From an article in
The Atlantic about the decline in sex among young Americans:
“Millennials don’t like to get naked—if you go to the gym now, everyone under 30 will put their underwear on under the towel, which is a massive cultural shift,” Jonah Disend, the founder of the branding consultancy Redscout, told Bloomberg last year. He said that designs for master-bedroom suites were evolving for much the same reason: “They want their own changing rooms and bathrooms, even in a couple.” The article concluded that however “digitally nonchalant” Millennials might seem—an allusion, maybe, to sexting—“they’re prudish in person.” Fitness facilities across the country are said to be renovating locker rooms in response to the demands of younger clients. “Old-timers, guys that are 60-plus, have no problem with a gang shower,” one gym designer told The New York Times, adding that Millennials require privacy.
Some observers have suggested that a new discomfort with nudity might stem from the fact that, by the mid-1990s, most high schools had stopped requiring students to shower after gym class. Which makes sense—the less time you spend naked, the less comfortable you are being naked. But people may also be newly worried about what they look like naked. A large and growing body of research reports that for both men and women, social-media use is correlated with body dissatisfaction. And a major Dutch study found that among men, frequency of pornography viewing was associated with concern about penis size. I heard much the same from quite a few men (“too hairy, not fit enough, not big enough in terms of penis size,” went one morose litany). According to research by Debby Herbenick, how people feel about their genitals predicts sexual functioning—and somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of people, perhaps influenced by porn or plastic-surgery marketing, feel negatively. The business of labiaplasty has become so lucrative, she told me in an email, “that you will actually see billboards (yes, billboards!) in some cities advertising it.”
I don't know what it's like in schools and gyms nowadays, but I can confirm that in the 1960s we got naked together at the end of every school day while showering after sports, and in the summer while changing into/out of swimwear at public beaches.
I remember reading in Richard Adams's (born in 1920) autobiography in which he commented that getting naked at appropriate times, such as group showers or medical examinations, was nothing surprising and completely normal. Something had changed during his lifetime.
ReplyDeleteA couple generations ago, swimming nude was the norm for men at pools--or so I have read. I was not part of that generation.
My own kids, who are tweenagers, were recently shocked when I mentioned gym class showers and changing. Changing in front of other people? This was an outrageous notion.
In addition to the lack of body confidence mentioned by the Atlantic writer, I suggest that cell phone cameras have also made people more inhibited about nudity. Undressing in the gym locker room may not be just in front of a few people, but thousands of people on the internet.
Everybody carries a camera around with them all the time now. This was also different in the 60s.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in Wales, England, Australia and New Zealand, my first sighting of a naked male body was when my son was born. Guess we were a bit prudish, although my first child arrived when I was 17, so not too prudish.
ReplyDeleteTook swimming lessons at the YMCA in 1954. All boys and all naked. Don't know why.
ReplyDeleteGen X also did not like to get naked. In PE we were allowed to use the showers but nobody did (except for swimming and we kept our suits on to shower and changed under a towel).
ReplyDeleteI've spent a lot of time in Finland, where public saunas and pools are clothing optional (and gender segregated), something I never exprienced growing up in the United States. Seeing other women of every age and shape, and being naked among them, has done wonders for my comfort with my own body. Seeing only perfect people's bodies, often computer-enhanced, is terrible for the mind.
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