How to Start Shirtless: Sports and Exercise
Another one of the many invaluable steps to take is making the change to being barefoot and shirtless for physical activities. If you live in a really warm climate, and especially if you live by the ocean, this post is for you. Unfortunatly, this advice doesn’t really work for cold climates.
I’m assuming that most of you that read my blog like sports, or at least play them once in a while. I’m also assuming that this is the same for your sons as well. One of the great things about sports is that it’s perfect for the barefoot and shirtless lifestyle. Shirts vs. Skins is common and people usually all just take off the shirts if it gets too hot. In my neighborhood, all the dads and sons have a big cookout and flag football game, and no one ever goes with a shirt or shoes on. It’s almost an unofficial rule at this point. You can transfer this into your own life, when you and your sons play catch in the yard or basketball in the driveway, it’s a perfect opportunity to get you all to go barefoot and shirtless. This should be a breeze if you’ve gotten your boys to the point already that their just in shorts at home all the time and they just go outside without puting anything on. If you’re not at this point yet, you can just tell them that it’s so they can cool off or that it would be wasteful to dirty up the clothes. They’ll thank you for it later. If your boys are going to someone else’s house or a park, you might want to give them some shoes, but it’s up to you. Personally, my boys always stay barefoot and shirtless unless there’s a strict dress code or the temperature goes below the 40 to 50 degrees range. Finally, all of the purely movement-related sports, like track, hiking and climbing, can easily be done in just shorts, especially if done outdoors.
Along with sports, I will assume that pretty much all of you have you and your sons excercise to stay healthy. Excercise is an amazing opportunity for going barefoot and shirtless. For one, you can jog or bike anywhere in just shorts. Having your boys do this will teach them valuable lessons on being comfortable walking barefoot on sidewalks and streets. However, I advise you to start them on the grass at a local park, then move on to sidewalk, so that their feet can slowly toughen up to the increased wear and tear. As for weightlifting, just have them go barefoot and shirtless beforehand and there shouldn’t be any problems. To sidestep, one of the things that this excercise will be good for is your sons’ body images. While your kids should be going in just pants no matter what, making them feel good about it too is a key goal. If they lose more weight and get more muscle, they will like their bodies even more than they did before. Overall, the mixing of physical activity with the barefoot and shirtless lifestyle is a key step in the process.
is it ok to sleep shirtless or naked then for a young boy? Does your kids do it?
ReplyDeleteSleeping in a minimal amount of clothes is perfectly normal and often extremely comfortable. My sons both sleep in boxers.
DeleteI Sleep nuDe
DeleteKids, boys and girls alike, want to sleep naked when they are toddlers and the parents chastise and shame them into wearing "jammies" which scars them for life. The reality is that sleeping naked is the best and healthiest way to sleep. So if your kid is a toddler, just don't chastise him about sleeping naked. If you have already shamed your kid to wear jammies, you need to have a talk with them and let them know you are OK with them sleeping naked. Encourage them to remove one thing at a time over several months - shirtless, then just in underwear, then finally totally naked. However, if YOU are sleeping in jammies, then any efforts to get them to sleep healthy will likely fail.
DeleteHey bro, you say there is common for boys and father beings always shirtless, and the boys are encpurage to be that way. Where are you from and where do you live now with your sons? I find this interesting
ReplyDeleteI am 13 years old, and I like to be barefoot and shirtless. Everyday after school, I play football and other things with my friends from the street. I was wondering if it was okay if I am shirtless playing with them even if they are not shirtless.
ReplyDeleteBro, it's ok because you are a boy and it gets hot. Boys should be shirtless if they want to
DeleteI'm 15, I go shirtless at home a lot. I hang out with boys my own age from school shirtless. Most of us first saw each other shirtless in middle school. I like being barefoot outside too, we've sometimes hung out shirtless and barefoot in the sun lisening to music, it's kind of good to stretch your legs and twiddle your toes with each other and feel good about seeing each others bodies just as happy mates should who get on great. Go for, get shirtless or barefoot, or both as much as you like with who you like. It makes me feel so good.
DeleteIf I had sons I show them it's no big deal to be barefoot and shirtless. One it's comfortable and two it will help build self-confidence and make them feel more comfortable in their skin. If it were up to me I would be shirtless all the time unless I was going out where I had to wear clothes or if company came over and the weather is a big factor too. I believe that boys who go barefoot and shirtless now at a young age can help them for when they're older as they go through life. I guess all I'm saying is I'm a big believer in the whole barefoot and shirtless thing. The human body is a work of art and should be respected. God bless all of God's creatures.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't force it by all means I would just let them decide if they want to or not. It's their body their decision. If they feel comfortable being barefoot and shirtless more power to them if not that's okay too.
DeleteI just want them to feel comfortable and know it's okay.
DeleteIt can be a massive big deal to boys to have to go shirtless in school, and even being barefoot is a big deal to a lot. If you're one of these kinds of lads, and I was, it makes school Physical Ed a real bad confidence issue. My teachers in the early 90's all sang from the same hymn sheet when it came to Physical Ed lessons and were constantly asking for boys in class to be going shirtless, either in or out, nearly always inside and in fair weather outside when it suited. Very unpopular used to be the class division into shirtless and shirts boys some days. Most boys instictively preferred shirts on it seemed to me. Barefoot was common in Physical Ed gym, hated my feet being out like that. Boys that don't feel confident about being shirtless or barefoot in such situations just endure it in silence for the most part.
DeleteDon't get me started on Physical Ed school showers. Our school required them and they had these rather different pole style showers that four or five of us would have to stand around facing each other around the communal shower, so staring right at everything rather than against a wall. Hideous getting forced into that with nothing on at all, everything on show.
Agreed Trigg, it felt like a big deal to me at the time (which was also early 90s). It was rare for anyone to be barefoot in PE, only if a boy forgot his trainers but being shirtless happened a lot more often. Not all the PE teachers enforced it but some insisted on that division of the class you mentioned, with half of us made to be 'skins'. A few boys in my class were more confident and didn't mind but most, like you said, dreaded that order to take our shirts off.
DeleteI was like Trigg. Really bad at one point in schooldays but finally got defeated into forced acceptance. My body was quite normal/average for my age. The school gymnasium was mostly a shirtless environment for boys of all high school age in the latter part of the seventies. Some loved it and it came so natural to them. I wish it did to me but we're all different. Your gym teacher never acknowledged any of his boys in class may find issue with being bare chested. I think it was always assumed all boys are okay with a no shirts rule, fully baring the upper body.
DeleteI think the shirtless problem arises when you are actually being told to be shirtless by somebody, mostly by school gym PE teachers. If you're someone who doesn't really go shirtless in your life, whether shy, unconfident or whatever about it then finding yourself confornted by someone demanding you must remove your top and be shirtless brings out the problem quite dramatically.
As Jonathon said, it's hard when you're suddenly faced with that situation of being ordered to be shirtless for the first time and I didn't experience it until I was 13. Which really wasn't great timing, it's around that age I was becoming more self conscious about how my body looked. So my immediate reaction was panic that first time the PE teacher told me to take my top off in the gym. I'd imagine it's a lot easier for boys who are used to going at shirtless at an earlier age, whether from choice or from being influenced to do that at home?
DeleteNot sure where you guys went to school, seems like a mostly USA slant on here but the guy beneath from a couple of years back talks it like it was in my time in a British school in the same decade of the 1980s.The policy set out at my school when I hit 12 was to instill complete and total barechested PE for the lot of us throughout our early to mid teens. Our parents knew this. That was not unusual at the time though. This was basically the standard way of things all over the country at that age in secondaries, also known as high schools elsewhere, infact even younger in many instances too when taking PE inside on the gym/sports hall floor. A bare chest was required in summer term outside too for general athletics in my case and I'm sure in many other places too. Only out of summer months did we wear the vest outdoors.
DeleteParents, guardians or other family or friends who came to see us at summer PE events where we had to showcase ourselves would see us shirtless, the rule was not relaxed because we had an audience viewing us. I was at a mixed school and these events meant mixing with the opposite sex like that, whereas in usual PE we remained apart and separate. That was uncomfortable when it happened. I have four male cousins and we spoke about this once and they all did regular shirtless PE at least a couple of times a week and in all our cases it was a compulsory element of a PE class in our English 1980s schools.
I don't know what showering was like in the USA but in England most boys have an identical experience in my time which involved no ability to duck out of sharing the showers, compulsory most times, communal open plan in nature, total naked for all and watched over and told when we could come out by a teacher. Hair had to be wet through, soap used and towel brought to school to dry. Excuses for not showering like this were rarely tolerated at the close of PE. You were not allowed to be shy or reticent at school in PE that's for sure. This affected a lot of people who now speak out as adults years later.
My teacher hated boys who were reluctant to remove tops and go shirtless during my own school gym sessions and would make reluctant boys do it more. Skins and shirts was his favourite time to do this. Late 80's in my case. I don't think it made them any more confident, the reverse infact.
DeleteI've got a piece of paper in my hand from 1992 telling our class what was expected of us in the school gym, what we had to wear and how we had to behave, as well as what activities we were allowed to do, when and with who.
DeleteAt one point there is a line on clothing specific to boys which reads - Shirts WILL NOT be worn in P.E, with the emphasis in bold of the 'will not' part of it. In that year I was 12 and asked my P.E teacher why we could not wear tops in P.E for the gym and I remember him struggling for a good answer before becoming quite short tempered that I'd dared to ask the question in the first place. Class sizes of up to 40 would always be in the gym for P.E and everyone was stripped bare up top. I was always surprised we didn't get the option of even a thin vest at least part of the time, similar to what the teacher wore.
Average looking and sized boys looked OK I guess but there were some real tall gawky thin types in my class and they looked real awkward shirtless and it didn't suit them and I think they knew it. Shirtless bare chested bodies work for some and not others. The blanket rule at school for all to be shirtless in gym was a bit harsh.
Not harsh at all. Perfectly fine. My dad swam at school with nothing on. Get your head around that! A barechested body would have been nothing compared to that for him. I took a few barechested PE classes and took them on the chin when told to.
DeleteI don't know who the slim shirtless kid in black shorts is on here in the photo on this page but he sure reminds me of myself at that age out on the school field. Boys had to go shirtless at middle school in 1984 when I was about 10 or 11. It was kinda fine but moving up to high school things started feeling awkward and I always wished I'd bulked up and filled out a bit sooner. I felt so weedy at 15 and really wanted my shirt on but teachers had the final say and often said no shirts, skins you are.
DeleteHello Ryan, seems like we went to quite similar schools. Mine too had a very strict shirtless PE policy for boys. No shirts allowed, just white shorts and bare feet, without any exceptions. Our teachers were always very keen on making sure there were no digressions, constantly reminding us if anyone tried to push the boundaries. They had a way of enforcing the rules that made it clear there was no room for debate—whether it was the hottest day or the coldest, we were expected to follow the PE kit rules to the letter.
DeleteFunnily enough, in my first year, I also asked one of my PE teachers why we were never allowed tops. He replied without any hesitation: "What do you need a top for, boy?"
At first, it felt strange and a bit intimidating, especially during those colder months, but after a while, we all just got used to it. There was a kind of unspoken understanding among us boys, almost like a badge of toughness. We didn’t really talk about it, but we all knew the drill and complied without much fuss. Looking back, it’s funny how what seemed so strict and unusual back then just became a normal part of our school life
John, I like you and Ryan went to both middle and upper schools that both expected of their boys PE classes that we must present ourselves in our bare chest only with no option of any type of clothing, vests or t-shirts above the waist at all. I found this quite draconian to put it mildly, but it was what it was back in the 70's & partly 80's and was very widespread in so many English schools of the time.
DeleteIt was often done as a leveller so better off kids didn't show up with nicer looking stuff on than others. A poorer shirtless kid in class looked the same as a well off one generally speaking. Our shorts had to be plain black. Very often there was nothing on our feet either, but even if there was it was just unfashionable generic gym shoes of the plimsoll type. This kit also had the benefit of being easy to manage and if someone turned up without PE kit a pair of black shorts was always readily available from a spares store, meaning participation was always 100% in these compulsory shirtless PE classes.
At my own upper school gym it had a big double easy access emergency fire door on the side of our gym and we were told if the bell sounded either for drill or real then we had to immediately open this door and walk very fast to our assembly point with the rest of the school. School roll being about a thousand pupils at that time. I was always fearful the fire bell might sound when in one of these gym lessons which would mean having to run oit and assemble shirtless and in shorts among the rest of school and face whatever weather outside it might be. Well the first time we had an afternoon drill in a normal class situation and I assembled and saw what I had been dreading for myself, a PE class of shirtless boys assembled in shorts only alongside everyone else dressed in full uniforms. I remember it was drizzling and cloudy and they looked very cold. A couple of years later the same thing happened to me and my fears came true when fire practice happened just when I was in PE shirtless and had to go out the fire door of the gym and line up with the rest of the school along with my own class of shirtless boys. Now I could deal with shirtless among the other boys but the thought of being shirtless among so many girls out there was the stuff of nightmares. The day this happened to me was dry and quite warm so they didn't get us back inside very fast either. But despite this it was not considered that we had any valid reason to complain about it.
Boys were treated at school as if being shirtless was not an issue for any of them in any situation or in front of anybody of any kind, a very false assumption.
It sounds like most of you were at schools with a blanket shirtless rule for PE but my school was a bit different. Basically there were different rules with different teachers and up to my first year of GCSE (this was 1990, at an all boys school) my class always did PE with everyone wearing a vest and shorts.
DeleteThen we had a change of teacher and at our first lesson with him we quickly discovered he was far more strict, not just in terms of discipline but also when it came to our kit. Most of us couldn't believe it when he announced 'all you boys,, vests off. You're not allowed those in my class.' One lad piped up 'but sir, it's cold in the gym' and soon regretted his protest as he was told to do 20 press ups to help him warm up! For the next two years we had to do all PE in bare chests and shorts, which was a real shock at first but after a while most of us got used to it.
Our North American friends on here probably don't realise just how deep the compulsory shirtless culture across British schools used to be if you went to one anytime from the 50's to the 90's, and still persists in quite a few even today. The standard school uniform for PE was in most cases at secondary school, high school to Americans, to be shirtless and you were expected to be comfortable doing so with a bare chest and make no fuss about it when told you must do so. It could actually apply right the way down to starting school. In my case I regularly did shirtless PE lessons from the age of just 5 until I was 15, and it was actually my middle school where PE was permanently shirtless, and that was under both male and female tuition. Those ten years for me were 1970 until 1980.
DeleteAdam you have mentioned a teacher making a boy do a warm up when complaining of the cold. This reminds me of cross country at my secondary in 1977-80 under a teacher who made boys run the cross country shirtless in some shockingly cold conditions. He received complaints some days about the cold and his response was just that we'd better run faster to warm up. That particular teacher ran alongside us all in a track suit jacket, but insisted that running shirtless even in the cold was beneficial (except for him it seemed) and made us work better at achieving decent times and learning about discipline and all that nonsense that so many PE teachers often cite with not wearing tops and body exposure. One of my friends went down with a very significant and debilitating dose of flu for a fortnight after running one of these teachers shirtless cross country's, but as soon as he was back in school he was back doing another shirtless PE lesson outside running again with us all.
