OMG! Trauma unlocked 🔓 We had to do this as girls in middle school as well. It was bad enough…some girls self conscious about over development and others flat as a board😵💫 Who EVER thought this was a good idea for fragile middle school kids with self esteem issues?!?🤦🏼♀️ Good golly I would have preferred this memory to stayed buried! Thanks!☺️
Absolutely the same in the 70’s. Girls were already under the cloud of the “in crowd” girls and the rest of us. Comparing who was more developed and looking better did not help with the ugly stage of hormones due to puberty hitting us all at different ages. Just awkward as hell.
I love this so much! Yes, indeed, girls - at least this girl - felt as shitty about the whole ordeal as you described. It didn't help that my athletic prowess fell on the negative side of those number lines. I was pretty sure there was some perversion going on as my eighth grade PE teacher, Miss Dye, kept track of our periods. You could opt out of that humiliating communal shower if it was your time of the month and Miss Dye had a physical record of when you opted out on her handy dandy clipboard. Pity the young women who had not yet experienced the joy that is beginning one's menses (insert snark here). They showered every day come hell or cold water. And those gym issued towels - no bigger than a postage stamp - and no fun for those who could have used a beach towel. P.E. was required from seventh through 12th grade where I attended school. I'm not sure it ever felt comfortable. Talk about anxiety and self consciousness. A lesson in empathy for totally losing one's dignity. There must be a more effective method of teaching that lesson. The athlete's foot fungus - just a fringe benefit.
If you think thats bad try being a teenage girl who got her first period in that communal shower torture maze (literally we had to run through 3 shower halls with only one exit and a cold blast at the end). You wanted to die.
In my middle school the gym teacher would move a chair in front of open showers and watch the girls shower, you had to open your towel in front of her and she would touch your skin to make sure it was wet. I refused, I knew it was creepy as f. The administration didn’t care.
As a teenage girl of the 60’s I still remember how traumatic being so exposed was at those stupid PE showers. You’re told all your life up until then to be clothed
I was like you but was in a church 3x a week cult.
Very shy, tiny, keeping the towel wrapped up high & shocked at all of the different shapes & sizes of my schoolmates. It was in gym class in 8th grade that I was horrified to learn that if I ever got married that my husband would see me naked.
Then I drove my bug to Oregon & bathed naked in the hotsprings everywhere, as it wasn't gym class anymore. My therapy. Good luck.
Christonnabike! Palpitations. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do PE if I could get out of it. I started puberty at 8yo. No way in hell was I going through that humiliation. Bad enough in Junior school. School centenary. Dressed in Victorian costume, dancing round a Maypole. A foot taller than everyone else and already in a C cup. Some twat had a cine camera. The torture of watching it in assembly with everyone laughing at my bounciness. I was convinced I'd been stolen as a baby and was actually 5 years older than they said I was. Never got half fare on the bus or at cinemas ..... I hated my life.
Haha. The locker room showers were definitely an American rite of passage. I have my own nostalgic story about that, but this is your thread, Jason. Still, kudos to you for stating another hardwired truth.
Love this piece Jason! Such a trauma-filled time. My first PE teacher was a girl that dated my oldest brother. As far as I know, he broke her heart, and was on a revenge tour after he broke up with her. She had me doing things in the pool and the gym that I was in no way capable of doing. It was so stressful, but I never told anyone. About a year ago, I saw a pic of her now old and severely disabled looking, while I am fully mobile, active, etc. Maybe it’s better to be a late bloomer.
Oh my, those memories still haunt me 40 years later. Especially the part when we had to give the teacher our name upon entrance to the group shower while trying desperately to cover our boobs and crotch. She would then check off our name sitting there with a creepy smile on her face. My question is why? Just why was this necessary?
Just as creepy for the girls! The PE teachers would stand there with their clipboard and put a checkmark by our names as we came out wet from the showers wrapped in our little tiny towels. The well built girls didn’t mind and the insecure girls were all hunched over. We also had to share a dressing cubicle with a girl that just got randomly assigned. Lots of cubicle swapping went on. Lots of body shaming went on. Nope-no door on that cubicle! The late 60s and early 70s really sucked big in someways and we’re a lot of fun in others!
For me in the 60's it just seemed like standard practice and didn't bother me at all. Growing up with 5 brothers we all bathed together a lot of the time in 2's or 3's.
OMG! Trauma unlocked 🔓 We had to do this as girls in middle school as well. It was bad enough…some girls self conscious about over development and others flat as a board😵💫 Who EVER thought this was a good idea for fragile middle school kids with self esteem issues?!?🤦🏼♀️ Good golly I would have preferred this memory to stayed buried! Thanks!☺️
Absolutely the same in the 70’s. Girls were already under the cloud of the “in crowd” girls and the rest of us. Comparing who was more developed and looking better did not help with the ugly stage of hormones due to puberty hitting us all at different ages. Just awkward as hell.
