Burnley Grammar School

Alan,I never considered that my parents considered that keeping me in short trousers was a form of humiliation.They enjoyed the look of me wearing shorts and decided to keep me in shorts rather than allowing me to wear long trousers.

Mine was one of those schools in the 70s with one of those you must take off your pants for PE attitudes, thus they came off in the changing room at the start of PE and we slipped on our shorts onto nothing. PE was shirtless and barefoot for gym, so the white shorts were the only item we had on for PE there. About as simple as it gets.

Others ran school cross country shirtless, so did we. , the same gym shorts and no pants. These white shorts, unsure what they were made of to be honest but the material wasn't very thick, but was a touch shiny looking. Nylon? Anyway, the shorts were not very giving, with not a lot of room in them. If you had big thighs they could mark them like socks do at the ankles. When we ran outside in these shorts in cross country and it rained on us, the shorts would get wet through and become horribly see through, it was literally a running joke among us all but nothing was done about it. Black ones would have solved this I think. The wet shorts would cling as well onto the skin so if you were running behind others in the wet shorts they clung to the buttocks and being white on white boys at a quick glance it sometimes looked like no shorts were being worn and they were running naked ahead of you, other than sight of the elastic waist part holding them up. I would have looked the same to anyone behind me I'm sure. The front was not quite so bad but the shape of things became clearer and if you looked properly things were not viewable. Yet all we needed to do was wear pants or change to dark shorts. Luckily were we ran didn't pass too many people and was mainly off road. Rainy cross country in white shorts, trainers and a bare chest were joyless for many and very chilly to do.

Peter, my physique was average build and I was never unhappy with it, no idea what height I was at fourteen, and never measured myself down below but I seemed to be up to standard when it came to checking out against others. You always needed to have reassuring quiet peeks at the competition in the showers at school to see how the race to adulthood was coming along!

Hi Yours Truly,further to my previous message,to attend a school wear short trousers wear compulsory for all boys made it fairer than just a few boys wearing shorts like myself and a few others.We became the objects of fun and teasing by both girls and younger boys.Yes,I do remember the song,'who wear short shorts'which was often sang to me. My parents were always oblivious about my thoughts when I contested wearing shorts all the time and told me that I looked nice in my shorts. Shopping excursions usually involved purchasing new shorts,which I was displeased because I was thirteen,but after visiting several shops,my mother found some Adidas satin shorts that appealed to her and she bought me two pairs in blue.Her clear refusal to allow me to wear long trousers was obvious.

Comment by: James on 3rd May 2025 at 09:44




".........Although I disliked being in the minority my parents relished the spectacle of seeing a teenager getting accustomed to short pants as I grew older........"

Forgive me James, and with all due respect to your parents, why the hell would any reasonable parent want to see their son (or daughter) humiliated like that?. They must have been adherents to the philosophy of Robert Baden-Powell. Given the amount of bullying that goes on in schools (and outside them on the bus to and from school) why would anybody want to make their lives more difficult?. It seems almost as spiteful as sending them to boarding schools.

Yours Truly on 1st May 2025 at 09:43

They may well have continued to check us at times, as they left us with the impression that their teacher didn’t discourage them. To tell you the truth we seemed to forget about it, or just leave it, which seems odd now. What could we do? When you think back to being that age, just one day seems to last so long with lots of things to get through, that even from one week to another seems an age. Perhaps it was a year’s optional, ongoing, observation of interest for them, who knows. Unlike males, don’t all females like to think they’re entitled to know every detail about everything anyway, which is probably why their female teacher let them continue. It still irritates me thinking about it now, but the years have gone by. I always did think their gym teacher was a bit strange though; at least we’d stopped her walking through our rooms…there is one other thing I’ve realised since thinking this through again all these years later: we never did try to explain that we were just getting our own back, but when our gym teacher arrived and caught us, all he would have seen was the door to the girls’ shower open; their showers still going; the girls having vacated the place; a group of us boys still standing by that open door. Perhaps he’d heard their screaming and their door slam. I suppose that’s quite funny.


Tony, thank you for your nice comment at the bottom of your 1st May 2025 at 21:37 post.

It was a nice post Tony but I find it a little awkward in answering.