I suppose it was the compulsion to be shirtless that we all faced that made it seem the big deal for quite a few.
I never saw any evidence around me in my time at school, especially when I was a bit older, that the shy ones with low self esteem and lacking confidence about themselves, were brought out of their shells and made less so by being made to be shirtless when in the school PE class.
For myself, I was broadly neutral on the issue, neither horrified by being shirtless but also not greatly enthused either by it. If anything it could often make me feel slightly vulnerable and critical of my own body when judging it against the others.
My eldest son came home from his first day at his new school two days ago and I asked him how it went and it was like the end of the world when he told me the teacher of P.E had told his group and him that they would sometimes have to do the lesson shirtless and would be asked to take a quick shower. I reassured him he wouldn't think anything of it within a month and would get used to it quicker than he thinks. I did. Thinking about going shirtless or naked in school was far worse than finally just doing it the first few times and getting over it into the new normal.
DeleteI was once a youth leader and remember times when we did physical games with the lads in warm weather and I used to say if they wanted to cool off and get the top off they could, up to them, which meant a few would do that instantly and often the rest followed up slowly but surely, leaving everyone shirtless. That happened so many times. Actually some would remove tops without even being given the question.
DeleteHere in the UK I was at a school in the 80's that always made boys like me do our PE inside without any kind of top on, barechests for all of us and also bare feet only. This never changed throughout school from the day I started to the day I left twice per week for 90 minutes each time. There were no allowances for such things as being incredibly shy or body imperfections, being too thin or too fat, not that there were any fat boys about, we were all quite trim. Outside we were nearly always barechested during summer and spring terms and we also ran during autumn and winter with no shirts on rather a lot and on very fresh days. Occasional lessons would be mixed gender adding an extra element of anxiety about the way we were told to present ourselves for PE. The fact it was never a choice we chose to make about ourselves seemed a big deal to me and others. Did they have the right to force this upon us? The teachers who demanded we must go barefoot and bare chested in their classes never did this themselves. Indeed girls often wore trainers outside when boys were not allowed to and had to go barefoot on the grass within the same class set up. How are you supposed to deal with boys who are crushingly shy about their bodies and don't want to bare their chests or their feet? Likewise full scale communal class nudity was compulsory regards the showering requirement at each of these lessons with absolutely no consideration of shyness or privacy. All our parents thought it was perfectly fine even the ones who knew their sons such as myself didn't parade about at home shirt off or bare foot, never mind naked. But in school tough luck, you did it on pain of serious sanctions and punishment if you resisted.
ReplyDeleteIt's still like that in my school today, we have a teacher who makes it either shirts and skins teams or everyone in skins. I don't mind it, I feel like I've got more confident about being shirtless plus in summer it's actually more comfortable to wear just shorts. Some boys in my class still hate being skins but they can't do anything about it really.
DeleteHi Jordan. It's like this with my PE coach in school right now actually. Each class with him gets alternate skins and shirts on rotation so we all are skins and have to be shirtless at least once every two weeks, sometimes more. Now and again the whole class are skins too, even on non team sports. He's nice about it but you still have to take your turn and be shirtless when asked to. I'm kind of okay with it and it's made me take notice of a bit of weight I shouldn't have at my age and get rid of it which I did and he praised me for, so shirtless did that for me and gave me some extra confidence.
DeleteGreat to hear, Elijah! That's the right attitude to have, your coach isn't going to change his mind and say you don't need to be skins so you have to deal with it. He sounds ok really, must have been a good feeling when he complimented you on losing weight. I feel like it probably encouraged me to put in more work on my body too once I realised I'd be doing most of my PE lessons shirtless.
Deletehi
ReplyDeletehi
ReplyDeleteCan a nine year old sleep shirtless?
ReplyDeleteYep
DeleteMy sons were full time shirt less since they are 5
DeleteMy son hasn't put a top on since 19th July when he kicked off his summer break from school. That was a month ago. It's now August 20th. He's not gone too far, just hanging around the home, hanging out in the locality near home and popped in a couple of local stores. He's thirteen. I'm glad he's so comfy in his own skin and I don't see why he shouldn't do so in the circumstances I've outlined. His mates don't even comment on it even though most wear their tops when with him, although one does sometimes get his off as well in our yard with him.
DeleteI played soccer in just a pair of boxers or at least some outworn briefs. So some of my friends did. Of course some of my mates liked to play games like strip soccer were you have to go home in what you could stay in. I often saw them in just their underwear and slowly they got used to it.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any children but I still want to comment on shirtless sports. I take Thai boxing lessons and live in a warm climate. I'm always shirtless because the gym isn't air conditioned and I sweat buckets. Most of the guys are shirtless and so are the coaches. Great way for us to bond. I also exercise shirtless outdoors. Shirts just aren't necessary in these situations.
ReplyDeleteEven today many British schools go for the mandatory barechested way of doing physical education and enforce communal fully stripped off showers after P.E. Going back just a few years and nearly all schools did some form of barechested PE from an early age and it was almost universal everywhere at one point that school gym physical education must be taken in bare chests for boys after age eleven and up to sixteen. In my own case my school enforced it without exceptions so we all had to face up to it, like it or not, and take everything off afterwards in large group open showers.
ReplyDeleteThis is true. My eldest went up to secondary school, Queenbury School, two years ago and the youngest begins there in a couple of months time. The eldest has done a lot of shirtless P.E at this school over the last two years and my youngest fears this as he's not like his elder brother very much. The school details I have ready for his entry in September specify that shirtless P.E is considered a compulsory part of the remit there for boys taking P.E lessons. From my eldest I know this is not just for gym but taken outside in good weather too quite a bit. He's fine with it, and so am I.
DeleteThe latest school details for the new September intake like my youngest son also specify the need to bring a towel on P.E days because proper showering is expected with everybody on return to the change room at the end of P.E, to be taken in the communal shower room without any clothing or jewellery of any type on. Just like in my day actually.
So I can concur with the above comment on UK schools in the past nearly all acting like described and very many still do so as I can testify with my own two, aged 12 and 14.
Hi Chris. It's less common than it was say up to twenty years ago but far from uncommon even nowadays. When I was in school long ago all the boys had to remove school uniform for PE and remain bare chests and go off to PE like that. I think the teacher might have used some forceful encouragement to get a few to do so when we first had to, just like he did have a constant battle making sure everyone was showered properly as it was forbidden to leave PE lessons without a full shower and soap down with your classmates together in the raw.
DeleteHi.
DeleteI've just been emailed my twelve year old's new school year instructions when he returns for autumn term, new school on 4th September, and the school gym kit states 'shorts and a bare chest' for boys for that part of P.E taken inside. There is also a towel requirement for P.E because it says 'showers are provided for everyone and must be taken as a part of all P.E'.
I'm in the United Kingdom, in Manchester.
Hey Paul, let us know how your young one gets on with having to go shirtless in the gym.
DeleteHe seems to have settled into things in recent weeks after a nervous start, it was shower requirement that concerned him more than taking his shirt off, but I think he's got used to both now, and is doing nothing that I've not been there and done before him and I got used to such things. As everyone does the same then it's fair and I see no reason to make any kind of big, or even small issue out of it.
DeleteI was always told by my own father that a part of growing up is having to do things you don't like or want to do but to do them and not whine about it.
I'm 15 and at school in the UK, what they call a secondary school academy. For the past two years our PE teachers have been making all the boys in my gym class leave the changing room for the sports hall in our bare feet and nobody gets allowed to stick a shirt on, we all have to go bare chests as well. One boy complained about it once but got shut down over it and told to get on with it. Not sure much PE is done like this anymore like it used to be. My dad thinks it's unusual but says he did it in his day and never had much choice either. We have to go into a large open room to take showers after PE too. They're mandatory. Nobody argues about that bit.
ReplyDeleteSam, thanks for posting. How do you feel about the PE kit at your school? I think your dad's right, it's probably unusual nowadays in the UK but not totally unheard of. My nephew, who's 14 has to do PE barechested although not barefoot, his class got a new teacher this year who either divides the boys into shirts and skins or makes them all take their shirts off. I know my nephew doesn't like having to do PE barechested because he told me the teacher makes him a skin for almost every class and asked whether it was the same in my day. When I said yes, he asked did you get used to it?
DeleteThe truth was I did eventually and hopefully he will as well. I think it gets easier as your body develops and you gain more confidence, maybe you've found that too?
Richard, I'm not sure what I think. I was very nervous at first and couldn't believe it when our teacher first thing in the morning took the PE register in the changing room and then told everyone it was shorts only for sports hall PE. Suddenly it dawned on me what he meant, no tops or shoes and socks. Someone asked if he meant we had to be barechested and feet and he said that's what shorts only means, yes. I remember looking around and quietly comparing myself in PE to the others, it forced us to see our friends barechested and many were not keen like it. I think we should be able to decide for ourselves. Even barefoot PE doesn't go down well with some of us. But we started doing PE this way in our sports hall and never stopped. It took a long time to finally get over being weird about it, shy I suppose. The teachers had to keep telling us at the beginning but nowadays we just do it without being told. Nobody in PE sports hall class is allowed to be different from anyone else, we must all take part doing sports hall PE barechested and in our bare feet, it's more or less compulsory just like going into the showers is after our PE lessons into one big communal area where nobody is allowed to shower with their shorts on and everything has to come off totally leaving us naked. They even make us use soap in the showers and that's compulsory too. My dad says I'm not doing anything he didn't do at school and it was always expected everywhere at that time. It seems weird to me that my teachers can force me to take a shower and get naked, is it right that they cxan do this and make a boy show his willy at school like that, whether he's shy or not. Nobody says a thing about it though but I know what some are thinking. Even saying we must all be barechested for PE is a bit weird to me or telling me I should be barefoot when trainers will do.
DeleteI was in school many years ago Sam, you describe things as I recall them. On the whole showers thing I recall a teacher telling us to use them once and saying he did not expect to have to tell us to do so again and that using them should become second nature and automatic. The same applied to going shirtless for PE which was mandatory in school gym class. Again, we got told to do so once and were not expected to argue over it. I don't know how it was in the United States but here in the United Kingdom it's well known that boys who went to school in the 70's or 80's nearly always had to do gym PE without shirts on, in bare chests, it was policy nearly everywhere, not just after age 11 in secondary school but also quite common from age 8 in primary too. At my school there were no exceptions to the rule made. It could be a tough ask on boys who were either very thin or a bit podgy, but you had to deal with it.
DeleteAnother UK schoolboy here, secondary educated at age 11 to 16. During those years, 1977 - 82, going into the school gym for weekly PE and having to be barechested was non negotiable, the whole class had to do so, no messing about over it or whining you didn't like it. The only person in the gym who wasn't shirtless was the actual teacher. Going barechested at that age in that time frame was a feature of British schools that most boys just had to accept and we did so even if we didn't like it.
ReplyDeleteBut as we all had to jump in the communal shower after PE anyway, which was naked, and very much compulsory to do so, being barechested was the least of it. Every school in the UK had showers on the go after PE lessons in those days and nobody was let off doing them. British schools were incredibly firm on both the shirtless gym for secondary age boys and the follow up showers we had to take. We all got to know each other very well indeed!
You had a dreadful time if you were very shy or self conscious, overweight or terribly weedy I suppose but you just had to put up with it. Nobody was let off any of it and it was best to keep up a brave face and not show any insecurity if you knew what was good for you.
I did all the things at school the others mention here, the shirtless gym, the nude showering with others, little choice about it. That was life in school around PE lessons. Most teachers carried these policies out with us. It was rare to get a teacher who would excuse you from showers for instance and the school gym for boys meant an expectation to be shirtless on demand when asked, which was often. If told to your shirt came off instantly or else.
ReplyDeleteBut at home I faced something similar. When my parents took us on holidays, they liked the coast and frequent beach holidays in my younger days. Even when I was 13 or 14 on these holidays my dad would insist I dressed sensibly on the beach with them and made me wear just swim shorts and go shirtless while there. He did this with my other brother too. When there were hot weekends over summer or a heatwave he would insist I behave sensibly and say something like - "come on Stu, get your top off in this nice weather, it's too hot for wearing too much" and I'd be guilt tripped to be shirtless for the weekend. He'd often make me or my brother leave the house with him without a shirt on, even if he had one on. He thought it was normal for young boys to be this way.
I had a parent just like yours Stuart. When I think back to it, between about the age of 8 and 15 I must have spent most days of my life at some point during the day in the company of others while shirtless, either by choice or mandate, such as in school, where from age 11 to 15 doing PE in the gymnasium meant bare chests all round for everyone male. When I was able to start making decisions for myself I tended to remain covered up far more later on.
DeleteI did used to hang out with friends, both male and female, at home and at their homes quite often over summer holidays while shirtless from the age of 8 to 11. I remember turning up to the home of a girl in my class at the age of about 9 while shirtless and her mum making a comment about me like that, I think she was surprised or something. Later on I became more self conscious though.
Interesting post, Stuart. Very much reminded me of a boy in my class at primary school whose parents made him take his top off at home. They were very big on observing a healthy diet, as I found out when I was round at their house a few times, and I think that was part of it, they also believed it was healthier for boys to go barechested. Presumably they must have spoken to the school about his PE lessons because he never brought a t-shirt to the gym, the teachers let him do it in just shorts.
ReplyDeleteAfter we moved up to secondary school it didn't make much difference as the boys' PE kit was now shorts and plimsolls with no top permitted under any circumstances. Most boys, including me, were quite nervous at first about doing PE barechested but we didn't have any choice in the matter.
I grew up going to a secondary school in East London in the 1970s which had a rigorous physical education department within which every teacher strongly favoured and implemented a compulsory regime of boys at my school not being allowed tops for any form of physical education inside the school gymnasium. The bare chest look was the order of the day, every day we did PE there. We used to be quite fearful of a couple of our teachers at this school and the gym felt quite an intimidating experience for a sizable portion of the class I was in during that time. The teachers always kept an authority distance and always wore some kind of top, whether a vest, t-shirt of tracksuit top and I never actually saw one of my own PE teachers shirtless at the school or in any lesson even though they often took part directly in activities we did. The literature that came with the school uniform for parents eyes told its own story and I remember my parents commenting how easy the PE kit was, because there was not much of it on gym days. Not even trainers. The importance of doing PE bare chested was impressed on class quite early on. These lessons involved some girl involvement too, but not always. My memory was that we preferred or boys only PE lessons without girls around. I think this requirement at school in gym was quite a big deal for a few boys actually.
ReplyDeleteI remember a lot of physical touching being encouraged in these lessons amongst us where we had to hold onto and grab onto bodies.
Unless your body was the standard norm, whatever that is, the teachers could make personal comments at how you looked. We had a couple fo chubbier lads in class who got this, and a number of puny boys too, on either end of the scale.
I think a decent amount of boys will have resented being made to do gym in their bare chests in those days and secretly wanted a t-shirt on.
All classes ended with us being squeezed into a communal shower with each other by the teacher of that day, herded naked with not much room between us as we tried to properly soap and rinse while the given teacher watched ever move we made before deciding who could be let out when he considered us done.
When you think about it, it's quite unbelievable now, forcing 30 boys at a go to strip naked and cram together like that or to insist that we could never be allowed to ever put shirts on in gym even though the teacher always wore one.
