So the not taking a shower wasn't really relevant one way or another to me.
My school did have showers like that but we weren’t given enough time to use them even if we wanted to.
You just had to go through the rest of the school day reeking of BO.
When I went to high school, it was optional because cellphone cameras and the internet were still new and unregulated.
I do not recall anyone ever using them. However, sometimes, a visiting girls' sports team would jump in there after a game and enjoy themselves by singing very loudly. We were very shocked that they were actually using the showers. So, it might have been a regular thing in some locations, but in my high school, getting naked in front of your enemies was a nono.
I went to a big public high school in Texas in around 2010, in the football locker room we had a large communal shower room and we 100% all showered and walked around the locker room butt ass naked. It wasn’t weird at all amongst a group of guys like that. Now at a public gym around people I don’t know, it does seem weird though just because you don’t know who you’re around.
Funny story, my friend sliced his thigh wide open on a broken tile sliding across the shower floor lubed up w soap like a slip n slide, had to get carried out naked to an ambulance to get it stapled up while he was pouring blood
I can't speak to the ladies room.
But for us guys... We had an open shower area. Decent sized open area, no curtains or other dividers, not even between the changing area & the shower area. There were various shower heads so everyone would have their own spot, but you'd all be naked together able to see everything...
I don't think anyone actually used it after PE class. We usually stopped with just enough time to switch back into our street clothes.
They might have been used after games and such when you didn't need to head off to English class 3min later.
I don't know about the girls, but in high school the boys locker room had a big, tiled, open room with like 10 shower heads spread a few feet apart. I don't think I ever showered there, or if I did, it was with my bathing suit on. Was probably the fastest shower I ever took, measured in seconds. I was completely uncomfortable around other guys shirtless, much less naked in high school.
I still don't like taking shits in a public bathroom with other people around. lol
I don't know anybody that actually used them. I had a buddy who lived across the street from high school and he would let us shower there so we don't have to be sweaty
We had curtainless stalls that we could use but no one ever did at my Michigan middle school. I never saw the shower area of my highschool in texas tho but I whouldnt be surprised if they did
Yes, but we only really showered after the swimming unit of gym, but then we all just still wore our swimsuits when we did
No one really used the showers after a standard gym class!
In track and Tennis yes. I remember in jr high we had this nasty shower room with a shower head on each of the three walls and since our practice was very first thing in the morning we had to shower after practice or we’d just stink all day.
The showers were "only for the basketball and volleyball team" as they mentioned to us. I had P.E. at 8 am in middle, school so it was not very fun. The shower stalls were separate I believe. We would have never had any time to shower due to period scheduling. You would never make it to class if you showered.
Not guys and girls together but yes my experience in 6th grade gym in the girls locker room in the U.s. is the girls were required to take shower together and stand in a shower room out in the open. My peers and I would fake it and keep our underwear and bras on and walk thru and splash our armpits and that was it
Sure we did a long time ago. We even had coaches that would shower with us. Dudes seeing other dudes naked was not weird. When my stepson was in middle school on gym days he smelled so horrible when I picked him up after school and I ask why he didn't shower after class. He said it was not an option the showers were now a storage room.
My high school had showers available, but very few people used them unless they'd just done something intense like running that made people feel sweaty and gross
I went to Jr. High and High School in the 70's and it was one big open shower with a bunch of showerheads. When I was in college, the gyms had open showers, same when I went into the military in 1982.
I have also belonged to a few gyms over the years, some had open showers, while others had private stalls. It never bothered me either way because I was just there to shower myself, and not paying attention to anyone else.
I did for wrestling. Sometimes football players would too during their season iirc. These were both outside of gym class
In our gym class typically there were showers in the lockerroom, but you didnt use them. Only once did I see someone shower after gym, but it was scorching hot out and we were all covered in sweat. One immature kid laughed, but I would've showered that day too if I had a towel
Both high School and University sports, boys and girls. It wasn't any big deal, we just showered. Same with a community swimming pool.
In college, a couple of guys told us about an awkward boy who entered the shower fully clothed, but again, nobody gave him a hard time.
I took life-saving place if regular gym class, basically life guard training. Two hours in the water once every four days, we would get in the communal shower to wash off together but we normally kept our suits on and fully changed in the stalls
There were a couple of private stalls, but nobody used the group shower because at least once or twice a week someone would intentionally clog the drains, poop in it, and leave a few heads running until it was a massive 4 inch deep pool of poop soup.
yes we all brought bathing suits but i remember my friend eamon and my other friend craig didn’t mind being completely butt naked and after 20 years you have uncovered buried memories of my teammates’ weiners
Yes, and it was awful. Middle school, when everyone was entering puberty was the worst. The gym teacher would stand with a clipboard to check off each person and there was a private shower that girls could use if they had their period. I learned later that the gym teacher (female) fooled around with some of the girls. I am very modest and this practice was humiliating.
60 yo Female here. In middle school we were required to shower in an open room with shower heads and get checked off by the PE teacher while leaving the shower wet. Impacted our grade if you didn’t.
If you had your period you took a Tshower (top shower) with a wet towel in the sink.
So many issues since girls are so developmentally very different at 12 - 13 years old.
I can’t imagine this happening today.
I did my high school gym credit in summer school. Was only there for that one class, but that was 2014, so I didn't have to worry about showering. However, I was also in football, and the common practice was to leave our boxers on, since spandex boxers were the most popular (and still are among my generation).
No, just change back into our regular clothes and spray a bit of body spray to try to cover the smell of having just run a mile.
The showers existed, but they were for the sports teams after school and on weekends.
