Girls gone naked: Going a second lap without swimsuits
Tales of high school trauma spur hard-to-believe legends
If we accomplished nothing else with Tuesday's column about the once common practice of naked swimming in Chicago area high schools, we at least helped a whole bunch of parents creep out their children.
You'd better believe that a generation of kids brought up to disdain even showering after gym class are going to have trouble facing the reality that their fathers and grandfathers swam naked in high school, in some cases possibly in the same swimming pools where they now swim.
But the truth is we've accomplished much more, not only starting the healing process for all those once self-conscious boys required to swim au naturel, but also for the women who want it known they had their own cross to bear in swim class.
There's not enough space to print all the letters, but let me make a few observations before I give you a sampling.
First, every school seems to have some version of the crack in the blinds, or the peephole in the curtain or some other secret vantage point from which the girls were supposedly checking out the boys in the pool. I would make note, however, that no girls have come forward to say they actually did this.
Also, every school has some version of the legend of the guy who became aroused during swim class and was forced by the instructor to stand or lie down on the diving board until the condition passed. Again, though, there seems to be a shortage of actual eyewitnesses.
Lastly, everyone has heard a different reason for why this was the policy, but no matter the explanation offered, everybody just accepted it -- because that's what people did then. Read on.
"Trust me. Swim class was no more fun for the girls than the boys. I went to Foreman H.S. in the '60s and was a teeny 75-pound, 13-year-old when I started. Most of the girls were older, voluptuous Italian girls which was bad enough, but then I found out the swimsuits were color coded by your, ahem, bust size, so everyone pretty much got that picture right away. The smallest suits were black. They were shapeless cotton tank suits that were so old and stretched out you were required to bring a shoelace to tie the straps in the back so the suit wouldn't fall off in the pool. Getting to the pool was traumatic. You had to take a shower. The gym teachers would come around, pull back the curtain, and you'd have to turn around to show you were soaped up everywhere and let them look at the bottom of your feet to make sure they were clean. We didn't really know that the boys didn't like it either. I feel a little better now."
Linda Salecker
"We girls may have had swimsuits, but we also had to strip naked, line up for the shower, shower, line up again to prove we were wet and naked and only then were we given a swimsuit. Once you had your swimsuit, while standing in line, you put it on. Just letting the boys know we too had our humiliating swimming experience."
Cynthia Purcell
"Every time this subject has come up (for whatever reason), my wife always has to make sure that I discuss this with people because they don't believe me! It was thought that only all-boys Catholic schools did this. I graduated from Riverside-Brookfield H.S. in 1976, and of course, in 1977, this all changed as they started co-ed gym! I don't think it was that bad or humiliating. It was just the norm and you went with it."
Phil Dorner, La Grange Park
"As a '67 grad of Fenger, I too recall those weird days of naked swim class for boys. It wasn't just the class itself that was strange. It was the rumor that the cheerleading squad had a secret viewing area at poolside. The worst, however, was the pre-pool ritual of checking each swimmer to ensure that an effective pre-pool shower had been taken. One gym teacher had a method that was used on each teen. He would rub his thumb on the inside forearm to see if any grime would appear. If it did, it was back to the showers. As a onetime 'grimy,' this was just an addition to the "walk of shame.''
Gary Fox, Mount Prospect
"Attended John F. Kennedy High School in from 1977-1981. The boys swam naked. No one ever believes me! My 15-year-old son was horrified when I told him this story. Now I have some validation. I always wondered if these boys were traumatized. Why the parents never complained is beyond me."
Kathleen Moore
"My son is a freshman in high school taking swimming for the first time, and he did not believe me when I told him we swam naked at Thornton. We learned early in high school to question the idea that 'all men are created equal.' "
David McAley