I don't think it made anyone any more confident about being shirtless among others who were not already okay with it anyway. Forced school nudity was not only expected but demanded rigorously too. If anything it may have affected confidence negatively.
I don't know how our Brit schools of the time compare to those in the USA and North America generally, but my own school was considered quite normal and regular in everything it did with us.
My junior middle school (UK) in 1971/2 had mixed showers in the very first year for us at the ages of 8/9 years old. After that first year we were separate. Remarkably there was no known issue made about it that I remember while we shared communally whilst fully naked, boys and girls aged 8. This was my first experience of a compulsory school shower, something that continued in the following years and at another school for a further 7 years with boys only. I last took a school shower when I was 15 and a half.
DeleteI spent most of my time at junior and secondary school doing PE lessons with a bare chest, because I had to, although I first did this at infants school. Shirtless PE became more a self conscious thing the older I got.
Teachers were always very insistant that we showered at school, only let offs were medical related such as if you had a plaster cast on a limb!
Nobody, but nobody was expected to complain either about compulsory shirtless PE lessons or being told they must get naked and get showered in the whole class group.
In my middle school in the 1975-1976 period we never shared the showers with the girls like you Vincent, when I was eight year old, but the boys and girls did have to share the changing room with each other, boys on one side, girls on the other. It was the only place to change available, there were no separate rooms to take. When we went swimming the boys and girls would change and be naked in the same room and be able to look across at each other, and we did. The changing room had a shower and we did have to use it many times in middle school but boys and girls had to use it separately and not together. That kind of nakedness among that age group at that time was not frowned upon at all that I can think back on and was normalised. But like you Vincent, it didn't last and later on in middle school boys and girls tended to do physical games and PE stuff apart from each other much more so we no longer shared our changing room.
DeleteMy middle school PE kit, what there was of it, was to turn out shirtless in the school hall where we did the gym work. We wore tops for outside PE, most of the time unless hot, but never inside at all, right through to age twelve. Later on at my comprehensive it was a bit more hit and miss, some days were shirtless, others not, it was entirely within the gift of the teacher whether he let the class of boys keep the PE top on or told us to remove them and be shirtless. Some teachers had a preference for doing PE shirtless more than others. One day when I was 15 we had 20 girls in our gym class and the teacher who preferred shirtless even made us all take our tops off with girls in the class and I was so shocked and uncomfortable at that because by that age we were really growing up rather fast.
Thank You and I have a nifty offer: House Renovation Canada house renovation on a budget
ReplyDeleteMy boarding school had mandatory daily morning runs with all boys stripped to the waist regardless of the weather. For boys aged 9-10 it was a quick 10 min run. Boys aged 11-12 olds were expected to run for 30mins. From 13 -18 you stepped up to a 5 mile run around the school grounds. Our PE teachers also had us barechested outdoors for one double lesson a week up to 13 then it increased to two again irrespective of the weather. We also did cross-country runs without vests too, fun on freezing cold dayi! Indoors PE was the same barechests until you left. That gym was freezing in the winter, no heating on and the windows wide open every day but still it wasn't unusual for us to leave the gym showing sweat.
ReplyDeleteI think this short film shows our UK schools PE classes for boys quite well and this would be how it was for many in school from the 1930's to 1990's. Being a Brit boy meant a bare chest for gym in 90% of schools then.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/children-playing-and-exercising-in-ranks-at-school-stock-video-footage/mr_00056213?adppopup=true
Gym teachers were still forcing us to remove tops and go shirtless in my PE classes as recently as between 2013 and 2016. Sometimes part of the class, other times the whole class went bare chests with no say in the matter. Once the teacher decided we were gonna be shirtless we had to be shirtless and that was that. I had never been shirtless in a PE lesson until I was 11 so it was a bit of a surprise when it first happened, everyone was told to keep tops off when changing. There was definitely an awkward atmosphere going on at first. The last time I was told to be shirtless was age 14, and that was in 2016. I'm 22 now.
DeleteSome of the guys in school did talk about why we were doing PE shirtless with each other instead of keeping to our regular tops. Being shirtless even when everyone else was the same around me didn't make me feel at all confident about myself and I dreaded someone making a personal comment about some part of my shirtless body. Perhaps the biggest thing was being told to be a bare chest in the gym rather than just choosing it. I disliked someone telling me I had to be shirtless.
Our old PE teachers used to take our school lads out on the cross country in early summer even on some wet and windy days and we still all ran without anything on top, total shirtless and full on bare chests everywhere you looked. It was classed as character building apparently and made us better and stronger people. Well that was the theory. My own recollection of those days is those in charge of us on PE staff really loving making whole classes remove tops and being shirtless and using it to demonstate their power over us.
DeleteShirtless and barefoot physical education was mandatory for me at both my middle and secondary schools. I didn't mind it so much at my middle school because I was so young but I began to mind it quite a lot later on even though it was something I'd been doing a lot for a long time. It had no effect on my confidence one way or another but I do think going shirtless should be treated as a personal choice for the individual and them alone and not something someone else should insist upon, with an exemption to that for swimming. Most of the times I was shirtless in my school gym classes in middle and secondary I really didn't need to be.
DeleteWe had a new boy join our class one day when I was about 12 and he came from another school but had never done any shirtless PE before in his life and he began getting real upset and crying when he noticed that was how we did it and he would have to do. He seemed really quite scared about having to go shirtless at school with the rest of us but adapted eventually.
One of my gym teachers in secondary would often take the lesson with us shirtless too, but just the one, none of the others did. He also used to shower alongside us too while keeping his eye on us all and chatting. It was really weird talking to your gym teacher while absolutely naked like that. That was a UK secondary school gym in 1978 for you and that kind of thing and very frequent or permanent mandatory shirtless lessons were incredibly common then, and so was a stripped off shower, sometimes with teacher.
Aaron, I'm curious to know why did shirtless PE end for you at 14? Wondered if maybe you got a different teacher then? For me it's the other way round, until I was 14 I always did PE wearing a shirt and then my class got a different teacher who was like you described. He either made us all go to the gym in bare chests or sometimes picked half of the boys to take their shirts off. I found it really weird having to do PE with a bare chest and it continued for the next two years. Like you I think we should have been given the choice.
DeleteI don't know your age Jake, but I'll say this to you and young Aaron here. I think the teacher of a PE/gym class has every right to decide what he wants his class to wear at school age. If he regards the shirtless option as appropriate then I fail to see the point of an objection when boys are all together and doing the same, or even in a split half class skins and shirts scenario.
DeleteI'm 47 and was always having to take my shirt off in PE classes on teacher instruction. Infact I had to do this at 3 different schools, including my middle school for not just PE but Music & Movement, which was a weekly lesson when I was 9 and 10 where all boys had to have bare chest and feet alongside girls in our class. Our middle school even showered just like the comp did too, so a shirtless body was the least of it because we were told to be naked in the shower room together after these types of PE class and privacy was non existent.
But I understand the points being made. There were other boys I shared PE with and gym in all my schools who huffed and puffed about being shirtless for PE or being naked for PE showers, but they all still did it is what I remember.
In fairness and knowing the teachers I had, they wouldn't have allowed them, me or anyone else to opt out of any of it no matter what we thought or felt.
Going in the showers was always non negotiable for the lot of us as teenage boys in school at the end of PE and being shy about your body or genitalia and others seeing you naked simply didn't cut it with the teachers for a moment. They made sure we showered and got everything off time after time. Our whole class had to shower together at the same time in one open plan communal tiled area. We'd stand there ready and waiting for a teacher to turn on the jets of hot water coming direct from the ceiling like sprinklers.
DeleteWhen it came to shirtless PE, that was also non negotiable as a teenager. It wasn't every lesson, but very many, mostly indoors. We seemed to do just as much shirtless PE over winter months as in summer months. Again, being shy or embarrassed about showing your bare chest held no sway at all at school or what body type you were. You simply had to do it when told. Sometimes the whole class was shirtless, sometimes half the class or even sometimes just a few for some reason.
The teachers themselves never went shirtless with us in the class.
I'm lucky as I wasn't shy and accepted it but could see the way all this demand for going shirtless or fully stripped everything off got to some people who were unable to wriggle out of doing so but wanted to.
I think this is the school regime anyone over 40 will relate too because it was so common.
Interesting to read you were doing shirtless PE and being made to bare your chest within the last decade there Jake.
I started going shirtless in middle school for the first time, it was the rule for boys all the time I was there. At first I asked if I could keep something on but wasn't allowed to. Much the same happened at high school but we mixed it up a bit more. At high school came the added "problem" as I saw it of showering which I also tried to extract myself from with little success and had to do that as well. My memory of that forced situation was that we most definitely were not all the same and it was hard not to take notice in a room with 25 others up close and very bare naked.
DeleteDarren, I'm early 20s now so I'm talking about less than 10 years ago. Totally get the logic of what you said about a PE teacher having the right to decide about uniform for the class when it's the same for everyone, but that's not the case in a skins and shirts scenario. To me it didn't seem fair if he decided half of the boys had to do the class in bare chests while the rest wore a shirt. With my teacher it wasn't as though he'd just flip that around the next time, he would pick totally new groups. I remember having to do several weeks of PE without a shirt while others hardly took theirs off at all.
ReplyDeleteHi Jake, I'm in my late 20s and went to school in Dundee, Scotland. I finished school ten years ago, but finished doing PE lessons in school twelve years ago, in 2011/12 academic year before joining sixth form. In the five years up to 2012 I had a regular gym lesson taken by three regular male teachers which involved the class being shirtless. It just seemed to be the way they did it there for gym. We had another lesson outside but were never told to be shirtless for that one.
DeleteI remember speaking to my dad about it when I was eleven or twelve but he wondered why I was even mentioning it as he had been a pupil at the same school as me back in the late 1970's and 80's and told me they always did school gym shirtless and went outside like it too on many occasions.
I had mixed feelings about it. Some days I felt better about it than others. It was very much compulsory which I think it didn't need to be. I think boys should have been able to wear some kind of gym top if they wanted to. Actually very few boys in school are that confident and comfortable about their bodies enough to choose to bare their chest by free will alone. But you got used to it within weeks mostly by seeing the same people and the same bodies time and again each week. Gym was always referred to as our skins lesson by one of the teachers.
Our school had showers. We used them from 2007-09 only and then after that you could use them if you wanted to and few did so after the age of thirteen or fourteen.
With a choice I would have put a top on for gym and declined shirtless and swerved the showers, but I was by no means that bothered by it compared to one or two others including a lad we had who literally hyperventilated when he realised he had to do the gym shirtless and shower. Again, such things as showers in school should be offered as a choice to take if necessary, not a direct demand from a teacher.
What I did like about doing shirtless PE, and two years showering, was that it gave us all body acceptance about what we all looked like and whether anyone was fat, thin or just average in development was just the wide range of normal to me.
I found teachers generally encouraging and although they could be quite critical about our level of fitness and activity I rarely saw anything directed about what any of us physically looked like in front of them even when they could see the state of us, which wasn't too bad for 80 percent of us anyway.
God I remember the school making me do physical education and forbidding boys from tops of any kind and insisting we all went as skins very well because I didn't take to it easy at all and hated it and the compulsion that came with going shirtless in those classes. I was also so naive on entry to high school that I literally freaked out on the spot when confronted with an open shower room we got told to use. Silly me had expected to have a nice individual stall and some privacy rather than an open communal free for all and hanging out nude in sight of everyone without choice in the matter. Fat chance of getting any privacy in high school in the 1970s and I learned fast to forget about such ideas and accept what the deal was - no tops and shirtless very often and a nude shower to go. Argue about it at your peril! You sure got to know your mates in school very well indeed doing physical activity in school in those days.
DeleteHad a gym master at my school who would mix up gym classes with shirtless and shirts boys quite randomly but singled out some boys for shirtless treatment if he considered them soft or insecure to make them man up. Some guys went the school year shirtless while others wore shirts. I was told to remove my top and go shirtless and drop to te floor for press ups a couple of times as a class sanction. Boys being shirtless can therefore be used for humiliation when in the hands of an authority figure who misuses it. I was left with a strong association to being shirtless with being told off. At 68 that's a quite old memory now.
DeleteIf you forgot the correct gym shorts you did it in your pants. If we were outside they found some spare from the lost gear box. If you forgot or had the wrong trainers or footwear you went bare footed for gym, sometimes even outside. But if you actually brought your correct gym top you still had to take it off and go do gym in your bare chest under many of my gym teachers, go figure that one. Out of about 100 gym lessons I did annually at high school I estimate at least 70 involved all in the class going shirtless the whole thing, and the other 30 part shirtless or mixed shirts and bare chests. I take this back to 1994 starting high school.
DeleteI got a sudden unexpected introduction at 12 to the shirtless demanded mandate of my school in the form of a note handed around reminding us what to bring for our P.E in our gymnasium the next week, which was white plimsolls, white ankle high socks and white shorts. Needing to know more I asked what the top was we needed as it wasn't mentioned, only to be told it wasn't mentioned because there wasn't one. Gulp, you won't be wearing a top I was told, and the others heard that too. I began frantically processing this news and felt my nerves rise considerably as it hit me I'd have to be a skin, stripped to the waistline, a total bare chest and shirt free, and there was nothing I could do about it. This was one of the most anxious points in my young life at that stage, was it for anybody else?
DeleteUsed to hang about shirtless with my mates sometimes at theirs or in the street and thought nothing much of it but when it came to doing the same in various gym situations at school or on the athletics field under teacher instruction I felt a certain resistance and was less keen about it.
DeletePhil's post was an eerie reminder of my own experience at school, though I was 13 rather than 12. The PE kits were listed separately for girls and boys and of course while the girls' kit included a top, for boys it was exactly as described by Phil - white shorts, ankle length socks and plimsolls. I remember that nervous feeling of anxiety and dread in my stomach as it dawned on me I'd be doing PE with nothing on the top half of my body. It was something I got used to over the next five years!
DeleteI'd like to agree with both Phil and Harry here. Such a similar situation to me and my feelings on the subject. Except in my case I had zero advance warning or prior knowledge that I was going to be shirtless and didn't expect it. I would have been eleven going on twelve, and I'm forty nine now and feel it like it was last week. The instant reaction was one of near blind panic but a desire not to show it outwardly to anyone and that was not easy. I think I began shaking actually. I know it seems quite irrational saying this but it felt like a really big deal. I was not a young lad who did the shirtless look or wanted to, I saw myself as too thin and lacking muscle for starters and had already been mentally preparing myself for the onset of group showers in school that I knew of after a teacher mentioned such things were done for older boys doing PE. When everyone around me was shirtless that first time I looked on feeling deep discomfort rather than reassurance it wasn't only me, and an ever bigger discomfort at shower time for a long while until it subsided only because of regularity of happening. The whole made to be shirtless and shower at school was actually quite tortuous for many months and I struggled hard to accept it for what it was and to accept that people in school were telling me to do these things I disliked. I know for fact that I was not alone but nobody ever said a word about how these things made them feel, some just bunked off.
DeleteHi Harry, your words click with me about the sudden nervous feeling when you realise you've got a PE teacher who likes the shirtless way of doing things and knowing you're going to have to be bare chested in regular lessons. I remember trying hard to keep my nipples covered as much as humanly possible while shirtless, and failing miserably of course. Showing my nipples was a big part of my own bare chest nerves as well as just feeling too exposed and looked at or judged. My body was quite normal however.