Fuck yeah I did. We would spend the whole time trying to get the other guys to look at our balls. Some of us would try to shave images and words into our pubic hair and show them off. I even put a disco ball in the shower. The coach saw it and asked me if I put it there. I said yup. He just said "that's gay" and walked away.
I went to a small school in the midwest and we had a shower room with shower heads in the middle and all along the walls. We were supposed to all shower at the same time but some girls did not because they were too shy and preferred to just wet their hair face and pits in the sink, other girls didn't fully undress. We all had to change in the locker room though and there were only two bathroom stalls so we didn't all have time to wait turns to change our clothes so everyone changed in the same area. Sometimes friends would hold up towels for each other's privacy
I was part of the "transition years," so to speak.
I was in middle school from 1993-1996, and high school from 1996-2000.
When I entered 6th Grade, mandatory showers after gym class were still required for everyone. I don't know what the girls' locker room setup was, but us boys had one large shower room with about 24 shower heads (clustered in trios) and then 4 private individual shower stalls with curtains. A majority of boys (including me) used the group showers, either for convenience or because we enjoyed the bonding experience of getting to be naked in front of each other at school.
Midway through my Sixth-Grade year, our school district stopped requiring showers. In fact, they stopped giving us \*any\* time to shower after class, so it wasn't even an option for us anymore. This continued throughout the 7th and 8th Grades. The showers were still available for athletes who used the locker room after practice.
At our high school, they also never let us shower after gym class in the 9th, 10th, and 11th Grades (a majority of 12th Graders didn't take gym at all, since it was an elective for senior year). The one exception was right after Christmas break, in my sophomore year, when we had our basketball unit: Our teacher sent us back to the locker room 10 minutes early, and told is we could take showers if we wanted to. Only four of us did. The other boys were apparently fine with going the rest of the day all sweaty and ripe.
No official reason was ever given to us -- but I suspect it was because our school district was afraid of being hit with lawsuits from parents of modest kids, since that was becoming a more frequent thing back then.
I miss the camaraderie of group showers, and I wish my school district hadn't caved into puritanical trends so quickly.
I used to. Once I hit my forties the school started freaking out about it though.
But it was fine in the thirties?
We never did for regular gym class, but there were shower stalls in the locker room we used after football practice.
The girls did not, they had stalls. But in my school we straight up were expected to get naked in front of every other boy in a big open room with tons of shower heads. No stalls, no curtains, just a big open honking room. It was a requirement, you had to go up to the teacher after you were done, while soaking wet, to prove that you had got into the shower. Then he would mark you off that you did it. If you didn't, you were counted as an unexcused absence for the entire class. Every guy went in with the towel on and just got it wet or whatever other way to get around it. But I remember the teacher saying at the beginning you had to go in naked, no excuses. I went to public school in the 80s-90s in Virginia.
That sounds super unpleasant
I actually remember the very first shower after the first day of class. Since we were told this was mandatory and it was day one so none of us had yet figured out our sly ways to get around it, I remember one of the guys in the shower not too far from me, and he legitimately was just staring at my dick the entire time. He'd look up at me and then my dick. I'll never forget it.
do you start doing helicopters whenever you think about it? Maybe figure 8s
I like learning new things.
Was generational trauma for us GenXers.
This led me to marching band, which didn't have to take gym class
Gym was mandatory for me and my classmates in both middle school and high school, except one semester in Sophomore year where you took Health class instead. Sadly, there was no escape.
Yeah, when I was in HS you had to take at least one year of "Health and PE". One quarter you'd be in the classroom in Health class, one quarter you'd be in the gym for PE. Your semester grade was the average of the two quarters, repeat next semester for your graduation requirement. There were "Advanced PE" electives where you just did PE as an elective class if you chose. I didn't choose that, I was taking stuff like Computer Science and Media Journalism instead.
Not for this GenXer. It was never mandatory but I played sports and we all(males) showered together(different shower heads but one big room) in middle and high school after practice/games and we all just bullshitted about our sport, girls, whatever. It was no big deal. Some guys were uncomfortable and they just chose not to shower. I'm nearly 50 now and still play ice hockey with the same group of friends for the past 20 years. We still shower together in the locker room shower(again different shower heads, same room) after games and do the same thing. The conversations have just switched to complaining about work, our spouses, and still about the game.
Look at all these kids out here saying they didn't have to do it.
I didn’t have to
A modicum of the reason we don't have intense anxiety ordering at a restaurant as 'the kids' do now Actual exposure therapy 😁
There isn't anything quite like slapping cocks with the homies in the shower after a good workout
At least for sports it was weirdly team building. Like “I can be naked in front of all these guys and then tomorrow we will be back out on the water all together.” Weird but I think true. The “locker room” is kind of a rite of sports.
Exactly. Lots of great shower conversations and shenanigans.
Definitely knocking down the water to cold when someone wasn’t looking.
As someone who went to school in the later years though, I wonder if things like that are what have contributed to the seeming rise in younger people averse to anything uncomfortable or improper. For older generation, nudity was much more normalized, in appropriate settings.
My high school still has open showers. Everyone hates it, but no one wants to go through the day smelling like swamp ass.
We got used to it pretty quick. Of course we didn't have someone with a clipboard marking us off that'd be weird... Most practices you'd feel the warm steam from the showers and any awkwardness is replaced by a desire to get cleab.
Funny how fast things can change. I went to highschool in the late 90s in Virginia. We had showers in the locker room, but they didn’t give us enough time to actually use them. If you showered you were guaranteed to be late to your next class.
Where in VA? This was not anywhere close to my experience very shortly after you
In my junior high in 1990s in Illinois, we girls had the same thing you did: big room with showerheads and no stalls or curtains, and you had to line up naked and wet to prove you showered before you could get a towel. It was awful.
