Graduated in 1988. No working showers at all in the high school for any gender. No one showered, for any PE or sporting activity.

Graduated in 1990. The first MS I went to mandated showers and it was awful -- a girl got stabbed in the shower. The second MS I went to theoretically mandated showers, but no one enforced it, so no one showered.

My oldest had PE last period all through MS, which was great because it eliminated the shower issue entirely. My son is starting next year and it's going to be BAD if he doesn't shower -- he really runs for pretty much any sport and sweats like crazy. And, unlike his sister, doesn't shave his armpits so the sweat just festers there, despite the deoderant. If you have a half dozen thirteen year olds like him in a room after PE, it's going to be toxic.

Anonymous wrote:My dad was born in 1930, when they had gym they had to swim in the nude. It was a thing. Google it.

My dad was born in 1949 and says the same. Now he says the PE teachers then were definitely creeps but no one thought anything of it because that is how it was done.

For the most part the shower rooms in high schools are used as storage rooms. Hell the nozzles were missing at the school where I work. Go to a high school basketball game. The reams arrive in uniform and leave in uniform. Some reams never go near a locker room.

My dad was born in 1930, when they had gym they had to swim in the nude. It was a thing. Google it.

Graduated in 1992, and we had some sort of shower requirements in MS and HS; it was something like five showers per semester, and we had to check in with the teachers to prove we had done it, which meant that our bodies were wet. Truly stupid.

No showering for my kids in DCPS MS or HS now.

Also, there’s a great Freaks and Geeks episode about this. Strong recommend.

1994 and we never showered. We were not getting our big hair and makeup ruined. I never worked up a sweat in gym class.

We had swimming for part of the year and no one showered after that either. We would always try to tell the old male teachers we had our periods and couldn’t go in that day to avoid getting wet. It was all about the hair.

No showers ever happened in middle school either.

Anonymous wrote:Graduated HS in 1998 in the Midwest. 3 minute passing periods. We had locker rooms for PE and sports but no one ever took a shower except for the football players after gym. We showered at the natatorium after swim practice (down the road from school) but left out suits on with just the shoulder straps pulled down.

My kids are way more chill about nudity than we were so hopefully showers will come back. People smelled awful after gym and sports.

I wonder if we were at the same school! Same, down to the 3 minute passing periods (not even enough time to wait in line for a bathroom, let alone use it) pulled-down shoulder straps after swim practice. In the actual high school building, there were showers in the locker rooms, but they were never used to the point that the fluorescent lights in that half of the locker room burned out freshman year and still hadn’t been replaced my junior year when I got cut from the a different team.

It is a total relief to shower without a swimsuit after laps now that I’m an adult.

The school showers are gross. I graduated in 2000 and would never uses school shower.

There was no time to shower. There was barely time to change your underwear And that's it!

Guy here. Graduated 1998.

We had showers but didn’t use them in public MS. At private HS (boarding) we used group showers after athletics… weird for a couple days freshman year but then you’re totally used to it. I remember one guy on the football team always ran back to his dorm to shower instead of at the gym and he was mocked relentlessly.

I didn’t really take a PE class in HS, played sports all three seasons. I think showering at the gym was maybe less common for non-athletes.

Side note: Showering at the office gym is 100% normal and I wish it weren’t. Lots of very old, very naked men with low hanging fruit just chatting away.

I graduated high school in the late 90s and no one showered after gym in middle school or high school. We were required to change clothes.

Graduated in 1997. We had to swim in PE our freshman year so we could at least "shower" with bathing suits on and then we all ran around trying to get our hair dried on time and we shared the 3 bathroom stalls to change so we didn't have to get naked in front of everyone. Also, our pool was shared with the community so there were lots of adult women letting it all hang out in our locker room. I don't think that would happen today. I can't imagine adults being allowed to shower with minors these days...

There were definitely showers in middle school but I honestly can't remember being forced to shower.

I graduated in the late 80's, and nobody showered after gym class. In fact, IIRC we weren't allowed to use the showers even if we wanted to (which no one did...they were definitely not clean and there wasn't enough time anyway).

Anonymous wrote:I graduated in 2006 and we never used the showers. I never got sweaty enough to need to.

+1