DeleteHey there Ryan you were not alone on that one my friend.
DeleteOur gym teachers in high school when I was around twelve or thirteen were mad keen on the gym in phys ed being done barechested. When we began high school we kicked off the first times in sports shirts but overnight it changed and off we headed into a world of shirtless gym. I didn't mind the quick change of top and shirtless for a couple of seconds in the changing room but not putting anything on and going out for gym was something else.
The first time we were told to do gym barechested made my throat and stomach go real weird and churning like. I dunno if any of the other young guys felt the same but it hit me with strong nervy sensations and a sense of reluctance. Basically I didn't wanna be shirtless in the gym. Looking around at so many other barechested lads my age in the same place didn't make me feel any better about it but a hell of a lot more nervy actually. I thought I must be the only one feeling the way I was. We'd have to make a slow jog across the school yard shirtless to get to gym.
The first time we did this I thought it was a one off but it happened next phy ed with another teacher so I began to feel panic before the next few phys ed classes and before I knew it we'd done a month and then two months gym shirtless and could not recall when we last wore our sports shirts in school gym. We hardly ever did again, not even for the sports show and tell for our folks which came about during every May, where the boys school gym classes all lined up shirtless in front of our parents before we displayed the skills we'd been taught.
My folks were always keen to come down to the gym show and tell but never made comment about all the shirtless boys and me, and I didn't say a word about my feelings over it but real wanted to speak out how much I felt uncomfortable the high school dictating we go shirtless for phys ed like this.
It's great to see my own shirtless feeling as a boy were not unique to me but quite common with others too, not just here in my home state of Colorado but over there in Britain I had no clue they have a long history of doing phys ed shirtless in their schools.
I'm in England Eric and it was so true. This is England of the 1980s I am referring to in my own case. I first remember shirtless PE when I was in middle school at the age of 8. It didn't seem the big deal it became later for many when I attended secondary school from 11 onwards. That was the time that shirtless PE really got going in a big way after we had transitioned up to the big one. They took our tops from us without any discussion about it and it was mandatory that the boys at my secondary school had to do PE, the indoors ones, entirely in a bare chest (and feet) irrespective of the kind of activity inside that we were taking part in.
DeleteOur parents had to buy us a couple of pairs of standard issue black shorts to wear from the official supplier shop to the school. No others were allowed. The shorts had to be close fitting and well above the knees. No other clothing was permitted in PE at all for boys, other than underpants beneath the shorts if you wanted to keep them on. I think most of us did. Some schools didn't even allow underwear under the shorts.
Going shirtless did not come as any great surprise to me at that school, you knew what was coming when you reached age 11 at these schools then. Going shirtless outside was also done at the whim of any given teacher we had. I did a lot of outdoor summer athletics shirtless, always because the teacher of the day had insisted on it, not because any of us had just casually decided to. Decisions like this were never ours to make. Summer shirtless felt alright I suppose. Some teachers even chose to take us long distance running well away from school while shirtless as well. This was even common outside of the summer months too. Once again, not our decision, only the teacher made that choice.
There would be a lot of PE truancy from boys in school and I think the whole shirtless thing played a part in this with some. There was always a spare pair of shorts for anyone who forgot theirs, and with nothing else to wear in the gym it was easy to provide some, so now and then people used to never show up at all to avoid it all. If you forgot your outside kit you could find yourself being the only boy out there who was shirtless if it was a lesson with tops on and sometimes British weather even in spring and summer can be cold. I can think of at least a couple of occasions when I saw others pleading with our teachers not to have to be shirtless, notably on the long distance running days we had and also when we were younger at the start of secondary about 11 coming on 12 or so.
I also remember masses of excuses from boys who used to plead desperately not to be made to take showers in our school too. We had mandatory group showering that we had to take together with each other at the same time while completely naked under close supervision while being checked we had wet our hair and our body thoroughly and used the soap provided properly too which was often just laying on the floor to pick up and was probably used by boys from the previous class. We could not say no to showering like this.
This was how my formative five years from 11 onwards worked out in school, and this was absolutely as normal and common as it got. Anybody, certainly the boys, who didn't go through what I've just described was, if they minded it, very lucky indeed. I suppose many of us in my time were just ambivalent or resigned about the whole shirtless thing with naked showers thrown in on top.
My old secondary school still does shirtless PE, it says so on their website, but the shower rule is optional nowadays.
This is a good post Jonathan.
DeleteThere's this perception that all boys just love taking their shirts off and hanging out shirtless if they can, or getting everything off and going skinny dipping even. What a load of tosh that is, especially the shirtless one which hits home to many. Large numbers of boys really worry and dislike going shirtless and it doesn't really matter what your body shape is or how fit you look. It was a big deal to me when a PE teacher told me to remove my top and bare my chest. Once that shirt was off and I was bare chested my body language changed and so did my mindset. It did not give me confidence when like that. I always did it when told to, I would never have begged not to and show others my fear so clearly but I'm sure my body language gave me away sometimes and would have with others. I enjoyed PE, I just didn't enjoy shirtless PE.
What gets me about PE teachers is why were so many so adamant that we had to do their classes while shirtless when a tee-shirt would do fine. Nobody was asking them to collect our sweaty tops at the end and take them all home for washing. Some people say that shirtless boys in groups gel better together or are easier to handle but I didn't notice those things.
Going shirtless for the boys is still remarkably common here in the United Kingdom. Ten years ago my son who was eleven at the time was coming home with games vests that remained clean and not in need of a wash. When I asked why he just said he hadn't been wearing it, so I asked what he had been wearing for games/PE and he said he was wearing nothing. I clarified what he meant so I was sure and he said boys were doing games shirtless almost always in certain teachers PE classes and were not being given an option to do anything other than shirtless. This seemed to stay this way until he finished year eleven and that was only just five years ago. Some boys don't mind this, others mind a lot.
ReplyDeleteI did notice in his early teens he began spending more time around the house and garden shirtless in front of the family than he had ever done before so think it gave him a little extra confidence, however I did ask if this concerned him at the time and all I got was that he wasn't sure what he felt about shirtlessness within a class situation of his peers.
Born in 1978.
ReplyDeleteSecondary school from 1990 to 1996.
Having a bare chest in PE was compulsory and that included sometimes while in the company of girls in certain PE. I believe it was the general long term school rule that boys did it that way that had been the same for years since the place opened in the 1950s.This was applied universally to all while taking PE in our school gym.
I always found it interesting being able to see how our various bodies were growing and developing at different rates even though we were the same age. You pretend not to be paying attention to what others look like but are obviously not blind. Most of us probably looked fine shirtless anyway but I doubt most of us would have done PE in a bare chest if we hadn't been told to do so. It's interesting that the decision to be shirtless was made for us all rather than allowing individual decisions on a top or bare chest.
Our secondary in the nineties time frame I mentioned above also required the dreaded communal showers under the gaze of a couple of staff and this was also a compulsory element at the end of PE, in my case until I was 16. These showers were taken every lesson we did and involved mingling and lining up at a shower head along three sides of the open area. No cubicles. When packed it was sharing a shower head with someone else at the same time. Naked of course. We didn't even walk to the showers with towels, just went across to them it all on show for teachers and other boys. It was a bit of an education to see everyone without any secrets to hide.
Complaints about the compulsory shirtless requirement or the naked showers we faced, and there were a few, were just dismissed out of hand with no consideration regards issues some will have had about personal privacy, modesty or esteem. It was rough on those prone to these feelings.
This discussion interests me.
ReplyDeleteMany years ago I saw a psychologist who was a friend of the family. I won't go into too many details but he told me that being made to be bare chested is used as an act of submissiveness against those who are told to be bare chested by an authority figure, in most cases this is in school. I was also told by the psychologist that people who have been kidnapped it had been discovered in a lot of cases are often told to remove all footwear and remain barefoot, again to create a submissive state. I found that quite an unexpected discovery.
The requirement of school in this case, to insist someone, obviously boys, must not be allowed to wear tops and must be bare chested creates an immediate sense of vulnerability automatically, especially with less confident self critical mind types such as myself, especially young but all ages it can apply to. Adding the barefoot aspect on top of the bare chest and insisting it must be done ramps up anxiety in some quite considerably. It all did with me, I had terrible body image when I was a kid and it took years to shake off slowly, all caused by many gym teachers forcing me to be bare chested and completely naked around lots of others who I felt judged me. I always felt the teachers were judging me too.
I would make all kinds of excuses to avoid situations in school which I knew were going to require me to shower with no clothes on, take my shirt off or even just my shoes and socks. All were impossible to avoid however.
When I was forced to be shirtless in my schooldays, and often barefoot at the same time, I felt like I had been placed into a submissive situation just by being that way. I was a strong but skinny kid, academically quite bright. I used to question everything, or so I thought. I never questioned being required to be bare chested, barefoot or naked for the showers or why certain adults in the gym dept of school could insist on it. I really wish I had done so and pushed back a little and stood up for my personal body freedom, I think I had every right to refuse such orders to disrobe and bare my chest, my feet or my entire body and genitalia for the observation of others in classes or adults in the gym department, all for the sake of an hour's physical education two or three times weekly.
I wasn't on the school wrestling team but they even made them weigh themselves in front of various adults and some parents in school completely naked and line up to do so waiting without a towel so someone told me who did this years back, and these were often well developed 15 to 18 year olds.
This is a shirtlessbarefoot blog I see. How much did I hate gym teachers in middle school who made us go barefoot, I really did. Even with a top on and shorts, if I had nothing on my feet I felt exposed and quite naked and found showing my feet really quite embarrassing. I don't think I ever saw a barefoot teacher though. At high school if you didn't have the correct sole on your trainers for gym then you had to go barefoot instead. I made sure I always had the right approved trainer sole.
DeleteWe did shirtless gym a handful of times but it was not something that became much of a thing although when we did do it I wondered if it was going to become something we did more often but it never was and nobody seemed to want to volunteer to take gym without their tee-shirt on at the time.
Thank you Paul for pointing out the element of control and submission, which to my mind clearly underpinned my PE lessons in a UK comprehensive in the 90ies. We were only allowed white shorts, no top, no socks no trainers. This was for all PE, sometimes mixed with the girls and even outside, even though trainers were allowed, when doing cross-country or athletics.
DeleteIt was all about instilling discipline, as you mentioned, with strict adherence to rules. We had to line up in the hall according to size, and the teacher would ensure we were in perfect order before we started, often sizing us up — teenage boys as young as 11 — and making more or less depreciative comments about our half naked bodies.
It was all about instilling discipline, as you mentioned, with strict adherence to rules that went beyond just our attire. In the gym hall, we weren’t allowed to speak at all, and every action was governed by the teacher’s whistle. One whistle meant we had to stand to attention where we were, two whistles meant running to the sideline and lining up, and three whistles commanded us to drop and do ten push-ups. We became almost robotic in our responses, stripped of individual expression and moving only as instructed.
The teacher, meanwhile, always wore a top, maintaining a clear distinction in attire and authority between us and him. This difference was a constant visual reminder of the control dynamic at play — one set of rules for us, another for him. It felt like we were being taught more than just physical fitness; we were being conditioned to follow orders without question.
Looking back, the uniformity and lack of choice over both our movements and our clothing reinforced a sense of conformity. It wasn’t just about exercise; it was about obedience and submission, shaping how we understood authority and compliance. Experiences like this leave a lasting impact, influencing how we perceive not only physical activity but figures of authority in general.
There is a YouTube video which shows a typical 90ies UK gym lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_gb0CUzwX0
I'm from Greensboro, North Carolina where I grew up and was schooled.
DeleteYikes, the British comments on here have surprised me. I imagined Britain to be very different to descriptors here and in some other places I've read up on. I think of your country as buttoned up and well dressed and doing gym in nice shorts and always tops on. But now I discover it's completely the opposite and the UK had a strong culture for requiring shirtless PE education for its boys across the country with everyone facing it to some degree or another in nearly all schools and lots still use this method to teach. Wow. This seems quite Scandanavian in approach and not very British.
Here in North Carolina I always wore shorts and tops of my choice and training shoes. There were some guys who chose to go shirtless from time to time and I guess I could have gotten shirtless in middle/high school if I wished. I was educated in the 80s & 90s. We did have a compulsory shower for a while but it didn't last more than a couple of years, and I guess you can get that when kids are real sweaty but I find it real weird that UK kids at the time I was schooled were being forced into shirtless PE education as what sounds like a state directive almost.
The video of the boys in Britain from the 90s at the time I was schooled looked quite joyless to me and the shirtless boys all looked very awkward and nervous. I'm surprised at that age they were still sharing gym with the opposite sex like that and not a proper all boys dedicated lesson. If they'd had a nice white vest and some trainers on it would have made little difference to their ability and performance. They did kind of appear slightly submissive I suppose by being shirtless and barefoot like that, as well as contending with girls and a camera watching their every move.
Hello Chad, you are right; they seem to be quite submissive, which is probably the whole point of making them strip to the waist. The contrast between the half-naked boys and the almost completely covered girls is striking and surely intentional. Also, note that you can't hear anyone saying a word, which is quite different from how my boys' gym classes were conducted. But then, if I had been a boy in that kind of gym setting, forced to participate shirtless and in small shorts, I probably would have shut up and obeyed as well.
ReplyDeleteThose poor young guys being forced to do gym shirtless in front of the girls and camera. I'm pleased I didn't grow up in the UK where they do that to you.
DeleteWhat happened if you didn't want to take your shirt off for games like that, was there no choice at all in many schools there? I never faced such a situation ever. I'm 32, raised in Washington State.
Hello, Evan. I don’t think you quite understand. You didn’t have a choice. You could never go against the school uniform rules without risking punishment. In the UK, the PE kit is part of the official school uniform, so you follow it: put on your white shorts and get into the gym. Nobody ever openly showed apprehension; you acted as if it didn’t bother you, like you were tough.
ReplyDeleteI think being made to go shirtless for PE lessons was actually good for me. It taught me to endure difficult situations, keep a stiff upper lip, and become a man.
Yep John is right here. The British stiff upper lip was learnt early in life and this whole PE thing with being stripped off is a rather good example of it I'd say. You did indeed tough it out. I had to remove my tops and go with the bare chest time after time through middle school and secondary school, the latter being almost permanently shirtless for gym at the time and I'm late forties now. It became second nature to do so. I did it a couple of times a week like this, and in middle school also did music and movement class bare chested as well, like all boys got told to. It didn't matter if you disliked being shirtless and made no difference, you still had to in my case, but I wasn't concerned by this myself. Others did dislike the compulsion involved, especially at secondary school but would never say so direct to a teacher, just among the boys once in a while I heard rumblings about it.
DeleteUnsure about my middle school but for my secondary school going shirtless for PE like John said, was down as part of the required school uniform for the part of the day we did any gym based PE. After a while any teacher that took us didn't even need to tell us to do so, we knew to never wear tops in a PE class and walked bare chested to gym because being a "skin" as it was often called, was the kit. No jewellery up top either, no pendants, chains, or watches. Nothing above the waist at all.
Going in the showers at school was a bit different to going shirtless. They were compulsory to take but unlike bare chested PE there was some defiance openly against showering from some who hated the idea of being naked I suppose. Mostly this involved trying to dress without showering, being noticed doing so and getting instructed to get everything off and in with the rest, while pleading to be let off or with excuses. None of it ever worked though, so it was best to just get on with it all.