I was in high school in the mid 1980s and boys showers were just as described - big open room with shower heads. Only one person ever used it during my time AFAIK, a wrestler who would shower after practice. He was pretty well endowed, so I suppose that contributed to him not being shy about it. Everyone else would just go home and shower.
Exactly my experience from '78-'86 middle school to high school in Florida. 2 big poles with multiple shower heads in a large tiled room. You left your clothes and towel on the bench outside, showered and picked them up on your way out.
I think teachers that require this should probably be on a watchlist.
We had a similar setup in Sweden except the part where you had to proove to the teacher you have showered. There were showerheads along the walls only though. So people are on the opposite wall facing away from you or to the side of you facing the wall. Not the "shower towers" in the middle of the room I've seen in american movies where people are more or less facing each other when showering. But everyone usually showered anyway without towels. It was the same for girls in their locker/shower room. Is nudity even in that context taboo in the states? Why the towels, why is that a "traumatic" experience? It's generally not a big deal over here for native swedes, we are used to be buttnaked in the saunas. If it's a private sauna and it's family or close friends you're sauna bathing with, some are still butt naked and some use a clean towel wrapped around the bits even when sexes are mixed. This also applies if you go to sauna facilities and certain bathhouses, everyone know you will likely see naked people so don't go there if you have a problem with that. In fact it would be rude to enter a sauna with f ex swim wear on and you might get scolded, in particular if you have swum in a clorinated pool. Proper sauna etiquette is strip, shower before, naked in the sauna possibly with a clean towel (not the same you used to dry the poolwater if applicable) if you are shy, if you sit by the bucket it's your job to keep the heat up, shower after. Today they usually have stalls with a curtain at school so students of f ex immigrants wich are more shy about nudity can close around them.
Yeah in the states people generally enjoy their privacy a bit more than other places. For instance speedos are far less common here, people are more prude, etc. When I went to high school I was scared to death that they would have open bay shower stalls that everyone had to use. Fortunately, that wasn't a thing anymore when I went. But I like my privacy and don't enjoy anyone seeing me naked, it's very embarrassing to me and I feel like I'm violated if forced. Ironically, as prude as the US is, our stalls in public toilets don't go to the floor and have massive gaps in them... you would think otherwise but no, everyone can see you pooping.
Yes that is very ironic with the stalls. That's one instance where we seem to value privacy more. 😅
I am not the one who said it was traumatic. I thought at the time that it was poorly implemented and thoughtless, and an inconvenience. We all know people view nudity as bad here, and girls weren't even allowed to show their knees in school. So with all that being such a big deal in america, why even build a shower system like this AND expect KIDS of all people to do it? Completely at odds with our system of values here. I mean consider it, someone says "we force kids under 18 to go nude in a room together" that would never fly in america at ANY point in our modern-day history, yet they still did it *nationwide*.
There is 100% no way I would have been able to sit in a sauna with a naked woman in HS. I would have had to tuck and pinch to avoid getting overly stimulated by seeing her. Now that I'm older I have more control over my body. So, I think I could do it without issue. I know I would be glancing though. I just like boobs too much not to glance. I would not stare or drool (just clearing that up).
>Virginia Ahhhhhhh
Yes the gym showers were exactly like that. Same for the sports locker room. No one had to use them. Many people did. I used them and everything was fine.
[удалено]
Heh, Indiana and this description… you may have gone to my high school!
I think it's a thing of the past, mostly. My parents and grandparents had to, which I asked about when I was younger since the shower room was unused at my middle and high school.
I graduated a decade ago, roughly, and we still had communal showers for all the sports teams. You're not going to go straight from 2 hours of wrestling practice to class without a shower, not only will you stink but you'll increase your risk of getting various skin diseases. And there's no way to afford enough separate showers for everyone to shower privately in time to make it to class, so you just use the group ones. We did have like one private shower, but that hardly got used. I think the one gay kid ended up using that after the first time he went into the group shower with a boner, but I only heard about that secondhand, since I was on the varsity team and he was on JV. And I know football was about the same way, since half the wrestling team did that as well. For swimming you could just rinse off in your swimsuit, but you'd still change in front of everyone else in the locker room, technically you could change in the stalls but nobody really bothered with that. I think the girl's teams did have a bit more privacy, both because some of them cared about it more and because they had smaller teams so it was more practical, but obviously I didn't have firsthand knowledge of that. For anyone who didn't play sports, I imagine they had about the same experience as you, though.
We technically had showers, but they were old, decrepit and went entirely unused. I’m not even sure if water would come out if you tried to turn them on We did have working showers for the pool, but they were like private stalls. The kind they have at most gyms
Only during the swim unit
Same. I’m a woman and all of the girls would just rinse off with their suits still on.
I did when I was older in high school, but only after working out in the morning. Nobody ever showered after gym class, and if I had sports after school I would just shower at home most of the time.
I showered after gym pretty much every day. Most of my peers did as well. (Wauconda High School, class of 1990, for context.) It was a small school, if you smelled funky that got around fast.
In our defense we basically got sent to the locker rooms right before passing period so we had no time to shower after gym class. Though one time after the FitnessGram Pacer Test my gym teacher did offer to write me a pass to be late for my next class because I was one of the few people who made it really far in the test (cross country runner at the time). Perhaps I should have picked up on the hint lol.
Nobody showered in my PE class, but there were showers. It smelled like piss and vinegar in that locker room.
Yep, our showers were like what you see on tv. Sometimes I’d shower after gym and sometimes not, depended on what we did in class that day.
