School Showers in front of others after PE

peasant

jill_valentine wrote: »

I'd also say it's different in that if somebody makes a laugh of your hair or clothes, you can at least console yourself that you won't have either forever - whereas something like this can have fairly deep rooted and long term consequences for somebody's budding body image.

You won't have your pimples* forever either. Also, nature is quite fair in this respect ...bullies get pimples too

*substitute pimples with big dicks/small dicks/babyfat/pubic hair/no pubic hair/breasts/no breasts as required

I would say that trying to shelter children/teenagers from their own body is much more harmful to their body image than simply accepting that everyone has a naked body under their clothes and that no body is perfect.

Chaotic_Forces

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

So many prudes.

I just got out of the shower and am sitting naked in front of the PC. I just walked past an electrician who's in doing some work and neither of us batted an eyelid.

You know, if nudity was more common & socially accepted, then being seen nude wouldn't be a big deal to most. It's the very fact that it isn't 'normal' that makes it 'traumatic' for so many.

Yeah well when you're a kid and y ou get bullied over it, then let's see who's a "prude"

ya-ba-da-ba-doo

Denzil2222 wrote: »

There was some man on 4 live on RTE ONE the other day talking about school bullying he said one type of bullying thats very common is using a camara phone to take a photo of someone in the showers after pe, Wtf? irish schools dont have open showers with no privacy in school what planet was this chap living on? Also why does every rte lifestyle show have tina leonard on?

Yes they do.

Herbal Deity

Chaotic_Forces wrote: »

Yeah well when you're a kid and y ou get bullied over it, then let's see who's a "prude"

Generally, one's age increases over time, not the opposite.

jill_valentine

peasant wrote: »

I would say that trying to shelter children/teenagers from their own body is much more harmful to their body image than simply accepting that everyone has a naked body under their clothes and that no body is perfect.

That's not always how it works though. It's a formative time - when you're in your teens, you're still building up the bedrock of their self-image. Sheltering your kid is one thing - forcing them to sink or swim like that, whether they like it or not, is quite another and it can totally undermine what little confidence they already have.

It can f*ck you up good and proper, is what I mean. I know of a dude who had a nervous breakdown a while ago and the one event that kept coming up, over and over again, was an incident of bullying in the school showers that had happened years and years before. Now, obviously, he had other problems on top of that, but clearly that had left a huge impression on him that he'd never quite gotten over.

Stuff like this doesn't bother everyone, but it can be a big deal to some. I mean the kids who are going to fret about stuff like this are likely to be the shy kids bullies tend to target anyway, so why put them in that position?

Blitzkrieger

Cakesofrice wrote: »

Oh Yeh.. And we are suppose to were shorts in them too like football shorts or boxers.

We had that in our school too. The showers were open and there was only four shower heads. The done thing was to queue up and wait your turn. Some poor ****er in one of the other classes got a horn in the shower while waiting and never lived it down

TBH, I alternate between being very body shy and really not giving a ****. If I'm showering with the lads after soccer I can guarantee none of them wants to be looking at my naked body.

I can see how it'd be different for kids. On the one hand, if they're being bullied, the bully is probably going to find something else to torture them with, but circulating pictures of their junk is a whole other level.

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

I just got out of the shower and am sitting naked in front of the PC. I just walked past an electrician who's in doing some work and neither of us batted an eyelid.

I'm betting the electrician is your OH, otherwise that's well weird. Naked men almost never walk past me while I'm working.....

spurious

alan1990 wrote: »

We have communal showers at the gym I go to and you would often see grown men showering in a pair of jocks and then go out and get changed under a towel!!
I can half understand young teenagers in school doing this but not grown men!!

Until you're the grown man whose penis some teenager reports seeing pointing at him.
Then watch the fun start.

Celly Smunt

the gym i used to go to,the swimming pool was merged with the school p.e class so many a time you'd walk out of the shower and have a load of spotty 14 year olds staring at your manhood,on the upside it was nice to give them a size to aim for

peasant

jill_valentine wrote: »

I mean the kids who are going to fret about stuff like this are likely to be the shy kids bullies tend to target anyway, so why put them in that position?

Then those kids need help to deal with the bullies. Making them (and the bullies) wear shorts in the shower doesn't magically solve their problem, they'll get bullied anyway.
It might make them wonder however if underneath those shorts there might lurk yet another issue which they have to be self-conscious and worried about.
Hiding your body is never a good way to learn to accept it.

Dohnny Jepp

Gigidy

CrazyRabbit

Blitzkrieger wrote: »

I'm betting the electrician is your OH, otherwise that's well weird. Naked men almost never walk past me while I'm working.....

Well it wasn't intentional. I rent an apartment and the landlord had an electrician in to do some work. I knew the electrician was coming, but not that he had arrived yet.

CrazyRabbit

Chaotic_Forces wrote: »

Yeah well when you're a kid and y ou get bullied over it, then let's see who's a "prude"

Being naked doesn't cause bullying. Bullies cause bullying.

Chaotic_Forces

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

Being naked doesn't cause bullying. Bullies cause bullying.

Being naked gives them a target.

peasant

Chaotic_Forces wrote: »

Being naked gives them a target.

So does simply existing

Chaotic_Forces

peasant wrote: »

So does simply existing

True but let's face it; how many people are completely comfortable with their bodies? I'd say very, very few during that age. It'll be obvious that the bullies have hit a bullseye.