I can vouch for what Darren says here. Reminds me of typical school p.e days during the early to mid 90's. My place had the no tops p.e rule at age 11+ and the next four years. Shirtless applied to everybody equally and you couldn't ask to put a top on just because you felt shy or had a fat or thin body or felt you didn't look good shirtless. Teachers rules and all that.
DeleteSame here. Boys could not and would not be allowed to wear tops with any of our teachers going into gym at school when I was a comprehensive school age child aged eleven to fifteen in the early eighties. Tops, any type, were not allowed on anyone. Neither were trainers or socks allowed, we had to be barefoot and all look exactly the same as each other during gym at school wearing our small navy blue shorts.
DeletePerhaps the worst part about this is that we had to line up and wait for our gym teacher some days in a public school corridor like this with the general teaching staff and other pupils walking past gawping at the lot of us hanging around awkwardly.
Men and boys bodies are designed to be shirtless and to look good shirtless if you keep in shape and don't over-eat, so what better time to start doing so than in the school gym with your school pals together. The choice to be shirtless was not mine. The first teacher that made me do this in school when I was twelve horrified the hell out of me but I soon discovered the world didn't end because I had to remove my shirt and show my body to others and we were all the same, so I began liking it and finding it liberating even and I couldn't believe I had once felt a fear over it. It didn't work like that for everyone but it did for me.
ReplyDeleteYou're like my teachers now. I'm still in school but have got through and out the other end of going shirtless for the benefit of my teachers and not myself.
DeleteIf anyone wants to go shirtless in the school gym let them, no probs but why make us all do it when it doesn't really matter or impact what we are doing.
I've never been naturally comfortable going about with my shirt off, and have never liked someone who is allowed to tell me I have to be shirtless, the only place this has happened is at school.
When my parents sent me to a chiropracter last year the man who treated me respected my wish to remain dressed while he worked on me and asked first, saying some of his clients choose to be shirtless during treatment and others don't.
This same respect does not extend to the school I currently attend to bys there, although I'm done with gym now and all that now I'm 16.
I think there are all kinds of reasons why a school or particular teachers asked us to do PE class bare chested, and I had to, no choice. In my case the head of PE who took most of my gym lessons simply wouldn't have any of 'his boys' as he called us, wearing vests or tee-shirts because he thought everyone being the same in bare chests in class made us all work harder and act keener at what we did, and those who were not in as good a shape as others could see them and aspire to get in better shape.
DeleteNo problem with getting my kit off up top and never have been bothered by it. Did it quite a bit in my school time years ago and enjoyed it, I was captain of the school basketball team and had to choose who the shirtless ones were gonna be and liked volunteering our side to be shirtless which used to get me a few comments because the rule seemed to be if you chose you'd be shirts and I never did that and went for shirtless most times. I know this worked up one lad we played with on that school team who was 6"7' tall at fifteen with the thinnest and longest torso I've ever seen on anybody to this day and I don't think he enjoyed his tall body being displayed too much and looked crazy awkward among the rest of us.
DeleteHere in Australia going shirtless is nothing at school or around the home. Me and my brothers and cousins (boys) all sat around the outside shaded patio dinner table one Christmas Day eating the dinner shirtless because it was sweltering in 40c heat in Adelaide, and I think me and the others would have been disappointed if we'd never been allowed to go shirtless for a bit of phys ed in school days, which we spent with lots of skins and shirts team games and choosing the skins ourselves and other shirtless gym stuff too numerous to mention, most of it mandatory but somertimes T-shirts were slipped off by choice.
ReplyDeleteSaying it like a lot of us on here went to British comprehensive (high) schools back in the 80s when it was the norm for lads to go shirtless for PE, almost always compulsory to do so, no consideration for body phobics scared to be bare chests in school PE then. I won't deny there were always a few who made it obvious how they didn't like the shirtless rules we had then. I never thought anything of it, it was the rules you just got on with it though I think back then as many young men we were much less body conscious than what young men are today. Modesty wasn't as much of an issue, you shared a room back home with your brothers if you had lots them and you were out of PJ's by the time you reached 11, so you didn't really care about showing your body off. The school showers in Britain are legendary because everyone, boys especially but also girls doing them and being watched by teachers as we all huddled together naked without any say about whether we wanted to take all our clothes off and be naked. Again, no choice on that whatsoever. Some current kids who do none of this at school think this is unbelievably cruel and unjust. In my case I can truthfully state that I did all of this when I was told to and didn't think too much about it at the time.
ReplyDeleteHere in New Zealand going barefoot in school is a bit of a thing in some schools, not just for the p.e class. My young one at the moment goes to a school, he's only ten, that encourages class to go barefoot in general class because they say it's proven to encourage better working and concentration and children behave better in class while barefoot. It may not suit everyone or even work but in my one's case he's doing well spending the day learning with his socks tucked into his shoes left in the corner of class with all the others. I think they all do it, not the class teacher though! We were asked our thoughts and I immediately gave consent. My one found it strange at first they even asked him to do such a thing. He's regular barefoot around our home anyway, so school is just like home.
ReplyDeleteI remember having 4 PE teachers in high school. 3 of them were easy going guys who got on with us all and ran a really great gym class. The 4th guy was very different and a less likeable character, quite cold and detached, always moaning at guys in class. The other three took us and we wore shirts to PE much of the time, shirts came off now and again but not a lot and only if you wanted, they did it the consensual way. The 4th guy was all over guys in PE to strip down and have nothing on above the waist in his gym class and didn't require our consent to be shirtless, he just told us to do it and didn't take excuses. This was 1985/6 kind of time, 13/14 age. I wasn't a great fan of being shirtless at that age and a teacher insisting I must be always made me mad inside and knock my esteem.
ReplyDeleteIt should have always been illegal for your teacher to force you to become shirtless if you didn't want to, or to force you to shower naked. In hated both immensely when I was a teenager. I pity the kids in the United Kingdom who look like they had it real bad over there all being made to go shirtless in gym so much.
ReplyDeleteNo it should not!
DeleteThere is nothing wrong with a responsible person such as a teacher within the safety of the school environment asking/telling those he/she is responsible for that they must do as they are told and that includes being shirtless for the PE lesson and a quick shower if applicable. This literally happened to me hundreds of times during my school days on both counts and it was hardly a decision I think should be criminalised even if it was not my actual choosing to do these things.
There was no messin' with my old gym teachers, you had 60 seconds from getting into the locker room to everyone havin' to be stood showering with everything off, and I mean everything, no clothing, no jewellery, nothin'. Such a mad rush there was little time to think about getting self obsessed about it.
DeleteQuite frequent this would follow on from some kinda shirtless gym class, don't remember bare chests in the gym being done by choice, only by instruction. There was no appealing the decision I know that.
I'm in favour of shirtless gym and the right to do it this way. Hell, I think it knocks some common sense into some of the more body introverts to prove it's okay and no big deal to muck in with others like that while your learning.
I've two sons only recently left school in Maidstone just south east of London to our foreign correspondents here and I'm talking a fairly normal school for the over elevens up to eighteens run by the Dept of Education and both told me they were doing shirtless gym on a frequent basis, sometimes as skins and shirts and at other times just random shirtless classes with some shirtless or the whole lot shirtless. It's just a part of physical education in school really. It was not voluntary, but going shirtless at school was never voluntary for me either. We had to take our shirts off for the gym class when told to, and much of my school gym life was done shirtless with my friends. Some detested it, others loved it, many of us were somewhere in between.
DeleteEven the running shirts weren't allowed when i was a 70's schoolboy in northern England where we had a cabal of six feisty physical education men. Every one of them made the cross country groups run bare chested all year round and complaints about the cold were met with 'if you run faster you get warmer' and such like. It was quite a hellish existence at times in school for young guys when that was what you had to look forward to first thing after registration at 8.45am. When I think of being shirtless it just makes mr think of all those school gyms and runs that made me shiver while the teachers shouted and insulted us.
DeleteI'd heard lots of rumours about my high school before I went there and most of them I thought were kind of OTT and one such was they made the boys go full on shirtless in the gym nearly all the time. With my natural self confidence I doubted they do that and even if it was true I'd be able to talk myself out of it. Hell when I got to high school it was completely true, the boys went mandatory bare chests in gym not just sometimes but always and I couldn't talk myself out of it and nobody else could either. Kind of got used to it within a month and it became normal to do. I was always confident but not when it came to taking my shirt off and going shirtless for school gym. This took place in '97.
DeleteThis guy 'Jack the traveler' doesn't like to go shirtless.
Deletehttps://youtu.be/jdv9MeqhhEI?si=m_JSFcKVsy2hDPVE&t=420
Does No Shirt Dan ever read this blog nowadays?
ReplyDeleteGet this guys. I'm 14 and in high school 9th grade right this moment and have a gym teacher who makes us do gym shirtless and no tops allowed but have another swim coach same school who lets other boys swim with wet tee shirts if they want, and some do that.
ReplyDeleteAt high school I had no bother myself about going shirtless when required.
ReplyDeleteI had a gym teacher who let the athletic lads like me pick school gym teams, and they were always shirtless versus tops on, and because I always wanted the best on our side I always made the less athletic, unconfident and weedy kids in class be the shirtless team, and they hated me for it! The same kids were always shirtless in gym for team games like that. Call me mean but at school it seemed fun at the time to force other kids in class to be shirtless when they didn't seem to like it or want it.
I did my own share of shirtless gym, just not on team selections.
During the soccer world cup of 1994 when I was still in high school as a fifteen year old kid our PE teacher became keen on taking us for soccer games done Brazilian style on the school grass. This was barefoot soccer, and he went on about it for weeks and had us all out barefoot kicking soccer balls about like Brazilians. Half the guys had to also rip their PE shirts off and kick about bare chested. It was kinds weird while it lasted.
ReplyDeleteWe did quite a bit of bare chested PE in high school but nobody chose it, we got told to remove the tops and throw them aside or never left the locker room with them on in the first place. We had a couple of obese guys who looked horrible like that, it was probably hell for them. Maybe a third of our PE was in a bare chest and that was more than enough for me. We did the locker room gang shower routine most PE days so we actually got to see everything we all had to offer when it came to our total bare skinned bodies all hanging out, secrets about what we looked like under our clothes there were none.
The only three schools I ever went to here in the UK all chose shirtless PE lessons for the classes I was a part of and I must have been doing shirtless like this for something like eleven years, I started school at five, left at sixteen. At my first school the boys and girls seemed to do a lot of PE in their underwear only. The girls also went shirtless with nothing on top like the boys, they didn't treat the girls any different to the boys, from age five to about seven. There was no difference visually at that age of course. I don't know why we seemed to do so much PE in underwear like that but we certainly did in the school hall, knicjers only on girls, tiny y-fronts mostly on boys.
ReplyDeleteMy second school, my middle school, the boys wore proper shorts and you could have black, navy or white but no other colour. Shirtless and barefoot. The girls now wore an all over body leotard which school preferred, and it was one colour, black. At middle school somewhere around the age of nine years of age I was introduced to the requirement that I must take a shower when PE was over and my first communal shower at this age was shared with about fifteen other boys in our class. At my middle school the staff were 3:1 mostly women and they had full access to the boys area as well as the girls. In my first year showering aged nine there were many times we were kept watch by the woman who took our PE, even when we changed and showered, although she didn't look directly into the communal shower as we washed but did see us going in and out wearing nothing.
At my third and final school, a Leeds comprehnsive school, I reached when I was twelve years old, it turned out much the same again. The boys PE kit in the gymnasium there was white shorts, no tops were allowed, nor plimsolls or training shoes of any type, only our bare feet and bare chests. I was used to this way of doing PE by this stage but it was at this time I first noticed others who got worked up and anxious about going shirtless and also taking showers. These ones had come from other middle schools that did not do shirtless PE or shower before age twelve like mine had done. Unfortunately for those youngsters who felt like that and like so many UK schools at that time in the 70's & 80's were like it, they didn't take no to shirtless or showers as an answer and forced everyone no matter what to go through with it by making it fully compulsory for all.
Is it a good thing or a bad thing or does it even matter at all, I'm not sure.
There's a lot of interesting comments on here about being shirtless and what especially young guys thought of it at school.
ReplyDeleteWell I can sum up quite easily what I thought of shirtless in school. I'm not exaggerating when I say this but knowing I was highly likely to end up in a school that did things this way just about made me sick with nervous anxiety and when the day finally arrived this giant of a teacher imposed quite a figure of intimidation as I saw it and made everyone strip to the waist, using that term for being shirtless. I was not calm inside and wanted to shout back, fuck off I'm not going shirtless for you, but of course didn't. In the moment I melted into a shaking jelly and stripped to the waist just as he said and looked around at the others all doing just the same.
Shirtless PE is a tradition that fosters resilience and a sense of camaraderie among boys. There’s something about shared physical exposure, where everyone is on equal footing, that helps develop confidence, courage, and a sense of pride in masculinity. For some, overcoming the initial discomfort of participating shirtless in a group can encourage self-assurance, especially as they see their peers facing the same experience. Learning to embrace the custom of shirtless PE can foster strength, grit, and resilience in boys, marking a step toward maturity that serves them well beyond the gym. It contributes to making men out of boys, yet it’s unfortunately a tradition that has largely been discontinued today.
ReplyDeleteGood morning.
ReplyDeleteA question. What do we do with boys who fret about going shirtless in front of others and can never overcome bare chest anxiety if it is asked of them in situations such as at school? How do we makw such boys more confident about being seen like this?
If there is a set PE uniform which does not include a top for boys, they won't have a choice. They will just have to deal with it, stop being snowflakes and man up, like we used to and it did us a whole lot of good.
ReplyDeleteHarrison, that's pretty much what my dad said when I was 14 and grumbled about the new teacher who made me take my top off for PE. 'Toughen you up, make you a man' etc was the gist of it, so I certainly didn't get any sympathy and had no option but to get used to my new reduced PE kit, ie: my shorts. Up to then I'd never been made to do PE with a bare chest as it wasn't school policy, just down to the individual teacher and this one was firmly of the view that boys didn't need a shirt or vest for lessons in the gym. I thought at first that it'd be different for outdoor lessons and at first it was, but once we'd warmed up he decided to split us up into teams of shirts and skins and ordered all the boys on my team to take our shirts off. Again, no sympathy from my dad when I mentioned it, he fully approved and said he hoped the teacher picked me for skins again next time!
ReplyDeleteMax, shirtless in the school gym with the lesson fair enough, like many things in school you get told to do them and are expected to act on your teacher's instruction without debating it, and this includes a teacher who would tell you that he didn't require the wearing of a PE top and expected a shirtless class group. But what about shirtless activity involving school but not within the strict confines of the gym lesson, such as in my time in 1993 England in my early teens when the school did sports and gym displays for parents, governors and any other hangers on who wanted to watch us, and even though these took place out of school hours of an early evening we were forbidden from wearing tops at these showpiece displays and any boys taking part such as I were forced to be bare chests. Many young guys were naturally nervous about being in front of an audience anyway and I knew quite a lot who worried about being seen shirtless with the mums and dads, older siblings and anyone else looking on as they did gym display evening. These concerns were completely dismissed by all associated teaching staff involved and all the boys had to turn out in bare chests at such events in our school. I took part in two such things. I wasn't too bad myself but I remember I could sense a definite awkwardness when about 30 of us all streamed out in line in front of everyone shirtless with 200 people watching us.