When I wrote about the shower peeping episode, it was really following on from a previous discussion, and I certainly didn’t intend to write about the troubles that seemed to follow, but one then reminded me of the other. It’s odd how such things become so vivid, so that the writing just flows as you recall certain sensibilities from your younger years; you find feelings resurface that you know only belonged to who you were at that young age. At that time I really didn’t have a clue what was happening or why, but all these years later I do now think it was probably because of how I looked I suppose. Similarly, I even think it was why a 14 year old boy kept coming up behind only me when I was only 9, to push me under the water as I was playing about with same age friends in a swimming pool. I was a none swimmer then. If only he knew that he succeeded in putting me off swimming for life by doing that. Despite always being a sporty kid, on dry land, I was always in the none swimming group during school swimming, feeling pretty useless, and always a little humiliated.

My physique? Well I’m speaking about all this starting when still a child really, though moving into teens, so then still just a slim, tallish, sporty kid at that age. I did write on here some time ago about a man who turned up at one gym lesson, who we all thought was a student of some kind. Our usual gym teacher wasn’t present. After getting changed for gym and still all sitting in the changing room, he proceeded to take various measurements of each of us, one after the other, as we stood on the bench before him while he measured the distances between various joints, the width of wrists and limbs, limb and even finger lengths, all while writing this down on a clip board. I’ve mentioned before that I never had to do shirtless gym, as we always were strictly enforced to wear our all white gym kits, but for this we all did have to remove our tops. This must seem odd. I’ve since thought that he must have been a university medical student of some sort who was probably revising for his thesis? When posting of this that last time, I left out that he quietly complimented me at the end of all this, so I do realise I was very lucky that it seems I was well proportioned, or at least as I think he meant, on target to be so as an adult.

This is beginning to sound ever so self-satisfied, which is not how I ever was at all, so now I’ll explain a particularly awkward aspect of my childhood appearance that really did get me down at times, so I might succeed in undoing some of what I’ve just said. I'm going to admit to something! People seemed to identify something about my face when I was a boy that said, ‘girl’ to them. I never really understood it, and I remember complaining to my mother when I spent some time in hospital (see below) but she did explain to me. I don't think I ever behaved in any effeminate way as I grew up, and I certainly can’t begin to explain how much I hated this. I always hoped that when out with friends anywhere, someone didn’t say, or assume, which could have provided a topic for continued ribbing from the others. In fact the last time this did happen is when I was 13, so my voice still unbroken. I’ll give a brief example. I’d gone with a friend of the same age to meet up with others at a campsite; the same place I’d mentioned previously with showers. We had a few tents plus a smaller one used as our larder. I decided there were things I’d like to buy, coffee for instance as I didn’t like tea. So off we all walked to a small store nearby. I collected a few things as the others looked at other shelves elsewhere. I went to the counter to pay. The man said, ‘Oh, I see they let the girl get the food as usual.’ I looked around, saw my friends were out of earshot, and the woman next to me just smiled. I didn’t reply, paid, then we all left. Is having to put up with nonsense like this usual for a boy? I’m not sure whether others ever had this, as it’s yet another unspoken aspect of boyhood that we would never mention to anyone. It would be very interesting if to find this out on here once and for all. Anyone?

I spent 3 months on a children’s ward having fractured my femur when I was 11. This was the very summer from which we all transitioned from junior school to ‘big school’ so I missed that important time shared with your friends, including that first showering experience usually all shared together. I’ve written previously about the double standards issued out to boys regarding lack of privacy while on that ward, so I’m not dragging over all that again, but during all my time in there everyone assumed I was a girl, until newer nurses gave me a bed bath! Probably my unruly mop of hair had grown a bit longer during that time.

I suppose one potentially funny moment could have happened when one young lad came over to my bed and asked, ‘Are you a boy?’ to which I replied, ‘Yes.’ He then undid his pyjama bottoms to show me his appendix scar with stitches. I’ve since wondered how he might have reacted if I'd then said, ‘By the way, no, I’m a girl!” But I wouldn’t have said that at that age.