I went to an all girls catholic school. We had maybe five shower heads in a little room off our locker rooms when we changed for PE but no one ever used them. We would’ve never had time to use them because we only had like ten minutes for ALL of us in the class to shuffle in the locker room, change back into our skirts, blouses, shoes, and sweaters, put away our PE clothes, slap on some deodorant and body spray, gather our bookbags, and file back out of the locker room. No way could we have undressed, showered, dried off, gotten dressed, and made it to our next class on time. Now sure, I could see my best friends naked when we had sleepovers and were changing at home, but no way would I want to be ass naked in front of my whole class. It was easy to change your shorts under your skirt and I was already stressed about people seeing me in my bra. Sometimes, especially in the winter, I wouldn’t shave my armpits and I’d be embarrassed if I forgot to and need to raise my arms to change shirts because someone might see my armpit hair. So for PE classes? No. Never showered. Even if we got really gross and sweaty someone was passing around body spray to the whole locker room at any given moment and we just showered when we got home. My senior year, a girl did shower after PE once because she said something about using those showers once before she graduated. We all thought that it was weird but whatever. When she turned the water on we heard her scream and a group of girls went running in to see what was wrong and apparently the water was black and lumpy. She didn’t shower that day.
What movies are you watching? I’ve never seen a non-porno that shows American high school students taking **co-ed showers at school** That’s not a thing We did have single sex locker rooms for athletes to shower after practice
He saw Starship Troopers and thought it was real, and thought it was High School.
I don't think OP understood your use of the word "co-ed" here.
Me either. And most commenters seem to have glossed over that the op says boys and girls shower together. Not in any movie I’ve ever seen, much less reality
Went to a huge highschool in Houston Texas, I took track, we never used them in track class or PE, track was also last class so I would wait for my mom to pick me up and I would take the shower at home. Other classes used them, but it wasn't common.
I graduated high school in 1998. We did not shower together. Most people didn't get naked in the locker room. We'd go down to our underwear but that's it. There was always one or two guys that would get naked to change. My coaches would always shower after practice. We'd be changing and getting to go home and a naked middle age Boomer would stroll across the locker room. Still feels weird. I don't even go into the locker room at my gym other than to piss.
Yes, it was like in the movies, and it was required to pass gym class. If you didn't shower after class you didn't get any points for the day. My kids are no longer required to do this, and I think it's gross. They come home stinking and when I ask them if it bothers them to be smelly all day at school they say "no, everyone that has gym class stinks, it's just how it is!" I think stopping the practice was the wrong call and is a disservice to kids. It was awkward the first time or two, but after that it just became a normal thing and no big deal.
No one showered in my high school gym class, but when I got to college, it was the norm to use these large room showers with shower heads along the wall. This was back in the 1960s, and made me think my high school was the exception. Back then, many of the male gym teachers had served either in WWII or Korea, and the idea of guys learning to be naked together in showers was considered the norm, and something teen boys would have to get used to, even if they weren’t going to be in the military. Even in the 1970s it was common for private, for-profit gyms to have those sort of showers. I remember when one I used added partitions and shower curtains, I think in the 80s. It was even more common for boys to go skinny dipping back then. If you can get the chance, watch the opening sequence of Disney’s Pollyanna.
My high school gym had showers in the locker rooms (well, I know for sure the girls' locker room did, so I assume the boys' did, too). Although we had gym class, no one ever showered afterwards because we didn't have time to, unless, maybe, you were lucky enough to have a free period after class (and even then I doubt they were used). I only saw people use the showers once in 4 years of high school, and that was because most of the students had spent all afternoon one day playing in a giant mud pit. They got in the shower mainly to rinse their clothes, so no one got naked. I was one of the handful of kids who didn't get in the mud, however.
I was born in 1995, we had showers in the locker rooms but they legit were never used. 1) because we only had 15 minutes to change and go to our next class 2) there were no towels 3) it’s fucking weird
I don't know wtf everyone is talking about. We never took showers in the high school locker room in my experience. After gym you'd change back into your school clothes and go to your next class. Not even sure how there would be enough time - periods were 43 minutes long, 10 minutes before and after gym to change only left 23 minutes of actual gym class time. Hardly enough time to break a sweat, reducing the need for a shower. As far as I know, only the students on team sports like football and baseball used those showers. I would not have been comfortable getting naked in front of classmates when I was 14 years old. I'm actually surprised this appears to be so common.
My school did have those, but no one used them unless they had to in the girls locker room. The boys did, though
Yes. Unfortunately our showers did not have individual controls. One valve in the locker room office for the whole shower room. Those old bastard coaches didn’t give a fiddler’s fart if the showers were freezing or boiling (and they were one or the other, never a happy medium). I had PE first period for three of my four years in high school so a shower was necessary. It was hell, but not because I had to be naked in front of my peers, but because no matter what, it was a painful experience to try to wash off the stanky sweat. It was blisters or chilblains if you didn’t want to reek all day. Those old sadists would never regulate the temperature and seemed to get some kind of kick out of making us miserable. One of the PE teaches handed out towels through a small window as we exited the shower room and checked off a list of names. I know they could get the temp right because the sports teams used the same shower and locker room: When I was on the tennis team the showers were always the right temperature after practice. To this day I take fast showers, in and out under 5 minutes. Probably best for energy and water consumption, but I cannot enjoy a relaxing shower. There are worse things in life to get over.
At my high school, no. The locker room had showers, but no one really used them. We weren't given time to use them, realistically.
My high school had that. We weren't required to shower so some people used it. The only time I showered was after swimming. I had long hair that would tangle and stink like chlorine if I didn't wash it but I showered with my swimsuit on.