DeleteI remember thinking we would wear a PE vest for such a public event but when someone asked about this I think there was a certain intake of breath when told no, same as in normal gym with teacher, you'll go out there and do your stuff top free with a bare chest and show some muscle. My parents both knew I did gym at school shirtless and had no issue over it but one of the guys I was close to told me that he'd never told his parents he did school PE in a bare chest and the night we did the gym display and he came out with the rest of our class shirtless was the first time his parents realsied this was how he did it and it came as a surprise, and later admitted to me how deeply embarrassed by the whole thing he was.
Hi there, did them too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIS6-YdWEw But I must say, it didn't really bother me at all.
DeleteOoh yes that short video takes me straight back to upper middle school sports day in the school grounds with our p.e teacher giving us instruction in front of mostly our mums and a few dads who'd got time off work. We had the white shorts & bare chest look. I felt like a performing monkey doing it, and the boys in school most definitely could not show up wearing even a vest for sports, only shirtless would do. Our mums never thought it was unfair on us. British upper middle, Sussex, years 1980-83.
DeleteLots of physical education teachers were control freaks who took great delight in their position over us if they were a certain personality type that meant they would humiliate and demean. Making us go skins was a part of this. We had a PE kit at school which included a vest, a tea-shirt and a sweatshirt. We almost never wore any of it indoors under any teacher you cared to name. The lot of them ruled us with the universal thought that boys are best bare chested and shirtless. Bare chests automatically meant bare feet to match up as well. To some boys that feels more or less naked and very exposed, but we went the whole way on that too when lined up and ticked off and into the showers when we really were naked as the day we were born. Such an unbelievable level of control over our bodies, I've recently learned that the local prison near me doesn't even treat the high security inmates as poorly as I was ordered about in school.
ReplyDeleteEverything you did was fully appropriate for the location you were doing it though, so I don't know why people complain so much about it. All completely normal in my book. You were all the same gender, I presume for gym, and were all treated and looked the same way, I presume too. To be fair I think it's entirely reasonable to do gym like this and if there are some who get all funny about it then hopefully being in large groups of other more confident shirtless lads can pull the confidence up a few notches over time or even quite fast. I don't even think very fat overweight lads should complain in such a situation, there's no point hiding being like that, best to see the truth and try and do something about it. I know you can get weedy looking lads too, I admit I was quite skinny but so were others and it just made me want to try and shape up a bit better when I did shirtless gym sometimes. I cedrtainly would not have tried to cry off saying I was too skinny to remove my top. Anyway, as others have said, they sent you into the showers at the end of it all anyway so even if you did keep the top on you'd be getting it off in the locker room after gym and all the rest of your kit and getting totally bared, and if everyone else's school shower was like mine you got up very close and personal in those shoulder to shoulder, much closer than in the gym. While I think it's not unreasonable to have a bit of shower anxiety with others like that you should get over it rapidly once you start doing it but I do think it was, like shirtless gym, an entirely reasonable thing to be asked to do after school gym for everyone.
DeleteWe had to go skins and shirts and split half the entire class up like that once and nobody could agree who was going to be all the skins after about five lads did it, nobody else wanted to make the numbers up and join them by taking their tops off and going shirtless when we needed another six or seven to do it, so our gym teacher got so mad he made us all skins and told us we were going to stay that way until the end of term in each lesson so not to bother bringing our tops to PE for the next six weeks, and he kept his word on that.
ReplyDeleteIt's really striking to me just how much I can relate to so much that has been written on this discussion about PE classes. I had that "sinking feeling" when realising you would have to do PE barechested at my school. My experiences are from an almost six year period during the 80's.
ReplyDeleteMy school had what can only be described as a very rigid and strict PE dress code. Exceptionally strict infact. I had three PE classes each week, two indoors and one outdoors. Both of the indoors PE classes were compulsory barechested for all boys and there were no exemptions, even for a poor classmate who had a quite severe eczema over his body. One lesson was in the gym, in white shorts and the other was in a sports hall in black shorts. Our 80's shorts were very tight and skimpy too! At no time during indoors PE were we ever allowed to wear any trainers or footwear, it was always bare feet without exception. One of the indoor classes would quite frequently be a mixed boys/girls lesson which kind of made not being allowed to wear very much for boys a real trauma for some of us, especially when you hit about the age of thirteen or fourteen.
Even the outdoors lesson could often be a barechested one, on decent autumn days and more or less always during the summer term, which meant that literally the only time I wore a top in PE over the years was outside in the winter months. I often ran outdoors cross country barechested in autumn from September to November and it was a course that took us out of school grounds into some quite public areas too, which I detested. On one occasion I did accidentally forget my outdoor running shoes and ran the three miles in my bare feet by reluctant choice, as the alternative was to wreck my new leather school shoes in thick mud. Running barefoot through thick mud then gravel paths and onto tarmac before returning to the grassy playing fields was no fun I assure you.
The showers at my school were a very large open plan affair and I always remember them for being extremely hot, steaming away throughout the changing room. I tried to avoid them the first time we had them but got caught with a friend trying to do so and was effectively stripped bare on the spot and frogmarched into them. That's what still grates a bit to me, that there was no acknowledgement that we are not all the same and we have different levels at which we are comfortable. Some boys love getting their kit off and losing the shirt at any opportunity, others never would through choice, and some dived into the showers without a second thought. But quite a large number of us didn't do so, and what discussions like this one here are proving is that there were far more of my type out there than ever realised.
I still wonder just why I had to do literally everything in PE in nothing but a pair of shorts, stuff like squash, badminton etc? You can make the case for actual gym work on apparatus maybe, but why some of the other games needed me in my bare feet and barechested remains a mystery.
Even our summer sports days were compulsory barechested when we had our visiting parents and families watching, which was even more problematic for quite a few of us. I never even walked around at home with my kit off and certainly always kept a t-shirt top on even in summer. A total lack of empathy for the shyer boys amongst us from our PE teachers and I'd sure as hell like to hear from any current or old school PE teacher and what their attitude is to boys who struggle with these kind of "sinking feeling" barechested and shower requirements. It's not as if I had a body to be ashamed of, I didn't.
I went to a boys only secondary school in the early 70’s in England. I can remember being in my last year at junior school (aged 10), thinking how "grown up" the boys were at senior school, and how it would be great to be like that ! We lived close to the secondary school, so saw boys out doing cross country or running immediately after school.
ReplyDeleteBoys always ran shirtless, and some groups barefoot (always the ones I saw after school - I later discovered this was a punishment, when they wore only shorts as part of the detention).
Even when I was wearing multiple layers of clothing due to it being freezing cold, I still wanted to be grown up like them ! Later when it was me doing the run in freezing weather, I changed my mind.
The secondary school had class room based detentions, which were reasonably common, as in most schools at the time. Caning was used, but really only for serious offences.
As a sports mad school, and a traditional one at that, a gym detention was the most serious non caning punishment - it was meant to show you up in front of other boys and punish you.
You reported immediately after school for the detention. Names checked off, undressed (fully) rapidly, kit on and ran into the gym. ONLY shorts were allowed (no vests, bare feet), and this was strictly enforced. There was then 45 mins of non stop exercises in the gym. Next a run, which was on tracks/fields, same kit- bare feet, shirtless, much worse than wearing plimsolls - the whole thing was strict, so no talking to other boys, do as ordered immediately and so on.
If you broke the rules, even in a small way you were punished. The sanctions ranged from cold showers, up to caning. The most common was to repeat the detention another day. Caning was rare in detentions, but I recall one situation where 2 boys started to push one another/fight – the result was 6 strokes each of the senior cane immediately after the run.
Hey Steve I'm in Sacramento with a pretty decent climate but you English kids look to have had a hard graft in phys.ed class back there. That's remarkable stuff. The whole concept of any teacher forcing kids in my era, early 1990s to go shirtless in phys. ed for anything other than swimming would be unthinkable, although some did this in the heat and were free to go there if they wanted it. We did have to group shower in the buff though but it gets hot over here and not all school gyms had aircon and our school provided the towel to rub dry. Did they do that in England? Still can't get over the widespread use of mandated shirtless phys. ed across England for you guys as kids.
DeleteBlaine
DeleteCertainly in my era boys had to bring their own towels, and you HAD to shower after PE/Sport. Because of our climate no aircon of course.
Caning has disappeared in all English schools.
Certainly many private school (ie. fee paying) still do indoor PE shirtless, and possibly bare foot. In one private school near me, all boys run cross country shirtless all the time. They wear trainers, but no socks. As they are all dressed the same, I assume this is compulsory across all age groups, and certainly takes place all year around. I would expect them to have to shower.
There may be some state schools that have the same rules, especially as we seems to be moving back to stricter uniform/kits etc.
Your school provided towels Blaine, paper ones or proper ones?
DeleteYou had to bring your own towel to school in your bag with you every PE day over here in the UK back in the mid eighties, and then hump it around wet amongst your school books, a real drag if your lesson was early in the school day. It took a lot of room up. I hated bringing a towel into school a couple of times a week. Those who forgot to bring one got in trouble, would not be allowed to borrow anyone else's and had to stand there naked and drip dry. Considering we had no choice and were all made to go in the showers following PE class it would have been good to have the school give us the means to dry off after they'd given us the means to soak ourselves.
As far as general PE output went, throughout my whole school time I was doing shirtless PE with my bare chest on display very often from a quite young age and it was not exclusively when at the comprehensive, also known as secondary schools in the UK, or what others refer to as High School. Lower schools were a bit hit and miss but comprehensive was when going shirtless got serious on a regular basis for entire classes and a lack of tolerance for those who played up about it - there were a few.
Answering Blaine above, I don't know why you would describe a group of youngsters in a school gym class having to all turn out shirtless as 'unthinkable'. Over here in British schools that was quite standard going really, most of us did this whether we liked it or not and whatever we actually looked like. Rather than unthinkable I'd describe it as 'unremarkable' and most teachers treated it as so. I spent three straight years doing shirtless PE in the school gym from the age of 12 to 15 and that was the rule where I was. I hadn't done it before that lower age so it came as a bit of a shock that I had to simply get used to and certainly made me extra aware of my body.
DeleteBack then, I never wore a shirt much. Everyday after school shirts came off for the rest of the day, whether riding bikes or skateboarding, none of us wore shirts much in my circle. Those were the best days, the late 1980s. I'd get home from school, rip my day clothes off, stick shorts and sneakers on and not even think to look for a top to cover me. Out I'd go, round the neighbourhood with the other kids, into the local store or mall shirtless, come back for tea, go back out if it was still light and get called back about 8pm get washed and finally stick something on for bed not having worn a top since coming in from school. At school in the gym we chose our kit and it was a mixed bag of shirts and shirtless, easy either way., but as the other guy says, never easy on the need to refresh and shower, but I wasn't bothered I enjoyed the chance to do that.
ReplyDeleteddd
ReplyDeletedd
DeleteI was once a male anorexic who went down to just 85 pounds in weight at my worst, and I was 5'10" height as a 24 year old young man. Like others I had common shirtless PE demands placed on me at school, which I wasn't very bothered with because I thought I was nice looking when I was in my early teenage years. But then I encountered a new young teacher in gym who seemed to take a dislike to one or two of us and make comments about our shirtless appearance, in my case my stomach which he prodded with his index finger and said it was wobbling and I was getting fat. I got picked on a few times like this while shirtless in PE class and began to doubt how I looked and started wanting to wear a top for PE, but couldn't do so, leaving me open to more comments.
DeleteSo I must have been taking stick for my appearance for a few months, some others were too, and began getting funny about my food, wanting smaller portions, hiding my dinner or pretending to eat it if I took it in another room. I was completely skipping school lunch and just drinking a lot of water to fill up on. I became obsessed with the bathroom scales. I think at 14 I was something like 150 pounds and near to my adult height. In my final couple of school years my weight started dipping and I left weighing maybe 120 pounds. By my early 20's I was diagnosed with male anorexia and was avoiding nearly any food solids or throwing up a lot, but drinking lots of water. I thought I looked okay but my bones were poking where they shouldn't be so much. I saw a psychologist and then a psychiatrist and that was the start of my recovery and a turning point at 24. The bottom line out of therapy was that I'd been nearly fatally triggered into my illness by the teacher's comments about my shirtless body in those classes and it had set me off on a bad journey about myself that reached the darkest moment years after leaving school.
When I see the pictures when I was at my worst I know how ill I now was, but I didn't think or see it. I liked food but saw it as the enemy. Family pictures of me at home shirtless in my early teenage years at 13/14 I looked very normal and nice, perfect actually, and like I say I was initially unfazed by shirtless rules for gym in school until a teacher started sowing doubts in my head about my appearance time after time. I was obviously prone to this weakness, none of the others he did the same to ever became like I did. I'm now a recovered anorexic male of 37 back to full health and weighing in at a normal 165 pounds and looking good again and have been recovered 10 years now.
To conclude my story, I don't think shirtless PE in school was the problem. The teacher was the problem, but I forgive him because I came out far stronger the other side. Please don't ever fear being shirtless, even if told to be so, wherever you are, whatever age you are, and especially if you are young and in school. It's just your own unique body to cherish and not be ashamed of but to embrace.
I'm so sorry to hear that James, but also so pleased you pulled through.
DeleteGym teachers eh, tell me about it. I had one of those sarky types who threw personal insults about like confetti including physique stuff and he must have said enough to our gym class in one month to have given every lad in it multiple body issues for life, and like everyone else on here who must have come to this site because of thoughts and issues about being shirtless, his gym class he made damn sure we stripped to the waist for him, and went barefoot as much as possible. I was accused of having rounded shoulders, flat feet, and best of all, lacking strength so he always drew attention to my arms and biceps. We weren't even safe in the locker room, it's a miracle he never commented on our penises but he was checking up on us and looking so probably thinking something. It just takes one guy like that to set you back.
Prior to my first term at upper school in the early eighties I asked the visiting head of year what the PE kit was and if it was tee shirts, vests or nothing, because wearing nothing concerned me and I knew big schools often did expect nothing worn on top in PE. I was slightly reassured when she told me it would proabably be a mixture of all three over time, but when I got there we hardly ever wore tee shirts or vests and the main way we did PE was shirtless all year long. I felt conned.
ReplyDeleteBefore I went to my new grammar school (boys only England - late 1970's), a kit list was sent out, under PE/Cross Country this listed just "white cotton shorts"
ReplyDeleteAt the open day, one of the other boys asked what was worn, and was told all boys wear just their shorts, "it encourages fitness".
That was exactly what we wore - indoors and outdoors, all year around - stripped to the waist, bare feet, ONLY shorts.
Stuar: bare feet even outdoors?
DeleteYes, bare feet for cross country.
DeleteAt the time, many grammar schools were run on "very traditional" lines - shirtless cross country was all but universal (in fact the majority of schools did this) and bare feet not that uncommon.
We ran mostly on grass, country tracks, but started/finished on tarmac by the school gym.
At the start it was uncomfortable, but you got used to it, anyway we had to, and it was part of "hardening up boys" that was common.
