The Tacoma News Tribune ran a story in the paper recently chronicling the poor hygiene of student athletes. Apparently, kids these days prefer not to shower in the locker room where God and everybody can stare and point at their private bits while they lather, rinse and repeat.
Imagine!
I still cannot shake the horror of sixth grade and the required showers we had to take after physical education (P.E.) class. I was already mortified by the changes hormones had wrought. I disguised my womanly curves in a large blue down coat during classes.
But in P.E., after stripping off our required uniforms of white shorts, white t-shirts and white tube socks, we were all expected to disrobe, scurry into the showers, make sure that the teacher saw us unclothed, dab ourselves dry with skimpy towels, pull on our clothing and run off to class.
(This was very problematic for my hairstyle–the feathered bangs went awry after contact with my sweaty forehead. How is a girl supposed to look cute when her hair is wonky? Thus is the root of my social inadequacies in sixth grade.)
I might have died of embarrassment, if embarrassment could kill. A perceptive girl quoted in the article points out that the lack of showering by student athletes “might be self-consciousness.”
“I’ve never seen girls shower in the locker room,” said Kylie Marshall, a volleyball standout at Emerald Ridge High. “It might be self-consciousness. If I were to even think about it, I’d wear a bathing suit. In society, we’re not taught to be comfortable being naked in the public showers.”
Marshall, who also plays on a select volleyball team, said that she and her teammates come to those practices in their gear. Sweats come off before practice and go back on after practice before heading home to shower.
“I think guys are more open and don’t really care,” Marshall said. “With girls, it goes back to the olden days where were brought up to be more conservative.”
Um, the “olden days”? Were the “olden days” back in 1992? Where are these modest conservative girls of which she speaks?
Everywhere I go, I see girls’ bellybuttons, cleavage, tight t-shirts and jeans (or mini-skirts) outlining their bodies.
We see mostly naked people on network television these days and pixilated naked people on basic cable channels. Not a whole lot is left to the imagination . . . and yet, kids these days are too modest to shower?
We’re told that more than half of American teenagers engage in oral s*x, and they are shy about their bodies? They aren’t comfortable “being naked in the public showers”?
We hear all about MySpace, where teenagers post suggestive photographs of themselves. And yet–they refuse to shower at school?
What an odd collision of facts. Fashions have become less and less modest, leaving nothing to the imagination, really, and yet, kids refuse to shower because someone might see them?
I wonder if teenagers are just more self-conscious, aware that their bodies don’t measure up to the image of perfection bombarding us in the media. I suspect that’s closer to the truth–it’s not about modesty, it’s about their own perceived imperfections.
Whatever the reason they abstain from school showers, who can blame them? I only wish I’d been able to do the same.
Actual Unretouched Photo 
I was always the “new kid”…3 different middle schools, 3 different high schools. PE was agony for me because I developed early. I can remember one day in 8th grade when 3 popular girls snickered and pointed at me and said, “Look at the boobs on HER!” like I was a milk cow or something…and everybody turned to stare at my chest. Then they had the audacity to ask to use my deodorant…and I was so mortified and intimidated by them I handed it silently over to them. Boy, if I could go back and do it over NOW — well, let’s just say this sassy ol’ granny wouldn’t let ’em get away with it. Pills!
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Thankfully our shower facilities were so gross that our PE teacher couldn’t possibly justify forcing us to use them. I was raised to feel nothing but shame about my own body and I would have it no other way!
You’re totally right that it makes absolutely no sense that today generation of skimpy Brittney-raised kids are not self conscious about parading themselves naked in public, yet take issue with showering in front of other girls.
Just after I made it past the age of required gym class, our school started a swimming unit of gym class. They issued bathing suits–as it swimming in front of your classmates in used bathing suits wasn’t bad enough, they were color coded by size. Inexplicably, they were white for large, red for medium and black for small.
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In junior high we “showered” with our PE clothes still on. Stick a leg in. Stick a leg out. Stick in an arm. Stick in the other arm. It was more of a limb rinse. Dry off with a gray (once white, perhaps) 12 inch by 18 inch towel.
If I had a child that age, I would encourage him or her to shower at home and not at the school.
I wonder if half the kids in America truly engage in oral s*x? I remember filling out drug surveys during homeroom in high school. Many kids made a huge joke of it—filling in the little bubbles to claim they did all sorts of drugs when they didn’t.
Ewwww to Sarah’s comment. Suddenly I am glad my high school didn’t have a swimming pool.
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Updated link. You’re in my blogroll now… 🙂
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Clothing, no matter how skimpy, is still clothing and being self conciously naked in front of a bunch of strangers is more than media induced ideas of perfection.
Americans have always been made to think the naked body is not to be seen. (Do we have topless beaches here?) This attitude harkens back to our Puritanical roots and maybe the ‘astute’ teenager actually was being astute.
Add on to that the age old tradition of girls being so incredibly cruel to each other. Clothing may change, creulty among girls probably won’t.
I was never forced to take a shower and no one did. Every once in a while some girl would take a shower. That was back in the mid to late 70s when skimpy clothes and free love sans AIDS were everywhere. I imagine back then the same percentage of teenagers engaged in oral sex too.
I would even wager there were plenty of ‘older’ folks back in 1975 wondering the very same thing you are wondering now.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
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Mopsy, that sounds like an interesting twist on the Hokey Pokey! 😀
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Hey… it’s not just the chicks.
I had, and still do have issues with public locker rooms and showers. i never, EVER showered in the high school locker rooms, and I arrive at the gym in my sweats, ready to go, and leave, making only a brief stop in the locker room.
I can’t explain the reasoning, but hey, maybe it has something to do with the unbashful males propping a nekkid leg on a bench to dry, dangling their grapes of wrath all over the place.
I’ve always had an aversion to public-nudity, with the exception of strip-clubs, of course.
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