Hi,Yours Truly, At the school that I attended short trousers were not compulsory,but my parents chose to send me to school wearing shorts trousers.I was eleven at the time and I had been accustomed to wearing shorts both at home and school.Although I disliked being in the minority my parents relished the spectacle of seeing a teenager getting accustomed to short pants as I grew older.When I grew older and satin shorts became fashionable these were purchased for me and I was more embarrassed when wearing them than my ordinary shorts.They were very tight and shiny and just covered my bottom.

Comment by: Neal Wilkinson on 2nd May 2025 at 20:12


"Brian, I saw your message late last night and did not follow your advice,......

I like working with those I'm in charge of, not against them."


Neal, Your messages and that of Simon a week or so back really gives me hope that the bully is departing from school gyms, and decent and considerate men are taking over.

Those last twelve words of yours are a great credit to you and I sincerely hope many more are following your example in your profession.

I had my own particular reasons for dreading having to take part in PE lessons more than half naked, as some of my classmates did, for different reasons. Just because people like me and Brian had to go through the minimal kit routine, I wouldn't wish it on modern lads. It always concerns me why so many middle-aged men like Brian have such a prurient interest in lads wearing as little as possible.

OK men, boys. Describe all these bare chested bodies you talk about from your youth.

Age 14 is a good median to pick.

I was barely 7 stone, 5 foot 8 inches tall, waist was about 26/28 inches max, chest about 35/6 inches, and my biceps...what biceps!

I remember my PE teacher telling me "there's nothing of you" and "what are we gonna do with you" as I presented my slight frame to the class in PE lessons, shown up by the required need of PE to deny me clothing on top.

I didn't dislike being shirtless but I did dislike being quite so slight. I ate anything put in front of me and never gained weight, was the same until I left school. I was always wanting a bigger chest to at least reach the dizzying heights of being a medium in tops.

But I had the biggest willy in the showers so all was not lost! That's true by the way, sorry to brag. Feel free to compare. Where were you in the pecker order, that's a school days showers phrase we used against each other, and I was clearly number one when lined up along the shower tiles.

Suddenly from 22 to 24 I achieved a body more like I wanted, and without even trying to get it. My slightness of frame simply filled in. Too late, it should have done it when I was in school being called Master of the Puniverse by the comedian who took our PE without tops on in gym.

I'm now 59 and 15 stone. Our bodies can play cruel tricks on us sometimes. Now I need to lose some weight!

I'm sure we called the one the boy is upside down on a horse at school, I don't recall it being known as any other name. As for the other with legs, it's also a kind of horse too isn't it, as has been said, the word pommell rings a bell with that. So are they both just different types of horse? I see the confusion now I think about it. Google imaging up 'gym horse' bring pictures of both items.

It only took closing in on 7600 comments to question the gym equipment in that photo!

In school from 1986-89 shirts came off near constantly in PE during gym time, and sometimes for outdoor games. But officially for my secondary there is not the slightest suggestion that any physical education was done in bare chests or that anyone would ask us to do that, but turning up it was quite a different matter altogether. I've gone through everything I kept about my school and everything it says about school uniforms, school PE uniforms, the lot of it. They don't even mention the showers we had, there's a couple of words that just say 'towel required' leaving the reader to deduce the reason for that. It's almost as though it was a dirty little secret not to shout about!

I may be wrong, but I believe that the boys are sitting on a "Pommel Horse" and the vaulter is on a "Box".

Brian, I saw your message late last night and did not follow your advice, are you a teacher? While we do have a non-negotiable all encompassing full showering mandate and we do a bare chest sanction to those who do not bring the correct top into PE, I'd have no great enthusiasm to go further than that like you suggest. Our rules work well and are effective and just once in a while we relax them a little and suggest a bare chest option purely in terms of heat comfort for anyone who would like to. I think we cover all bases quite sensibly in that regard.

I like working with those I'm in charge of, not against them.

First time post, fab discussion. I've been reading page after page of these memories over the week since I found this here.

One thing though, what do people here call each of those two pieces of gym equipment, the one the boy is doing a handstand on with the teacher, and also the one to the right with legs that the boys are sitting on. I ask because I have a feeling I may have been using the wrong name for a lifetime for at least one of them.