(I think in New Zealand schools still do this now)
we never had this outdoors. being shirtless was an other thing. indoors bare feet was common
DeleteRunning without shoes is better for you in the long term. Check out lots of online examples of adults attempting it and explaining why it's good. It takes time though. I've given it a go but preferred running shoes in the end. I ran at school but always in training shoes. I think it's incredibly mean to make kids run barefoot outside long distances on various possibly unsuitable surfaces. I could maybe understand a short sprint along the grass or something similar. I just don't get the reasoning for both barefoot and shirtless running outside for significant time and distances though especially if kids would have preferred a top and trainers. Kudos to any kids who wanted to go to the extreme but a little unkind to insist on it. Most unsporty kids would find that a real hard task wouldn't they.
DeleteStuart - was there any pushback against those methods where you went? Why do you think Great Britain was to the fore when it came to such styles of doing things? It's not even a very warm country most of the year is it.
Delete(Rick) This was an era when school boys did as they were told (without question) and parents thought "schools/teachers know best". there was also an element of "it will toughen him up" (from my Dad). Certainly as a schoolboy you didn't argue with teachers, or you got caned.
DeleteI think many of our teachers had served in the 2nd World War as young men, so they had a strong military approach to things like PE/fitness (thus no need for anything other than pair of shorts + you do as ordered).
(Mitch) I totally understand what you say about running bare foot on hard surfaces, just our teachers though otherwise !
Quite a few kids didn't like it, but it wasn't as if we had a say in it. First cross country lesson we were simply told to strip fully, fold your clothes, JUST shorts on, line up outside the gym. MOVE.
I know all about first impressions of cross country running. Usually only done over half the year from September to March in our school, my intro to it took place on a very warm late SEptember day in 1985 and although we kept the running shoes on and a pair of black shorts, a pair of teachers both agreed with each other that our PE group of three or four combined boys forms would take to the run minus the tops. I remember it was a big surprise. We came back knackered, red faces, sweating buckets and dripping with our bodies glistening with perspiration in the sunlight. We were only a bunch of fresh faced and smooth chested 12 and 13 year old boys at the time, some who'd never run 100 metres probably but suddenly got hit with a good two or three miles on the odometer with no proper warm up and sent out and around the locality close to school, there must have been 50 of us. There were so many of us that on our return into school we had to queue for our turn to shower.
DeleteA fortnight later I was surprised we did another cross country with the same group of boys combined classes and ir was shirtless yet again, and another couple of weeks after that one and a month after out sweating buckets run we did another on a much less appealing day in our bare chests and were almost shivering running against the wind chill on us.
Did boys know the restrictions on kit when they had their first lesson ? When you changed did some boys bring plimsolls and vests, and put them on ready ?
Delete(Alan) There was a kit list sent out before you started at the school, but this said “boys need white shorts for PE/XC”, so you only knew by the fact that things were left out.
DeleteThe course for the run went from the gym across the school playing fields onto forest tracks via a minor road. Some of the normal classrooms overlooked the playing fields, so in normal lessons you often saw a group of boys starting their XC run or returning– they all had only their shorts on. Once you saw this a few times, everyone should have worked out what kit was allowed.
In spite of all of this, a couple of boys did turn up for the first lesson with tops and plimsolls, and started to put them on. By then almost everyone else was ready, in the required minimal kit – so it should have been obvious what was required. The teacher spotted this, told them in no uncertain terms that it was stripped to the waist and bare feet for his lessons, and that this was their only warning. By this stage one boys was in tears, but had to take his top/shoes off, as we all did.
(At an earlier indoor PE lessons, the same teacher had already warned us, as to what he expected, and that boys in his lessons did as ordered, or got the cane, which he had in his hand at that stage !)
My initial skins lesson was memorable. We all turned up for our new PE teacher in the school gym, a school I'd been doing gym classes at for a whole year already no problems and always in a vest. We lined up along one wall and I'd immediatley taken a dislike to the chap before he'd said a word to us. It was then an istruction of - let's start as we mean to go on - and he grabbed my vest and pulled it away from my body and said - these can all come off. I could tell there was majority reluctance to do this but we all did it with little enthusiasm, except one in class which is what made it memorable. The biggest lad in class, not fat, just tall and well built for his age, shocked us all by bursting into tears about it, which I'm sorry to say I found quite funny at the time.
DeleteDid your parents support you having to run bare foot, and what about other boys parents ? Was there a lot of boys playing truant from cross country runs because of the kit rules ?
DeleteGav, I'd have laughed too. What kind of boy cries over such a thing. That's so babyish.
DeleteSkins and shirts was always very popular at school and done all the while. Various gym teachers I had always chose the skins themselves by differing methods that left us waiting in suspended anticipation on who was going skins and doing the shirt peel off of shame, when skins were decided in gym the shirts side would always chant 'off, off, off'. But just because you were a kin one time didn't mean you would be a shirt the next time, it didn't work like that. I think I must have done skins four or five times in a row at some point. I didn't mind this but you should have seen how some of the guys got worked up about it if they felt they'd been called up to be a skin yet again when others kept their shirts on.
Stuart, how old were you and what times in the year did you run these shirtless and barefoot cross country's, and what did your feet feel and look like after a period of doing this, was it common or just occasional? I remember being made to walk on the grass at school in my bare feet sometimes (our PE teacher called it free footing, a term I've not heard anyone else use) and always felt funny doing that and found it awkward, as I hated looking at my large feet or anyone seeing them, anyone else like that? But I never ran a cross country like it. The real ordeal for me was shirtless PE which did include occasional distance running, the cross country. In our school we didn't just do team games like basketball, softball, volleyball and the like in skins vs shirts but the distance running we did was often split up into varying teams against each other which split along skins vs shirts lines and I once got into trouble and shouted at on such a day when I was chosen to be a skins distance runner on team selection and rolled my eyes, my PE teacher saw me react like this and tore a strip off me in front of everyone as I stood there just having become a skin for him and it made me feel rather unmotivated, I almost nearly ran away back into the changing room about it. PE teachers had a knack of making us feel quite small and pathetic sometimes, not great taking a mouthful close up from them having been de-shirted.
DeleteI saw the comment and video lower down from Oscar and it seems that school and cross country team manages to motivate them well and it's certainly interesting to see such things there taking place in what it said was 2022, but they were obviously the best in school and most motivated boys there with the fittest physiques on display, not regular normal lads dragooned into it without the passion.
(Alan/Chris Somerset)
DeleteTo fill in some of the background the school had a great reputation academically, so was very very hard to get into – my parents were pleased that I was there (to say the least), but this led to huge expectations that I didn’t “waste the chance”. Back then, the ethos of school/parents was different – kids did as they were told, parents always supported the school and so on.
Some boys didn’t like Physics, but their parents didn’t write a note saying “Can Fred be excused Physics”; in the same way your parents didn’t write a note to get you out of PE/XC, because you didn’t like the rules (it would have been ignored anyway, and made you look a wimp in the eyes of the other kids). Yes, a few boys did play truant, but it was very limited, and dealt with rapidly/firmly. If I can skipped a lesson because I didn’t like the teacher/rules, my parents would have been angry beyond comprehension.
I started at the school aged 11; we had PE (indoors) once a week and XC once a week – same all year around. Kit never varied, so same in summer, winter – all the school had 2 PE/XC lesson each week. PE split by class (25/30 boys), XC by year (fairly small school, so XC was 80/90 boys from 3 classes). You got muddy, but we had to shower. Really you got used to the minimal kit – stripped to the waist was cold in winter; bare feet, I didn’t mind, some boys hated it). The only “difficult” section was a 200 yd gravel/tarmac path at the start /end of the run, by the gym – this hurt bare feet.
Basically we did as ordered in all things at the school. Any boy say wearing wrong kit, or answering back, would have been pointless. He would have been punished in some way, and would still have had to do the run, probably twice (again after school).
From my own experience at secondary school (1990s) I felt a lot of PE teachers viewed making us skins at least partly as a form of discipline. Totally relate to what Chris Somerset said about being yelled at by a teacher when you were bare chested, that happened to me too after I was caught talking to a friend when we were meant to be paying attention in the gym. The teacher immediately shouted 'take your vest off!' before he began laying into me and although I was nearly 16 at the time, I remember feeling a lot more small and vulnerable standing there because he'd made me a skin. As well as staying like that for the rest of the lesson, which definitely felt like a punishment, he announced I'd also be a skin for the next PE lesson two days later. It felt quite humiliating having to get changed into just my shorts while everyone else wore full PE kit but I knew there'd have been no point protesting.
DeleteThe same teacher often made boys stay back for detentions in the gym and if you were given one of those, you had to do it in skins. No logical reason other than to remind you who was in charge!
Question for Stuart. What school did you go to and where abouts was this you ran. You're in the UK right? I've never heard of any school that would make its male pupils run with nothing on their feet over winter. It's not sunny and temperate Florida like the guy who posted below about his school.
DeleteI did a moderate amount of bare chest PE in my time (73 - 78) some of it outside, but not running any cross country like that, the only place we ever got asked to keep all footwear and socks off was in our sports gym and nowhere else.
There's no logic to it Gerry. Why would anyone be asked to run barefoot on frosty ground, unless you are a sadist PE teacher in a school with no boundaries whatsoever. Winter, really Stuart? For the life of me I doubt I'd have accepted such a situation being inflicted on me even as a placid 13 year old vs an assertive 43 year old teacher. Kids like you just accepted it Stuart, you must know it was mad and wrong if true.
DeleteIt doesn't seem likely does it Rob, unless you are deliberately setting out a warped punishment, in which case you shouldn't be in charge of kids in the first place. If Stuart is correct then his teacher was an abuser. Even SAS training doesn't go to that level, and they are trying to make battle hardened fighting men, not a few casual schoolboys on a bit of exercise to do them good.
DeleteOur primary school (England) had an obsession about making children go barefoot. We had to do so for PE, for music activity lessons, and many other things such as art when we painted our feet! All quite ludicrous when I come to think about it. I remember how I used to stare at a certain boy's feet who I liked.
DeleteIn my secondary school ( 11to 16) (1978 to 1983) it was compulsory that in gym boys were topless in just white shorts, in fact some of the shy boys who came in class with T-shirts on were harassed by the teachers and forced to remove. All so if forgot kit you had to do in your pants! Classes were mixed, and the boys changing room was in the centre of the school and the main gym was right at the other end of the school, so we was expected to walk thru the school corridors back and forth to the class. This was all year and at times the school was freezing also girls used to make comments, much to the embarrassment of shy boys, to others myself included it made them much more body confident if not cold at times. Also boys team sports were also shirts and skins indoors and outdoors in summer months , as well as track. So in my case in my school it was definitely the rule.
ReplyDeleteDavy - That sounds like it could get quite stressful. It was a good job you were confident but so many at that age are not and I'm not sure making boys race about school in such a severe state of undress is the answer. I remember my high school and juniors both pulling the skins against shirts trick and it was always causing trouble about who was going to be the skins and if they already been skins last time which rather suggests boys tried hard to avoid being shirtless a lot more than people may imagine when in school.
DeleteIs nipple shyness one aspect about why some guys don't like to be seen shirtless?
ReplyDeleteDefintely so. What do other shirtless shysters think?
DeleteMOst definitely
DeleteVery much this. I've got prominent very large and dark nipples on a hairless chest and hate them. They make me very self aware and did so when I removed my top in high school anytime, such as in gym or lockers. I envied boys around me with smaller paler looking nipples. I've never heard any boys or even men talk about the shape, size and colour of their nipples and if it affects the way they feel about going shirtless. Well if does, take it from me.
DeleteHi there. I'm in Florida, went to Sunlake High where I was on the school Sunlake Boys cross country running team a couple of years ago, top five placed in high school that year. Sunlake gets the boys PE shirtless A LOT, and we run the cross country at school and at meets shirtless too. We're okay with it, we even get interviewed shirtless for flrunners milesplit who always like doing our school running interviews like this and sticking them online. It gave me a great deal of confidence just hanging out with the other guys like this, I know we look a bit serious but I promise we were all happy to face the camera and questions shirtless. See the link below which should provide the interview with our school cross country team of '22.
ReplyDeleteI'm far left in my trademark funny shorts showing the team up.
https://fl.milesplit.com/videos/581053/sunlake-boys-interview
How refreshing to see this, all of you happily bare-chested for interview at a cross country that you run that way and at a school in this day and age that takes physical sports in bare chests so openly and without all the hang ups about it that sometimes prevail. You and your running mates all looked absolutely fantastic and suit the bare-chested look with such fine, fit and obviously healthy active bodies. You are very good looking even with the fancy pattern shorts.
DeleteJust one question though, are you told to run bare-chested or is it your own decision? You said, quote 'Sunlake gets the boys PE shirtless A LOT', so they made you do it, including at sports meets and the interview above?
Hot shirtless team there Oscar. A great school to get you like that. The old ways are best. Keep on running shirtless!
DeleteHow great is it to see modern day young men actually enjoying doing their sport bare chested and going to a school that embraces that with these cross country runners here.
DeleteHi there Jason. To answer your question, going shirtless was kind of the uniform for running, so although nobody said anyone must definitely run shirtless we all knew the score with it and went with it. School encouraged and asked us to do a lot of shirtless sport, including the running, we did remove our shirts during many gym sports in school from about 13 when asked to. I'm okay with my shirtless body and being around others who are shirtless. We've sometimes run some barefoot laps too.
DeleteI ran a number of shirtless cross country runs at my school in Dundee in the eighties Oscar and didn't find them as much fun as you probably do with your school running as you are clearly very good at it and have the bodies to match. In my case many of the boys simply struggled to keep up with the best half dozen or so runners who went way ahead of the rest with one teacher and another teacher had to remain with the larger slower group. Teachers refused to ever muck in with this shirtless ethic they instilled onto the rest of us, including throughout the rest of PE in the school gym where no teacher in the whole school let boys stick tops on for PE, it was shirtless and nothing else. The exact dark grey nylon shorts had to be worn or it was underpants only. I could not have got away wearing the kind of different shorts you had on in the interview when others had the correct ones.
DeleteWe had to run cross country shirtless at my school, but only spring/summer. There was no choice, our PE teacher decided that it was warm enough, and thus it was shorts/ trainers only from now on. We had a cross country team, and took part in county level races, then we all had to wear vests (we were told we would be disqualified if we stripped off during the race) - I can only assume rules are different in the US.
DeleteWe had the same at my school - UK, Midlands, early 1980's. Indoor PE was always only shorts, cross country, shirtless apart from mid winter (when a thin vest was allowed). Always plimsolls, no socks, no briefs/boxers.
DeleteWe had a team in the inter school xc, and there we always wore vests. In later life, I ran in adult races, and while in theory you had to wear your number on your vest, wearing it on shorts and shirtless seemed acceptable. Now, race times are determined by chips on shoes, but as society changes what is acceptable, you don't see anyone stripped to the waist. Indeed I think most gyms insist on tops being worn.
I don't think society has deemed that shirtless is not acceptable on a man or boy in the western world. Only a few extremist feminists might take that view. A gym, as well as a swimming pool and a beach is one of the most obvious places for a boy or man to be shirtless if he wants to be. That's why so many of us were at school in the gyms, even if a lot didn't actually want to be.