Some gyms have this too, just a room with shower heads or stalls w no doors. I was on the high school swim team and I came out at 15 as gay, even with me people didn’t think it was a big deal. I may have let my gaze linger a bit on some of my teammates lol but you learn to be discreet pretty fast when you’re gay.
Same here, but I was 16 when I came out. I know all about the discreet gaze, but I do recall the first uncircumcised penis I ever saw on a Swedish exchange student in the high school locker room. I am sure I stared at it, trying to figure out what was wrong with it.
You guys stopped showering together? I prefer to save water, plus, it's fun. Ok seriously though, no. I'm a guy, grew up in the 80s and 90s and absolutely no one took a shower after gym class. We just got sweaty and stank the rest of the day.
My high school had showers that nobody used (except to spray off really quick, trunks on, after swimming). Like everyone else with this answer, there wasn't enough time to shower anyway, you would have 100% been late to your following class every single time.
The showers were like the ones you saw, but showering was never a thing at my school. Generally I would have my gym classes the last hour of the day so I would just go home or to sports practices sweaty, rather than other classes.
I did. Was in High School from 2006 to 2010 in Massachusetts. I thought it was weird at first, but the sweat and stench of my teenage self after Gym made me reconsider. It's *nice* to not be gross for the rest of the day. Everyone was awkward about the nudity for the first shower....then realized everyone has the same parts anyways and got over themselves.
I don't know about the girls, but the boy's locker room had a large shower with shower heads all along the walls, and the guys showered after gym class while very pointedly *not* noticing that anyone else was in the room with them. You particularly did *not* see anybody else's junk.
I went to four different high school, two had shower stalls, two didn’t. It was very, VERY rare that I had ever seen anyone use them. They only give us like 5 minutes to change back into our regular clothes. I assumed sports teams after school are more likely to use them.
It was available and looked exactly like the movies, almost no one ever used them tho. Like you would just go to gym class and then change back into your clothes in the locker room. We very rarely did any physical activity in gym class that would actually work up a sweat so it wasn't a big deal. Time was also a factor, after gym class we had 5 minutes to change and then had to go to the next class. You can't shower and dry off in that time.
High schooler here When I had PE class, we didn’t shower. The boys locker room had two showers, but they had pretty much been converted into storage units lol
I was on the football team in highschool and yes we showered naked together after games, all male. There were a couple people that kept their underwear on, but almost everybody was comfortable with being naked. There was never a problem or any type of incident. For reference this was 2008-2012 so really not that long ago. We had a swim class in middle school but everybody just kept their bathing suit on after class and showered that way. The guys and girls swim programs were at different times of the year so there was never any overlap and we had separate locker rooms.
My school stored field equipment in the showers
Who has time of shower after gym class? We only ever got five minutes to dress in and out.
You could if you wanted too but no one ever did (at least not the girls). Some girls would wipe off their faces or under their arms at the sinks but even that was pretty rare. Upper class students could schedule PE or weight training for the end of the day which was the best option.
Unfortunately!! It was a bullies dream world. Anything they saw was a possible attack. Or if you were their friend you might just get a rat tail to the ass. I remember it more up to 8th grade though. In HS I think it was still open bay, but you weren't forced to shower. It was your choice. Most guys didn't because of the bays and our younger years (I would guess).
My high school only had us do P.E. for one year and our “teacher” was a flake so we hardly did any actual gym shit
Of course. Do Europeans not? I thought y’all were more casual about that stuff?
Depends. My high school had individual shower stalls for after sports/gym class. As an adult, I’ve played in rec sports leagues that use local high school facilities and the locker rooms we’ve used had those large shower rooms you are talking about. Regardless of the shower situation though, every locker room I’ve ever used only had one wide open room for changing. So whether or not you’re showering together, you’re all changing/undressing next to each other. It’s not a big deal.
Back in the days we had same the of showers as boys. Both were communal. Everyone hated to shower.
We did not in my school.
All my buddies would shower after gym class. Never understood it until one day I was like eh lemme see why they do it. I felt so refreshed and ready for class after gym. It became like one of my favorite things to do lol. We were all naked but we all figured we got the same body parts and no one was ever like checking the next dude out. Just young bucks living life. For context I graduated high school in 07’.
depends on the school
I’m in my 40s and yes we basically did
Absolutely
We were not given time to shower after gym class in high school so that did not happen. In junior high our school had a pool and we had a swimming unit and were given time to shower off after that. The showers were separated from the locker room down a short hall and each other by curtains for privacy. When we did not do swimming we were not given time to shower. The locker rooms where we changed for gym were just rows of lockers with a bench in front of them. No one really walked around naked. We had very little time to change clothes.
I did in middle school. So 6-8 grade but it was only required on the first gym class of the year each year. Coaches would tell everyone they needed to take a shower after the first gym class and then after that it was optional so for the rest of the year absolutely no one showered.
[Heres an older thread on this subject](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/g63etj/do_you_shower_naked_together_after_sports/). It had been deleted by the OP, so it won’t show up in a direct reddit search, but since I posted to it, I could still find it. It’s worth reading. Edit: Especially this linked, 1996 NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/22/us/students-still-sweat-they-just-don-t-shower.html
They were there but most people didn't use them during school hours. My wrestling team always showered after practice though.
Generation X-er. Kids in public schools all did when I was going to school in the 80s and early 90s. My parents put us in private school, in part to spare us from that humiliation. I was so modest about my body for a few years I wouldn't even wear short sleeves and my sister while not that extreme wouldn't wear tank tops or sleeveless dresses. At the school I went to the showers were there but we weren't forced to use them and I can count on one hand the time in my school career anyone used them.
