The Man in the Shower

Recently my wife and I joined a local YMCA, mostly for the swimming. We go mid-day so the facility is not very crowded, and usually when I shower I am alone or there is one other guy in there with me. Today I sauntered in to find a man, who looked to be in his late twenties, showering with his bathing suit on.

This was not just to rinse off the chlorine, he was soaping up his upper body. In all my many years of group showers or other locker room experiences, I have never seen a man shower in anything other than his birthday suit.

Since I did not follow him out of the shower, I was left with many questions. Was he just shy, or ashamed, or something else? Was he going to wear his wet bathing suit under his pants or was he going to take it off first, in which case he would be exposed anyway? He certainly looked normal, he was nice and trim, apparently no reason to be modest, but there he was in his dripping suit with a bar of soap.

When I got home I started surfing the Internet for anyone else who might have experienced a clothed shower mate. Apparently it is not uncommon to find men showering in their underwear, or keeping a strategic towel handy, or, worst of all, not showering at all after exercising.

Now it's just common knowledge that one has to clean the nether regions after vigorous exercise lest the bacterial armies will overrun the fortress. Not to mention the odor problems. So what would possess someone to be that hung up about his own body that he would risk his own personal hygiene?

Something has happened to American Society over the last 30 years. When once boys and men would swim in the nude at the Y, sexual integration called for mandatory bathing suits and the end of healthy skinny dipping. Where it was once mandatory for males to take group showers in high school after gym class, civil rights activists forced the courts to stop the schools from requiring the kids to strip and clean. With the rules removed, high school students have stopped taking showers, even to the point where hot and sweaty football players would rather go home and shower rather than strip in front of classmates.

I went to high school 1968-72, an all-male Christian prep school, and we were all required to strip and enter the gang showers. I will admit that it was intimidating, and I do not recall ever enjoying the experience, but at least I can say today that the sight of many nude male bodies in the shower is neither something remarkable or stimulating - to me it was and is just part of life.

Today, as someone who is a professed nudist and spends nearly all day naked, I realize that all that intimidation was wasted emotion. Being nude alone or with others is natural and comfortable. But in this society we clothe children from the moment they are born, we teach them to cover up and never let anyone see the "private" parts, we censor, we overprotect, we shield, we hide, we dehumanize. At the same time advertising and popular culture uses the human body to sell products, music, books, movies, etc., so on one hand we are de-sexualizing at home and over-sexualizing everywhere else. It is no wonder that kids are terrified that their own bodies will not measure up to the nipped, tucked and airbrushed fantasies that are so prevalent. And who can compete with the Viagra engorged penises that everyone is exposed to with the mainstreaming of pornography.

So while sexual activity begins at a younger age and oral sex is no longer considered "sexual relations", we are increasingly becoming a people with a fear of being naked.

The man in the shower wearing his bathing suit is a manifistation of something terribly wrong with our society, that we as a people have an irrational fear of who we really are. Nudity is not sex, nakedness is not exhibitionism, and nude men in a public shower is not homo-erotic or something to be feared. Was the man in the shower afraid of gay interest, or does he feel inadequate in some way? Or is he simply neurotic from the mixed messages handed down by a schitzophrenic society that elevates porn stars to cultural icons yet comdemns the brief exposure on TV of a female breast, or that sells cars, clothes and everything else with sex yet covers up a nude statue in the Justice Department?

The next time I am at the Y I will think about the man in the shower, perhaps I will see him again, but I sincerely hope that he is the exception and that most people in the locker room have a healthier attitude over what is normal and healthy when it comes to something as simple as taking a shower.