While I never saw this myself, I heard that the German farmers in the area I was stationed (Mainz area) would often work shirtless regardless of gender while tending the spargel (white asparagus) fields near there.  These were intermingled with cherry trees to make very efficient use of the land.  For those who may not be familar with spargel it's nothing more than asparagus that never sees light.  The soil is mounded up around the plants and the stalks are harvested very early in the morning.  If the stalk breaks through and sees the sun, the chlorophyll starts to form and it's no longer white.

As this is not the easiest task, wearing minimal clothing made a lot of sense.

Mentioning Evesham above re-asparagus has reminded me of a little story. My Dad (as I mentioned in the intro to this topic) lived in the countryside during the war - and it was actually Evesham. (Anna and I moved there many years later - and my Dad enjoyed visits as a trip down memory lane.)  Anyway my Dad told me that he and his friends used to swim in the river that ran through the centre of the town all the time as children/early teens and at that time none of them owned swimsuits and always used to swim naked. There was also a large area diverted from the river that was made into some sort of large pool. They would run around the walls and the banks naked and no one ever cared. Adults used to swim occasionally to and they would also always be naked. It was just an accepted way to swim - this would have been the forties and into the early fifties when he then relocated back to the large town. It is such a shame that this attitude has not remained in our society. It suits people during Mark Twain's day and beyond in both directions - but as the fifties moved on...

We have this idea that the sixties was a little shocking with nudity at Woodstock etc but maybe the nudity was not that shocking when put into context of only a few years earlier it would have been common to skinny dip without much ado. The human race seems to get used to things very suddenly and assume it has always been that way but really the time of swimsuits being the normal state of things has been rather short and only geared to certain areas and parts of society.  

Anyway one day while skinny dipping him and a couple of friends found a dead body in the water and one of them stayed with it while the other two went to find a policeman. I must ask him next time I see him whether the body was dressed or naked.   

Something that has been discussed recently in the Home Bodies group and elsewhere is the fact that swimming naked used to be a much more common thing - with schools and the YMCA having swimming without clothes. Does anyone have a personal memories of this or know anyone that was involved in this one time acceptable method of swimming which seems to have been forgotten? I did read once that because swimsuits used to be made of wool they were completely unpractical and as most children didn't have swimwear anyway when schools organised swims it made complete sense to be naked. Does anyone know about this? What about gym classes? Does anyone know about thses being performed naked. 

The world keeps on changing and we seem to be gettimng more and more fearful of nudity. My oldest son is in senior school and the majority of children turn up with their sports wear on under their clothes. I was chatting with him about changing rooms when I was at school. He was stunned that children used to get naked to then put on their kit and shower naked in front of each other and the teachers. I remember at the time that you were not supposed to wear you underwear under your PE kit, including all sports such as cricket. Jock straps and boxes were worn by some for certain sports. The idea being that you didn't make your underwear sweaty, wet or dirty for wearing after sports. The girls likewise had specific sports underwear that they used to change into for wearing under their sports skirts. It wasn't uncommon for teachers themselves to shower, dry and change along side the children and chat with them in a relaxed manner while doing so. Apparently the female teachers would do the same. My son says he doesn't even see children in their underwear when getting ready for sport. At the swimming club  everyone has little cubicles so no nudity there either. 

I suppose today the idea that children would be naked in front of each other is treading on some PC toes and the idea that teachers may enjoy being naked in front of children or see children naked is a big safeguarding worry for the paranoid. The thing is that at the time it seemed totally natural and I never picked up any negative vibe from any teacher in attitude or behaviour. It was probably a very sensible thing both in time management and also ion not creating an issue with nudity which must have helped a lot of children. 

On another note my father played football as an adult and the team used to share a big bath together at the end of the match. The water probably got dirty quite quickly but he said the hot soaking water used to help with relaxing the muscles and aches after the game. No one used to think it weird that 11-13 grown men were sharing a bath together naked after a football match - I wonder if that still happens now?

It was so usual that Terry Jones and Micheal Palin made an early sketch about the King and his knights sharing a sports bath after a battle and chatting about the battle as if it was a sports game. I think it was in The complete and Utter History of Britain in 1969 but it may have been Do not adjust your set. The joke was the concept of treating war like sport and the bath was not taken as anything but a natural part of what men did after a game. 