I love this so much! Yes, indeed, girls - at least this girl - felt as shitty about the whole ordeal as you described. It didn't help that my athletic prowess fell on the negative side of those number lines. I was pretty sure there was some perversion going on as my eighth grade PE teacher, Miss Dye, kept track of our periods. You could opt out of that humiliating communal shower if it was your time of the month and Miss Dye had a physical record of when you opted out on her handy dandy clipboard. Pity the young women who had not yet experienced the joy that is beginning one's menses (insert snark here). They showered every day come hell or cold water. And those gym issued towels - no bigger than a postage stamp - and no fun for those who could have used a beach towel. P.E. was required from seventh through 12th grade where I attended school. I'm not sure it ever felt comfortable. Talk about anxiety and self consciousness. A lesson in empathy for totally losing one's dignity. There must be a more effective method of teaching that lesson. The athlete's foot fungus - just a fringe benefit.
If you think thats bad try being a teenage girl who got her first period in that communal shower torture maze (literally we had to run through 3 shower halls with only one exit and a cold blast at the end). You wanted to die.
In my middle school the gym teacher would move a chair in front of open showers and watch the girls shower, you had to open your towel in front of her and she would touch your skin to make sure it was wet. I refused, I knew it was creepy as f. The administration didn’t care.
As a teenage girl of the 60’s I still remember how traumatic being so exposed was at those stupid PE showers. You’re told all your life up until then to be clothed
I was always a really skinny kid and developed late. And I spent the ages of 5-16 years in the Jehovahs Witness cult.
So I always tried to change in the toilet stalls. That was not always successful and I spent a good bit of Middle School locked naked in a gym locker.
Not that this helps, but know that you were/are not alone.
And also, thank you for unlocking that memory. Now I have something new to talk to my therapist about this week 😕
I was like you but was in a church 3x a week cult.
Very shy, tiny, keeping the towel wrapped up high & shocked at all of the different shapes & sizes of my schoolmates. It was in gym class in 8th grade that I was horrified to learn that if I ever got married that my husband would see me naked.
Then I drove my bug to Oregon & bathed naked in the hotsprings everywhere, as it wasn't gym class anymore. My therapy. Good luck.
Breitenbush?
I eventually lived there for 9 months in 1980! Good guess btw 🙌
Christonnabike! Palpitations. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do PE if I could get out of it. I started puberty at 8yo. No way in hell was I going through that humiliation. Bad enough in Junior school. School centenary. Dressed in Victorian costume, dancing round a Maypole. A foot taller than everyone else and already in a C cup. Some twat had a cine camera. The torture of watching it in assembly with everyone laughing at my bounciness. I was convinced I'd been stolen as a baby and was actually 5 years older than they said I was. Never got half fare on the bus or at cinemas ..... I hated my life.
Ps. UK
Thanks for reminding me about gym class-fun times! Brought back those early 70's vibes! 😝
Haha. The locker room showers were definitely an American rite of passage. I have my own nostalgic story about that, but this is your thread, Jason. Still, kudos to you for stating another hardwired truth.
I am old enough to have been subjected to the group shower trauma. Gives an alternative and unpleasant meaning to the term comparative anatomy.
Love this piece Jason! Such a trauma-filled time. My first PE teacher was a girl that dated my oldest brother. As far as I know, he broke her heart, and was on a revenge tour after he broke up with her. She had me doing things in the pool and the gym that I was in no way capable of doing. It was so stressful, but I never told anyone. About a year ago, I saw a pic of her now old and severely disabled looking, while I am fully mobile, active, etc. Maybe it’s better to be a late bloomer.
Lord, I remember communal showers for the boys / girls swim teams in the 90s.
No lie... Has this even changed?!?!
Oh my, those memories still haunt me 40 years later. Especially the part when we had to give the teacher our name upon entrance to the group shower while trying desperately to cover our boobs and crotch. She would then check off our name sitting there with a creepy smile on her face. My question is why? Just why was this necessary?
Just as creepy for the girls! The PE teachers would stand there with their clipboard and put a checkmark by our names as we came out wet from the showers wrapped in our little tiny towels. The well built girls didn’t mind and the insecure girls were all hunched over. We also had to share a dressing cubicle with a girl that just got randomly assigned. Lots of cubicle swapping went on. Lots of body shaming went on. Nope-no door on that cubicle! The late 60s and early 70s really sucked big in someways and we’re a lot of fun in others!
When my brother was in high school in the 70’s he was on the swim team. Everyday they walked over to the YMCA pool and always practiced naked. Weird
For me in the 60's it just seemed like standard practice and didn't bother me at all. Growing up with 5 brothers we all bathed together a lot of the time in 2's or 3's.