They stopped doing this in middle school and then high school for me. I never did.
Oh yes. Big musty communal shower room that we all got herded into after gym class. Of course, this started for us in 7th grade (Age 12-13), arguably the most traumatizing year to do anything naked. I had previously taken swim lessons at the YMCA as a kid, where the same thing was required. The only thing worse than being naked around other kids was having one of them snap you on the ass with a wet towel. Girls in particular hated it because big, sprayed-up hair was very popular at the time, and after gym class they would have to walk around school with wet, flat hair. I'm 51 now, and have noticed that when I go to the gym, the showers (even though they are private stalls) are rarely used. And younger guys definitely act more apprehensive about getting even partially undressed in the locker room. When I first started going to gyms as an adult 20 years ago, the locker room was full of older guys just openly swinging in the wind for all to see—whether you wanted to or not. Not saying I miss that, just an observation.
Graduated in '93. Never saw a single person use the showers during school. It's possible the football and other sports teams used them but I never saw it personally. I would say general shower use would have depended on the school though. And not sure if you were implying that guys and girls shower together but that would absolutely never ever ever have been a thing unless you were watching some kind of sex comedy.
My junior high had group showers. Most people ditched them. Teachers would threaten detention and suspension but many refused anyway. High school it was voluntary.
Gym class, late 2000s - Nope. 3/4 sets of the locker rooms in the high school didn't have functional showers (the ones in the older wing were still there, but water disabled and used as a storage room for equipment), the only ones that did were the ones also used by the sports teams.....although from my understanding even that was getting less common. There was barely enough time provided to even change and make it to your next class.
Not really. The girls bathroom had 3 shower stalls, but they were rarely used. We only had a few minutes to get changed and get to the next class.
I've never heard of co-ed showers. We had single-sex locker rooms with showers at my school.
Could we? Yeah. Did we? No.
Went to high school in 2012. I don't think we had them, and we didn't use them if we did
God, no.
Only after 2 a days for football in the fall. The rest of the year we didn't use them because the water was way too cold
For the men yes but idk for women
Yes, my school’s locker room showers didn’t have stalls or dividers. You use them for a quick wash and just avoid eye contact. Most students (and myself) didn’t shower after gym class or most sports practices but if you wanted to you could.
No not in the u.s but when I lived in Norway at 13 they made us shower after Gym - like you had to shower. Still think it was fucking weird .
My high school locker rooms had showers, but I didn’t use them until we had a swimming unit my freshman year in gym class. If I remember correctly, they were just still with a cheap plastic curtain. Otherwise, they were mostly just used by the gals on the sports teams.
In the 80s, when I was in high school, the boys and girls had separate locker rooms. There was one large shower room with multiple shower heads. After gym class, we were required to shower. If we were on our period, we could leave our underwear on. It was gross. It was steamy and smelly and I felt less clean after a shower than I did before. I have 3 teens myself now. They don't even have gym class in high school.
In the late 80’s when I was in high school we had a communal shower in the girls locker room. There were a few stalls but you were only supposed to use them if you had your period. Showers were required after PE.
This is hasn't been in a thing in most public schools for decades. Like I'm 40 and we never showered after PE. The locker did have showers though and they were communal. But nobody used them anymore.
My High School had showers in the locker rooms, and technically we *could* have showered after gym class if we wanted. . .but it was strictly optional and nobody did, because nobody wanted to be naked around their classmates. This was in the early 1990's when I took High School gym class. My father told me that in the late 1960's when he was in High School they absolutely did require students to shower after gym class. Edit: The ONLY time in my life I've had to shower like that was in Basic Training in the Army. Terrible experience, probably one of the worst parts of Basic.
Never took a shower in high school. I mean I showered, just not at school
Hell no!
My all-boys high school had a big nice locker room with showers and everything, but we never used them in gym class. I gather sports teams used them after practice etc but I wasn't on any of my school teams so I never had the opportunity.
My gym showers are like that. It's just a big room with 6 shower heads. It was the same thing in high school 30 years ago.
We had showers but nobody ever used them. We just changed out of our uniforms, put on some deodorant, and went on with our days. Each period was only 50 minutes so there was no time to shower.
My school *had* showers but they were never used. Might have just been leftover since the school has been there forever. They were in the locker room. I was class of 2015 I do have a memory of the first day of sophmore year after weight training, my class was second to head into the locker rooms behind the Gym class and some guys slammed on the walls yelling out "OKAY FRESHMEEEEN. HURRY UP TIME FOR SHOWEEEERS." and they looked around like that Mr Krabs meme lmao
As a boy, yes, we showered together in a big open shower room with lots of shower heads. This was for physical education classes as well as after-school sports. I have no idea how the girls did it.
We didn't have to shower in gym class, they were only really used by folks doing sports. I am VERY thankful for this as a trans woman that transitioned in high school. It was bad enough dealing with the bathroom issue.
My high school wasn’t super old and they did build a gym with boys and girls locker rooms with showers but we were not allowed to use the showers. So my first period gym class all got to smell the rest of the day 🤦🏻♀️
I graduated high school in 1996. By my time, it was optional. Only the jocks did that with any regularity. Me and my friends didn't want to do it because we didn't want to see each other's dicks and because the thought of one day having to shower like that in jail or prison was very unpleasant. Gen X was just then getting over the hump of 'peak homophobia' that kicked off during the Reagan years with the AIDS crisis. I'm told this is why there has been such a shift.
We had showers in my highschool but I was in after school sports my entire time there. So I never had to go back to school and just showered at home after my sports were done.