R0ot

I don't think I ever had a shower after PE ever, unless we were in the pool. :pac:

peasant

Chaotic_Forces wrote: »

True but let's face it; how many people are completely comfortable with their bodies? I'd say very, very few during that age. It'll be obvious that the bullies have hit a bullseye.

And you think that the bullies are in perfect harmony with their bodies at all times?
Often bullies are bullies because they are insecure themselves.

Not to put too fine a point on it ...nothing shuts up a bully better and longer than whipping out a willy that's twice his size, so the whole thing can work both ways

Edit:
I just can't accept the notion that shamefully hiding your nakedness somehow makes you more confident and better prepared to put up with bullying. It does the opposite.

Chaotic_Forces

peasant wrote: »

And you think that the bullies are in perfect harmony with their bodies at all times?
Often bullies are bullies because they are insecure themselves.

Not to put too fine a point on it ...nothing shuts up a bully better and longer than whipping out a willy that's twice his size, so the whole thing can work both ways

Edit:
I just can't accept the notion that shamefully hiding your nakedness somehow makes you more confident and better prepared to put up with bullying. It does the opposite.

I understand your point when you first made it. But you have to admit... no matter what way it is, forced showers (with out without swimming togs) is going to be a mess. Wear them and you're hiding something, go naked and "AH JAYSUS HE'S BLEEDIN' TINY!". Easier way is no forced showers.

peasant

Chaotic_Forces wrote: »

Easier way is no forced showers.

Next AH topic:

Why are Irish kids so smelly?

:D:D

nkay1985

peasant wrote: »

I just can't accept the notion that shamefully hiding your nakedness somehow makes you more confident and better prepared to put up with bullying. It does the opposite.

Yeah I'm with you on that. It'd make you more of a target. Even if you weren't comfortable with your body, the best thing you could do in that instance is do the same as everybody else and fake being comfortable.

Ann22

We had compulsory showers up 'til Junior Cert year, after that it was up to us. I dreaded the showers..being small and skinny and one of the last to wear a bra it was humiliating with my wee vest on show and all the big boobs around me:o.

When i did get one I struggled to open and close it while holding the towel around me (with nowt to hold it up:(). Awful it was..This one time I just pulled the straps down and went into the shower with the towel round me planning to stand out of the stream of water and pretend I'd washed. I closed the curtain and hung the towel on the nail outside it when to my horror and humiliation the teacher -big animal of a woman she was, like Miss Mann in Scary Movie..suddenly appeared, whipped the curtain back and dragged me out roaring and shouting at me to get my undies off...amidst much sniggering and nudging:(

Chaotic_Forces

Ann22 wrote: »

We had compulsory showers up 'til Junior Cert year, after that it was up to us. I dreaded the showers..being small and skinny and one of the last to wear a bra it was humiliating with my wee vest on show and all the big boobs around me:o.

When i did get one I struggled to open and close it while holding the towel around me (with nowt to hold it up:(). Awful it was..This one time I just pulled the straps down and went into the shower with the towel round me planning to stand out of the stream of water and pretend I'd washed. I closed the curtain and hung the towel on the nail outside it when to my horror and humiliation the teacher -big animal of a woman she was, like Miss Mann in Scary Movie..suddenly appeared, whipped the curtain back and dragged me out roaring and shouting at me to get my undies off...amidst much sniggering and nudging:(

That's bloody horrible.

And people wonder why there's a problem with showering in school....

Herbal Deity

I wish we'd been made have showers in school. There were showers there, but no one used them. We'd go for PE, and then return to class, sweaty and dirty, for another few hours.

We were indirectly being taught very poor hygiene.

I've been on a few sports teams where we showered after practice. Some people would shower in shorts/boxers, others would go naked (depending on the team, there would have been a leaning towards nudity or covering up), and I never witnessed any bullying over it.

Risteard

We had showers in school. But for basically my first 5 years, I had PE at the end of the day so I just went home and had a shower there. In 6th year I had showers after rugby training and PE as I had after school study. Everybopdy just wore their jocks in the shower and we weren't forced.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Chaotic_Forces wrote: »

That's bloody horrible.

And people wonder why there's a problem with showering in school....

We don't. We wonder why bullying is tolerated.

SportsGreatest

We have open showers in my school, but nobody in my year uses them. I don't think anyone starts using them until at least fifth year anyway. I have PE last thing on a Friday, so I wouldn't bother with a shower anyway.

Thinking about it though, do you really get sweaty during PE? I never do, to be honest, as we don't really do anything tough.

8-10

Open showers are not wrong. The Irish attitude to nudity is.

The behaviour isn't going to change in the schools until the mature grown-ups in society relax their attitude. Which won't happen I'm afraid. We'll always be prudes to the nudes.

Chaotic_Forces

8-10 wrote: »

Open showers are not wrong. The Irish attitude to nudity is.

The behaviour isn't going to change in the schools until the mature grown-ups in society relax their attitude. Which won't happen I'm afraid. We'll always be prudes to the nudes.

No, the tolerance of bullying is the problem.

DazMarz

Always had a shower after any physical stuff... Private stalls and stuff were the norm tho, which was fine by many of us!

Lando Griffin

Back in my day we all showered together in an open shower room, luckily there wre no camera phones so we had to draw our victim which was very time consuming and often the paper would get damp and smudgie.