Be advised that this post contains many uncensored photos and videos of naked boys and men. These simply record what was normal in past years, and readers must view them in that context to fully appreciate them. Along with that, please know that this blog is written in the United States, and this post is reacting to conditions within that country.
If you are a reader outside of the U. This was the post that drove saboteurs to try shutting down the blog on March 6th , its intended publication date. In past posts, this blog established that modern American prudery about everyday nudity is very young.
It has shown that up until the s, men regularly swam nude in pools of all kinds. It has also established that communal showering was far more common in the past. Perhaps because of this content, more mainstream sites now acknowledge that nude swimming and communal showering were once common. However, in doing so, they promote another falsehood whether consciously or unconsciously. While they admit that nude male pool swimming was once normal, they contend that most boys found these practices humiliating.
In their minds, those boys only went nude because they were forced to. At the same time, they also will not acknowledge that homophobia drove its demise. Instead, they insist that other factors ended it — improvements in indoor plumbing, shrinking family sizes, etc. This blog will address those two topics in one go. It will show that most boys were quite happy with these arrangements, and it will repeat how homophobia killed these practices.
To do so, this post will mainly focus on nude male swimming in outdoor settings, such as rivers, lakes and beaches. This is because. As said before, more mainstream sources claim that in historical nude swimming, boys only went naked because they had to. In their view, that nudity was a product of enforced culture, and was something that most boys secretly detested. To them, if those boys had the choice, they would have preferred wearing swimsuits or some kind of covering.
In these settings, no rules enforced or required nudity. As such, men in these situations were free to do as they pleased. The choice they made would reflect what they truly wanted to do. No one could say that their choice was forced. If they chose to go naked, they did so out of their own free will.
There are many photographs that show what choice these men made. Read on and take a look. Each photo will say a thousand words on how they viewed communal nudity, especially in such open settings.
It will also give loud commentary on how their wider society viewed their nakedness. And as you see each photo and video, the innate male need for communal nudity will become increasingly apparent. This photo probably originates from Edwardian England , and depicts 17 boys and girls playing around in a river. As you can see, all the boys are naked, while the few girls seen are clothed. From this photo, we can see three things. Thirdly, nothing was considered amiss if girls mingled with naked boys.
This particularly eyebrow-raising photo comes from Trafalgar Square in London, taken sometime during As you can see, all the boys playing in the fountain are naked, and some could be in their teens. Yet, despite having a large mixed crowd of onlookers, nobody made a fuss about it.
Evidently, this practice was quite old, given this photo from the same location in Thus, even in large open urban settings, boy nudity was quite acceptable.
As you can see, the boys of various ages shown are all naked. Keep in mind that the area had subway access for nearly 20 years , so this area probably had a lot of traffic.
Yet, these boys felt free to strip and frolic in the water nude. This further shows that boys swam nude even in heavily urban areas. As this photo shows, boys were so accustomed to swimming nude in public, some even walked to those places naked.
Here, two boys intent on going swimming encounter a policeman, who will probably just let them go on their merry way. This one is undated probably from late s or early s , and captures boys and their adult supervisor along a stretch of riverbank.
As you can see, some of them have clothes on, so everyone clearly had the choice of being clothed. Nevertheless, roughly half of them decide to stay in the full monty. More than any other photo so far, this one perfectly illustrates the main point of this point — that in the past, boys often willingly went nude.
However, I will include them because they show accepted nude male swimming was in the developed world, especially in the United States. A number of them also show a mix of clothed and nude male swimmers, all in outdoor settings where swimmers could wear swimsuits. This shows that swimming naked was a conscious choice boys made:. Ordinances did exist that barred nude swimming in certain public areas. At times, those laws clashed with the activities of the swimmers. In St Louis , some nude boy swimmers were chased down the street by police, after being caught alongside a local river.
The police ultimately promised not to arrest them, so that they could come out of hiding. Meanwhile in New York , some schoolboys decided to swim naked in a Central Park pond, to celebrate the end of the school year.
Six were arrested for juvenile delinquency. In Eastern Canada, an Ottawa constable threw out a complaint about nude boys swimming in an old quarry. The exact date this happened is unknown, though the font suggests the s or s. Nevertheless, they did pose a risk to those nude boy swimmers. It speaks volumes then that, despite this risk, public nude swimming continued into the s and s.
While the practices might have moved to more private places, it remained just as pervasive. This gives powerful context to the supposedly weird history of nude male pool swimming. Many young people today might be perplexed by this history, and wonder how such public nudity could have be tolerated.
Given the supposedly progressive attitudes of today, such past events seem unimaginable. For males, nudity in general swimming was already commonplace, and in some settings expected. It was a practice that men freely and enthusiastically engaged in. The boys above were outdoors, in full view of the general public, yet they had no qualms about taking off their clothes. Swimsuits were available though as uncomfortable wool garments , yet they chose not to use them.
Even when nylon became common in the s, there was resistance against swimsuits in general. All of this suggests that there was nothing forcing these guys to go naked. In fact, they did so despite some amount of dissuasion. They did so out of their own free will. In fact, given how freely they stripped down, they seemed to relish the opportunity. When in the company of other men, the urge to strip seemed irresistible.
This is something I saw during my years in private elementary school. After swimming class, we always changed naked with each other, freely talking and observing each other while doing so. There was no rule enforcing total nudity in our locker room. However, nobody in the staff ever stopped us, and none of us wanted to end it. To put it bluntly, we wanted to get naked with each other, and we loved it too much to stop.
Plus, these practices are not limited to only one place. Even as these practices waned in the United States, they flourish in the developing world. For example, these photos from East Asia show that even today, boys still prefer stripping down when they swim. These photos come from Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Philippines respectively:. Whether it was in the early 20th century, or my school experiences in the early s, guys will choose to go naked if they feel free to do so.
Though these events are no longer common in the U. Yet when it comes to men and public nudity, we see identical behavior. When the same actions transcend time, place, location and age, that strongly suggests that the behavior is biologically rooted.
To me, this points to an inner male need for men to experience communal nudity. We men want to see other men naked. We want other men to see us naked, and to accept us in our nudity. We want to interact with our friends in a way that feels like ultimate freedom.
Whether we want to admit it or not, homoeroticism is one major component. We want to compare how long our erections can grow, and how much semen we can squirt when we orgasm. We want to see and hear each other writhe and grunt as our genitals make us feel good. We want to see each other experience sexual pleasure. If possible, and absent social stigma and religious condemnation, we guys want to be the ones who give other guys pleasure.