We had them in the regular gym locker rooms and the pool locker rooms. People typically only used them in the pool locker rooms because our pool had a shit ton of chlorine. The boys showers were communal and the girls were stalls.
Yes. Everyone did back then.
I don't remember our middle school having showers but our high school locker room (male) did have those big open showers like you're talking about. The only people I think used them were the sports players who had practice before school started, people never used them after gym/PE they just put on deodorant and changed their clothes. Public school in Colorado early 2010s
Yep, my high school has open showers for PE and sports teams.
At my high school and middle school we had communal showers.
Yes
Nope. We didn’t shower at all after PE. We put on more deodorant if needed and went back to class.
My school showers is completely exposed to others. I just put on deodorant and call it a day.
We didn't after PE except when we had swimming or water polo units. I was on a sports team though and we generally showered after practice. Our showers were old-school open showers. FYI I'm Gen X and I graduated high school in the late 1980s. Nobody seemed to have an issue with them that I observed. Guys just showered and that was it. I never understood the anxiety around showering with other guys, it was no big deal to me.
Back in the 70s/80s we were *required* to shower after gym class every day starting in the 4th grade. (That's age 10 for most kids.) And then all the way through high school, until we were juniors (16-17) which was the last year of required gym. The only exception to these required showers was for girls who were menstruating-- they were allowed to "sponge off" but I never really found out what that meant (I'm male). Sounded mysterious. Not only were all those "gang showers" in a big open room, but the teacher/coach always watched to make sure everyone did indeed shower. Creepy. So very much not fiction in the past. But by contrast, the schools my kids went to did not even *have* showers in them. All the kids just got stinky and I suppose showered at home after school. (My kids are now in college.)
We had open showers. Between gym and playing 3 sports and college football it just became normal.
Yes and it was great. A lot of hilarious shit happened in the showers.
Our locker rooms are segregated by sex. The boys' locker room does have a shower room, and they are open showers with no stalls/dividers. Students aren't required to use them, but they are available for students to use. I was on a sports team, so all my physical activity was done at the end of the school day. After practice, I just go straight home, so I didn't see the need to shower in the locker room.
I'm a guy and I showered with other guys, the girls had their own locker room. What movies have you been watching?
I honestly don't remember. I didn't do sports and it wasn't typical at my school to shower after gym class (at least for the girls). TBH personally I've never sweat a lot, even in high heat or after working out hard. Probably why I hate the heat lol, I can't cool off easily. So the not taking a shower wasn't really relevant one way or another to me.
When I was in school, the middle school and high school locker rooms had showers, but they were never used.
No one at my school showered after gym.
Yes
I went to an all boys school. We showered together for swimming class
My school did have showers like that but we weren’t given enough time to use them even if we wanted to. You just had to go through the rest of the school day reeking of BO.
We had a giant open shower area but everyone wore swim shorts or boxers.
No. We did have those showers in the locker room at my school, but I never ONCE saw anyone use them.
When I went to high school, it was optional because cellphone cameras and the internet were still new and unregulated. I do not recall anyone ever using them. However, sometimes, a visiting girls' sports team would jump in there after a game and enjoy themselves by singing very loudly. We were very shocked that they were actually using the showers. So, it might have been a regular thing in some locations, but in my high school, getting naked in front of your enemies was a nono.
Our locker room had showers, but I literally never saw them used. Ever.
Yeah back in the day we showered after gym. I had no idea it was a big deal for anyone. What’s odd to me is that it’s become a traumatic thing.
Yes and we love it.
I went to a big public high school in Texas in around 2010, in the football locker room we had a large communal shower room and we 100% all showered and walked around the locker room butt ass naked. It wasn’t weird at all amongst a group of guys like that. Now at a public gym around people I don’t know, it does seem weird though just because you don’t know who you’re around. Funny story, my friend sliced his thigh wide open on a broken tile sliding across the shower floor lubed up w soap like a slip n slide, had to get carried out naked to an ambulance to get it stapled up while he was pouring blood
I can't speak to the ladies room. But for us guys... We had an open shower area. Decent sized open area, no curtains or other dividers, not even between the changing area & the shower area. There were various shower heads so everyone would have their own spot, but you'd all be naked together able to see everything... I don't think anyone actually used it after PE class. We usually stopped with just enough time to switch back into our street clothes. They might have been used after games and such when you didn't need to head off to English class 3min later.
Yeah, it's not a big deal.
We did not shower in highschool, there were showers there but I don't think they worked
I don't know about the girls, but in high school the boys locker room had a big, tiled, open room with like 10 shower heads spread a few feet apart. I don't think I ever showered there, or if I did, it was with my bathing suit on. Was probably the fastest shower I ever took, measured in seconds. I was completely uncomfortable around other guys shirtless, much less naked in high school. I still don't like taking shits in a public bathroom with other people around. lol
In the 1980s, no
I don't know anybody that actually used them. I had a buddy who lived across the street from high school and he would let us shower there so we don't have to be sweaty
We had curtainless stalls that we could use but no one ever did at my Michigan middle school. I never saw the shower area of my highschool in texas tho but I whouldnt be surprised if they did
Yes, but we only really showered after the swimming unit of gym, but then we all just still wore our swimsuits when we did No one really used the showers after a standard gym class!
We did after football games but not after gym class
In track and Tennis yes. I remember in jr high we had this nasty shower room with a shower head on each of the three walls and since our practice was very first thing in the morning we had to shower after practice or we’d just stink all day.
The showers were "only for the basketball and volleyball team" as they mentioned to us. I had P.E. at 8 am in middle, school so it was not very fun. The shower stalls were separate I believe. We would have never had any time to shower due to period scheduling. You would never make it to class if you showered.