DeleteSteve: Hello there, I was at school in Coventry in the mid 80s and where I was they went the whole way with shirtless PE inflicted on all boys there from first to fifth years. Various bossy gym teachers used to collect all the boys outside without tops on and make us all run multi laps of the quite spacious school playing fields in trainers and shorts. Some of this was done in shockingly cold weather and a picture I have in my mind of those days is boys finishing the laps being timed, with red rosy cheeks and a flushed red upper body and many bent double with stitch, barely having energy left to return to the changing room we'd been made to run so much. I also have a memory of some boys running this barefoot, like we were always in gym, but I've no idea why some of these boys were running on the playing fields like that because I never did. In have no idea if they chose it or were told to do it. But none of us was allowed to put on a top, I do know that. It sounds a bit cruel just relaying the story now doesn't it.
DeleteCouple of boys in my group did run barefoot, but that was their choice - not forced.
DeleteWhile we were allowed vests in winter, it made virtually no difference - this isn't a nice warm rugby shirt, with a t shirt underneath ! Again a few boys still ran stripped to the waist - but they didn't have to. Inside the gym, it was strictly shorts only - never anything else. We ran cross country weekly all year around, and really I can only remember once it being called off - freezing cold or pouring with rain was "normal" and if the teacher didn't think it was "winter" yet, it was shirtless.
Part 2
DeleteDid you have one PE teacher who was stricter than others ?
One of my teachers, always enforced the kit rules, never thought it was cold enough to merit us not being shirtless, didn't allow talking, quick to hand out press ups, shuttle runs etc as punishments, numerous cold showers, slipperings, gym detentions etc etc
This goes back a very long time, 1972-73-74 actually, and I had a deputy head teacher who regularly took our rugby matches in PE at school. He was someone you didn't want to cross paths with. He threw boys into the mud as part of rugby instruction for laughs. I remember how he mocked especially weedy looking boys, and he was also fond of making boys remove shirts outside and we did some skins v shirts rugby games like that and got thrown about unprotected and a few cuts, scuffs, scrapes and bruises. He thought it made 12-13 year olds in school act more like grown men. He was one of those you need to get some hair on your chests types. Not at 13 you don't. Her was also a strong shower disciplinarian forcing it on us and thought nothing of reducing the water to almost cold on us all. His most famous trick among us was to grab someone's towel, wrap it around his wrist and thrash it at someone, sometimes four or five times across pre or freshly showered bare boys bodies, the legs, the bums or the back and even sometimes up front at the chest. Anyone was fair game, you didn't have to misbehave much, just look at him wrong or take too long. British teachers of the early 70s seem to have been in a sports league all of their own.
DeleteI had someone take mixed cross country classes for boys and girls and he made everyone run barefoot through thick puddled mud covering part of the course one time after heavy rain so that none of our trainers were ruined. How thoughtful of him. Nobody could persuade him otherwise. So bare feet for all, and it hurt running like that at some parts. You should have seen the state of our feet, boys and girls. Then he had the utter cheek to complain to us about our dirty footprints on the floor going into the PE block afterwards. Usually boys would take their football boots off outside and walk back in just in the cleaner socks.
DeleteKeep it up Oscar, that's a great shirtless look you lot have there mty friend. You sound like you went to a fab school there.
ReplyDeleteTwo or three years ago there was a story in the British press about staff in a school during a summer heatwave complaining about the number of shirtless men, the kids dads, hanging about at the school gates waiting to collect them at school finishing time mid afternoon when it's hottest. Where do these people get off trying to dictate terms like that to the parents. Dads were perfectly entitled to do this, and it was probably only two or three anyway but who cares of it was all of them.
Thankyou. It was a great school for personal fitness development and confidence and going shirtless, even at school and public running meets came natural to many of us.
DeleteAre you sure you weren't running in your boxer shorts underwear there Oscar? 5 lovely shirtless guys there. Have you ever tried barefoot running, that's good for your feet too.
DeleteI complained to one of my teachers once in the 1970's about him making me do gym shirtless all the time. He told me to stop moaning about it because it could be worse, he could lawfully under loco parentis ask me to take everything else off too in the gym if he wanted. I shut up. I still don't know if he was just joke naked threatening me or really meant it and could of.
ReplyDelete@patrick I think he can't tell you to do it naked but when your parents agree to it.
Deletewere you the only one shirtless or just everytime in the shirtless team?
I always seemed to be on the shirtless side of the teams. He chose the boys who had to peel the tops off and hand them over to him. But we had full class shirtless gym so many other times too when everyone was the same. We did a warm spring day community jog for charity on a Friday night once and he decided the boys running that looked best shirtless and started collecting our tops off us at the start and took them back to where we'd just got changed. Like Oscar's post above showing his interview video shirtless, we had to meet various dignitaries at the end for a small medal which was placed over our heads onto our bare chests. The difference with us though was we were regular school lads with no special ability told to take part and what to look like, while it looks like Oscar above was the cream of the crop and those boys enjoyed their shirtless sports runs.
DeleteSo you didn't stand out being the only one shirtless. It just happened you were always on the skins team for some reasons. Was it mixed classes? Were you barefoot too? What have you done if he would have really asked you to take everything off? Maybe teacher thought you shirtless guys were cream of the crop...
DeleteSome are really ok with being shirtless like Oscar is explaining and showing it.
I would never have taken everything off anywhere other than the locker room and shower area and if anybody had asked me to I'd have complained to the school principle pretty quick about it. Even if you knew he's joking, you kind of knew he could make you get naked in the locker room situation for the showers quite legally I guess, but I don't know if that legality went beyond the locker room door, even back in the 1970's. 99% sure it was a joke but 1% is enough to just leave enough doubt I guess.
DeleteEveryone always thinks they are on the majority of skins teams don't they. I wasn't a fan of divisive skins selection in school gym, it was better when everyone just stripped down together rather than leaving half the class feeling singled out as shirtless skins. Class was a mix of no footwear and sneaker type pumps, sometimes we were ordered barefoot for gym that involved standing on others, like their shoulders for example. I think they tried to make us into circus acrobats at times. I've never again needed to stand barefoot on the shoulders of another male in my entire life.
Many of our gym classes were single gender, boys only, but the event I mentioned above was a mixed situation of a large number of both boys and girls at about the age of fourteen and fifteen, this was a situation I found myself shirtless among a lot of girls for the first time in my entire life and it made me very nervous indeed, but our gym teacher wished us to run like shirtless like the boys in Oscar's video, whether he though we looked like the cream I doubt, we were just the regular guys from school of mixed abilities, I'm sure most of us shaped up reasonable but not everyone had a body best designed to go shirtless. But hey, it was a compulsory element and what the gym teacher said went, so where to go after that, go squeal to the principle, our parents would have laughed at us if we'd said we had a problem going shirtless in school gym in the 1970's and tried to back out because we were shy like that.
I don't know that many of us were actually shy as such, just lacking the confidence but being told to strip down shirtless in an instant in gym all together or half class didn't really fuel greater confidence in me, rather it made me critical as hell of what I thought others must be thinking of me.
Take it from me Patrick that even guys that project confidence and feel it about themselves will feel a touch of anxiousness by being bare chested in certain situations. In my younger days I used to enjoy being bare chested a lot just because it made me physically feel good and free in some way. I had a lot of leisure time one year through summer and made the most of it between school and higher education. Two girls about my age approached me for directions one afternoon, no problem about that, until one asked me why I was shirtless and that she had seen me before passing along just the same. I walked away starting to doubt myself for quite a while after that.
DeleteIn school itself I'd done what I think was the normal amount of bare chested gym anyone at the time, in the nineties, would expect, shirtless was asked of us just regular now and again maybe every three or four gym classes and that was okay. I would have been fine if it was every class actually.
The decision to be shirtless in gym was taken for us by teachers at my high school. There was not much free choice involved. This goes back some 35 years though, so wasn't really unusual. In my high school if our gym teachers had allowed us to decide that would have been a pleasant surprise to most of us. I think all of our gym teachers knew most of us didn't really like going shirtless in the gym but treated it like a way of bringing us all together on one level and some misguided thought that it would make men of us all. Real guys take their shirts off and bare the chest to show their masculinity. Boys in school in my time were being told to do this for these reasons even when we were still boys and a long way from being men yet.
ReplyDeleteWonderful to see young men like Oscar from above fulfilling their potential like that and also showing such confidence in you and your friends young masculinity while doing sport. Being shirtless is such a natural state to be in and is a great way to exercise, do gym or just hang out. My high school used to insist the boys gym class was shirtless, many felt exposed when we first did it but it really brought me out of my shell about myself. Early days I used to keep thinking about my bare chest state but I knew I'd succeeded when suddenly in gym I realised I was not thinking about the fact I was shirtless anymore or that anyone else was. Without that school, that teacher and that gym and having to go shirtless I would never have attempted it and would not have torn down a small barrier in my head about doing it.
ReplyDeleteA mate of mine used to remove his shirt and go bare-chested a lot, and he considered himself a shy introvert, go figure that one. I'm definitely an extravert and prefer not to do this.
ReplyDeleteGoing without our tops in PE was always the deal at my own middle school when I was aged eight to twelve. Classes were mixed, with both male and female teaching staff. I really disliked being a bare chest like that and asked if I could wear something but they didn't listen or let me because someone had made the rules on it and they had to be kept. If I was allowed to cover my body then others who wanted to do so would have to be allowed as well, and I think there would have been quite a few. So every boy took part shirtless and that was that.
ReplyDeleteSo you can imagine my reaction a few years later when my own son ended up in the same school I'd been at about twenty years earlier and I discovered he too was doing PE the same way still. He even felt the same way as me, so I decided to enquire about it hoping speaking as an old boy of the school would help and expressing my own feelings I had. Unfortunately it came to nothing and I was asked to understand that making exceptions to anything would mean they had to make the same for all. It basically came down to administration. I suggested they just stick everyone in PE vests or something similar but they remained adamant that shirtless PE lessons for boys were there to stay.
So many youngsters overthink about being shirtless. I used to. I wish I hadn't, such a pointless thing to worry about when I look back at how much I would worry about situations I couldn't avoid being shirtless like in school physical education class or a health check in the medical centre. I finally got over this fear when I was about 35, it felt like a definite phobia I grew out of without actual help but time.
DeleteOne one has really mentioned boarding schools.
DeleteWe had a run every morning, only ever shorts and plimsolls worn - no exceptions. It ranged form 800yds (aged 9), up to 2 miles (13 on). No excuses (beyond death !) were ever accepted, and no matter the weather every single boy ran stripped to the waist.
(This is north west England - early 70's)
Schools in Britain sounded very cruel at times in the 1970s if some of the things on here are anything to go by. Why is this? Refusing to let boys wear anything upper body seems unnecessarily strict and uncompromising, very much so if they wanted it done cross country running outside. Some boys/men enjoy being shirtless there's no doubt about it but lots don't and feel extreme levels of self conscious if their chests are bare.
DeleteSome non UK comments on here keep on about our schools but at least we didn't have to swim in the school pools completely naked without even a pair of trunks in England as teenagers like so many American had to. Now that is the ultimate in cruelty to inflict on a class, it must have psychologically affected many. I can't imagine it. Going shirtless in school is nothing compared to being made to do the lesson lined up with all your tackle displayed for the teacher.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of things in schools (both in the US & UK) were about tradition and also (to a lesser degree) control. This was also a time when boys "did as they were told".
ReplyDeleteAs a 9 year old in boarding school you didn't question a teacher - doing a run at the start of each day had always been the case - a number of my classmates fathers had been to the same school, and had done exactly the same run each morning, in exactly the same kit of shorts, plimsolls, no top.
In much the same way, I guess a teenager in the US, didn't question naked swimming in the 1960's
Did you literally get up out of bed and staright out to run before your breakfast or washing yourself? I guess you wouldn't get up, shower and then run would you. You ran shirtless first thing at just 9, for how long did this go on and what did you REALLY think at such a tender young age as that. It almost sounds like a juvenile detention facility of some kind making boys run shirtless. Did you have a good body image at that age Mike?
DeleteWe were woken up, "make bed" , pj's off, shorts on, assemble outside, sent off. On return, shower, dress, breakfast.
DeleteWhat did we think ? Boys, then didn't think, they did as they were told ! Thinking (or at least questioning) got you punished. Apart from one lad (who was a bit chubby), everyone was slim (look at old photos to see this) - I don't think we had a body image as such, some boys were shy about undressing, but undressing in front of other boys was so common you just did it. We shared a dorm, we showered ever day, we had PE, games etc - all of which involved stripping naked.
The vast majority of boarding schools in the 70's had early morning runs, and it was totally normal to run shirtless (both for the morning run and cross country), in fact I think running with a vest/top would be the exception in most schools.
This is correct Mike, and I think the same applies to many of us, whether we are in the UK like I am or in the USA or wherever, from a time very recently when there is no way anybody would raise an open objection to a shirtless lesson and certainly few people probably know anyone who ever openly faced down a teacher and objected to their instruction to remove all clothing, strip naked in their presence with the rest of class and mandatory shower. We all took our shirts off for gym when told to and we all got naked and went in the showers when we had to. Personal feelings about any of this were largely irrelevant and not considered.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid up to maybe about fourteen I used to skinny dip where I come from in Medford, Wisconsin with three boys my age and we loved it in a small pond near home and also along a shallow stream. We loved it even more if two girls we knew, same age, came and joined us and sat and watched. We used to show off endlessly and make them laugh, we were maybe only twelve at the time, but we'd pretend to play guitar on our 'instruments' as we called them and strum on our p*nises, rapidly twanging them to and fro like a guitarist in a rock band, air guitar style. Just innocent carefree old time uninhibited fun that meant nothing other than we were happy contented kids at ease with ourselves and the world around us in that moment. I loved those days like that, loved the water, loved my friends, loved being outside, loved swimming and loved taking my stuff off. I spent a lot of time with my friends at that age shirtless and barefoot aside from the skinny dips in the water. It was how we were. Not all boys were, but we sure were.
DeleteI did lots of shirtless phys.ed classes in high school too. It was alright for me but definitely felt different there. I do think most benefit from shirtless phys.ed at some point for a while. But skinny dipping swim class in school, now that would not have appealed. My personal red line would have been drawn at that one. What was fun and games in my free time with friends would not have been so great in my school time with the swim coach or phys.ed teacher and would have felt inappropriate in a large class grouping.
Steve, as you said, we did as told, personal feelings didn't come into it.
DeleteMorning all. Mike, not entirely true from my side of it. I was in high school in 1997 and we had to do the shirtless/shower thing. We had a couple of teachers back in that year who let 3 boys in our gym class stick T-shirts on while the rest of class went shirtless. These 3 boys were often allowed to slip away unshowered without a word being said to them while others had to. They got a bit of a hard time over it from some quarters. Not mucking in the same with the rest of your class is always a bad move, and we're all in the same situation and have the same thing about us so why run away from it.
DeleteAll I can add is that wearing a t shirt/skipping showers (or any other rule breaking) would have been quickly punished !
ReplyDeleteOh yes. What's the top thing that I remember making a teacher of any type get a bit shirty with you - easy one this, failing to run butt naked into the showers after PE lessons quick enough. If we jumped back out too soon we were sent right back in again. Nobody escaped the school shower, it was like trying to get away from Alcatraz.
ReplyDeleteYou're describing millions of us here Gary, the reluctant naked parade forced on us all.
Delete