I would love to hear more thoughts and memories on this and other ideas for this topic on examples of naturist style attitudes to nudity in years gone by.  

Steve's latest post mirrors my own experience.  I graduated from what is called high school in the US in 1969.  We had P.E. from the seventh year (7th grade) all the way through the 12th year.  Back then we had to change out of our "kit" into P.E. clothes.  For boys it was a tee shirt, shorts, jock strap, socks and sneakers.  I have no idea of all of what the girls wore but it was some sort of a blue skirt style getup.  At the conclusion of the class we all went to sex-segregated locker rooms with gang showers.  Everyone was expected to shower before getting dressed again for class.  Communal nudity was the order of the day.

Fast forward to even as long as 8-9 years ago.  I was attending a local YMCA that did not have its own pool but was renting time in the evening to use a local school's pool.  The locker room looked much like what it had in my day and the gang shower was even bigger with column mounted shower heads.  What was different was that all the faucet handles had been removed.  There were three wall mounted shower heads that I suspected had been installed at the request of the Y. There were times that I would be in the locker room when the football team came back from practice.  Not a one of them took a shower (I did learn that the column units were now controlled en masse by an electric valve) and I was surprised at the shocked looks I got from these kids if they saw me. 

The Y eventually lost the use of the pool but there was a municipal community center close by that had a very nice pool.  It had a nice locker room but the gang showers were gone, replaced by about 10 individual shower cubicles, all but one with a door.  I imagine the one without the door originally had one but that it had broken and the decision was made not to replace it.  The generational differences were evident in that locker room.  Everyone over 50 was not concerned with nudity while the teens from the swim team normally did the "change under a towel" routine.  I was the only one however that I ever saw use the shower without a door but my experience was necessarily limited.

I kind of feel for these kids.  There will probably come a time in their lives when they have to help a family member (most likely a parent) with bathing.  Perhaps they don't want to be naturists like us but to be that concerned with nudity to me is kind of sad.  Only time will tell.

"I kind of feel for these kids.  There will probably come a time in their lives when they have to help a family member (most likely a parent) with bathing.  Perhaps they don't want to be naturists like us but to be that concerned with nudity to me is kind of sad."  - So true Jonathan.  I really feel that it shoiuld be that "naturism" shouldn't be needed. A laid back attitude towards nudity should be enough. Whether that is at home, at the beach or any other sensible place - the trouble is because it isn't for all of society we have to have a term like naturism to explain what we are doing and how we feel about our bodies and nudity. It makes us seem like we are choosing an different path rather than just following a natural and normal one. I like to believe that if I wasn't a naturist I would be bringing up my children in my home to be relaxed about their bodies and ours - but then almost as soon as you start feeling that way you find that you can help but may be consider that you only feel that way because you are a naturist. There seems to be no middle ground in today's society. This idea of middle ground is fascinating me at the moment. Where is that place of general acceptability, those greys areas where people are just sensible? Children grow up fearful of nudity and yet the internet is full of porn. Schools come down on children for the simplest of ethical mistakes and yet on laptops and mobiles they send hate and foul ideas to each other. Politicians make bad judgements and instead of being able to put them right are expected to resign - politics has become like Big Brother - with people getting kicked off on a daily basis. It is everywhere, in comedy, children's TV, in employment, race, religion, gender, physical and mental issues we have lost the ability to walk a middle ground and accept logic - we tip toe around fearing being average and yet what we should be doing is encouraging everyone to feel equally important who ever they are and what ever they believe. We should be more interested in whether people are good people and do no harm to others and not care about their colour, age, sexual orientation or anything else. For naturism it means many people fear nudity and yet porn has never been so common place and not just the internet and magazines, but seeping into mainstream cinema, strip clubs and the increased sexualisation of women, the increasing worries of child abuse. Our inability to walk a sensible middle ground means all logic in making choices is lost. Innocent nudity is feared, paranoia of child safety is probably doing them and society a lot more harm than good, tabboos are built around the human body and long term the only outlet may be a continued rise of perversion.