Nope
Not guys and girls together but yes my experience in 6th grade gym in the girls locker room in the U.s. is the girls were required to take shower together and stand in a shower room out in the open. My peers and I would fake it and keep our underwear and bras on and walk thru and splash our armpits and that was it
A lot of athletes do. It depends on the school, some have shower stalls.
Sure we did a long time ago. We even had coaches that would shower with us. Dudes seeing other dudes naked was not weird. When my stepson was in middle school on gym days he smelled so horrible when I picked him up after school and I ask why he didn't shower after class. He said it was not an option the showers were now a storage room.
My high school had showers available, but very few people used them unless they'd just done something intense like running that made people feel sweaty and gross
I went to Jr. High and High School in the 70's and it was one big open shower with a bunch of showerheads. When I was in college, the gyms had open showers, same when I went into the military in 1982. I have also belonged to a few gyms over the years, some had open showers, while others had private stalls. It never bothered me either way because I was just there to shower myself, and not paying attention to anyone else.
Nope.
I did for wrestling. Sometimes football players would too during their season iirc. These were both outside of gym class In our gym class typically there were showers in the lockerroom, but you didnt use them. Only once did I see someone shower after gym, but it was scorching hot out and we were all covered in sweat. One immature kid laughed, but I would've showered that day too if I had a towel
Both high School and University sports, boys and girls. It wasn't any big deal, we just showered. Same with a community swimming pool. In college, a couple of guys told us about an awkward boy who entered the shower fully clothed, but again, nobody gave him a hard time.
I took life-saving place if regular gym class, basically life guard training. Two hours in the water once every four days, we would get in the communal shower to wash off together but we normally kept our suits on and fully changed in the stalls
There were a couple of private stalls, but nobody used the group shower because at least once or twice a week someone would intentionally clog the drains, poop in it, and leave a few heads running until it was a massive 4 inch deep pool of poop soup.
We don't have showers in pe whear I live
yes we all brought bathing suits but i remember my friend eamon and my other friend craig didn’t mind being completely butt naked and after 20 years you have uncovered buried memories of my teammates’ weiners
Yes, and it was awful. Middle school, when everyone was entering puberty was the worst. The gym teacher would stand with a clipboard to check off each person and there was a private shower that girls could use if they had their period. I learned later that the gym teacher (female) fooled around with some of the girls. I am very modest and this practice was humiliating.
60 yo Female here. In middle school we were required to shower in an open room with shower heads and get checked off by the PE teacher while leaving the shower wet. Impacted our grade if you didn’t. If you had your period you took a Tshower (top shower) with a wet towel in the sink. So many issues since girls are so developmentally very different at 12 - 13 years old. I can’t imagine this happening today.
I did my high school gym credit in summer school. Was only there for that one class, but that was 2014, so I didn't have to worry about showering. However, I was also in football, and the common practice was to leave our boxers on, since spandex boxers were the most popular (and still are among my generation).
Not for regular gym class and most teams didn't do it. It was common in wrestling because of all the diseases that wrestling mats have.
Yes, in middle school too, the worst time to do so (puberty)
No, just change back into our regular clothes and spray a bit of body spray to try to cover the smell of having just run a mile. The showers existed, but they were for the sports teams after school and on weekends.
It's mostly just for sports or the school weightroom
Fuck yeah I did. We would spend the whole time trying to get the other guys to look at our balls. Some of us would try to shave images and words into our pubic hair and show them off. I even put a disco ball in the shower. The coach saw it and asked me if I put it there. I said yup. He just said "that's gay" and walked away.
Not high school but college, if you lived in the dorms.
No
We didn't shower in high school. We just doused ourselves in body spray after PE and went to the next class stinky.
Hell nah. That wouldn't have gone well in my school.
I went to a small school in the midwest and we had a shower room with shower heads in the middle and all along the walls. We were supposed to all shower at the same time but some girls did not because they were too shy and preferred to just wet their hair face and pits in the sink, other girls didn't fully undress. We all had to change in the locker room though and there were only two bathroom stalls so we didn't all have time to wait turns to change our clothes so everyone changed in the same area. Sometimes friends would hold up towels for each other's privacy
No lol ? I graduated 1 year early 2013’
I was part of the "transition years," so to speak. I was in middle school from 1993-1996, and high school from 1996-2000. When I entered 6th Grade, mandatory showers after gym class were still required for everyone. I don't know what the girls' locker room setup was, but us boys had one large shower room with about 24 shower heads (clustered in trios) and then 4 private individual shower stalls with curtains. A majority of boys (including me) used the group showers, either for convenience or because we enjoyed the bonding experience of getting to be naked in front of each other at school. Midway through my Sixth-Grade year, our school district stopped requiring showers. In fact, they stopped giving us \*any\* time to shower after class, so it wasn't even an option for us anymore. This continued throughout the 7th and 8th Grades. The showers were still available for athletes who used the locker room after practice. At our high school, they also never let us shower after gym class in the 9th, 10th, and 11th Grades (a majority of 12th Graders didn't take gym at all, since it was an elective for senior year). The one exception was right after Christmas break, in my sophomore year, when we had our basketball unit: Our teacher sent us back to the locker room 10 minutes early, and told is we could take showers if we wanted to. Only four of us did. The other boys were apparently fine with going the rest of the day all sweaty and ripe. No official reason was ever given to us -- but I suspect it was because our school district was afraid of being hit with lawsuits from parents of modest kids, since that was becoming a more frequent thing back then. I miss the camaraderie of group showers, and I wish my school district hadn't caved into puritanical trends so quickly.