I think many of us when we went to our upper schools at eleven or twelve felt a little overwhelmed and insecure and possibly quite powerless, feeling a need to simply comply with everything and anything, and to use a PE style phrase, we were expected to hit the ground running on arrival.

I'd class myself as nothing more than an average boy, with average ability, with average looks and an average body to match, at a mid range average middle England comprehensive school of the very late sixties and mainly seventies, there from autumn 69 to summer 75. I hope and think that I've been a better than average adult though in my post school lifetime these last fifty years.

Someone once asked me in a job interview what teachers had inspired me at school and I really struggled with that one to come up with a fitting answer. I remember a PE teacher popping into my mind in that moment and opted to use him as my inspiration, but not in the way they expected. I was being interviewed at a book publishing company by a man and woman. I told them he'd inspired me because he'd made me do things as a boy that I would never have done otherwise. One of these things was about being more of a team player, believing in my own ability as an individual, realising I was better at some things than I thought I was, endurance running for one, aka the cross country, and allowing me to become comfortable in my own skin which I'd only done because this man and his PE colleagues made me do my PE in ways that initially I really wasn't keen at all on, going shirtless around others. But I have to admit to myself that it was the being made to do it that helped out, and with that I include the showering mandate too. Some people, and I have to say I was clearly one of them, do actually respond well to such rules being imposed even when uncomfortable at first.

It might seem a little odd to some on here to read me saying I was inspired by a teacher, and others, who told me I had to be shirtless for gym and then naked for showers at school but it worked to demystify my own and others physical attributes. This, along with developing my team player skills and other strengths.

Don't get me wrong, I can cite as many less great points as anyone else, we had a PE teacher who I disliked because he only ever criticised and hardly ever praised. I saw that as his failing, not mine though. You can never please some people in this life and shouldn't keep trying to. Another lesson learned early on.

I got the book job and the interviewers seemed to really like my school teacher inspiration explanation. Without the PE teacher I'd have been stumped to find another teacher to call even remotely inspiring, they were all just doing their day jobs to me, many looking bored sometimes. The PE teachers at least never looked bored.

The chatter on double standards is a fab one too. An early one of mine goes back to being six years old in a painting class. What a horrible paint bullying story a day or two ago that was by the way. I don't know what kind of paint it was, except it was very messy and came in many colours. There were large bits of paper over the floor of the classroom and we had to do hand and foot painting, or rather the boys did. The girls were doing hand painting only but all the boys had to take shoes and socks off and dip bare feet into trays of paint and walk onto the paper, as well as do hands. The girls didn't have to. Even at the age of six I thought what a stupid silly thing to make us do. The resulting pictures just a mess. To do this on our hands and to keep our school shirt clean the boys had to do this with top removed, the girls did not. Once that was done we had to sit on a side unit and stick our feet in a sink under running water while our teacher made sure our feet were properly clean again, I even remember her touching me and checking between my toes for left over paint that I'd missed, while looking down at the paper on the floor with various girls hand prints and boys footprints everywhere. Then it was all screwed up and thrown away at the end of the day.

Boys are expected to get messy and not care but some boys aren't up for all that, while some girls would love to get stuck into it. Just so stereotypical of the genders right from age six.

I'm full of opinions and stories of school but won't overdo it.

The older boys at the Queensbury Academy here in Bedfordshire have been going out group running from that place again late this morning in their usual sized group of about twenty I've seen before and this time the whole lot of them were bare chested, I didn't spot one with a top today, whereas when I've seen them a couple of times before on my drive past there have been four or five with tops on, not today though. They went off into their usual running track off road near the school which is quite private and leafy after you leave the quite busy road they have to go along first to get there. I was out of the van walking to deliver some flowers and they were the opposite side of the road to me and looked quite focussed on themselves and nobody else. I doubt any of them were being made to run that way, it just gives the impression of being their own choice but I could be wrong. An older guy was running with them in shorts and T-shirt, one of the gym teachers I should imagine.

Whatever you think of it, there is definitely something that looks more impressive when you see a group running in their bare chests like that as opposed to a random collection of tops they threw on with sweat stains back and front. It sort of looks business like and gives off a disciplined sense of the whole group to me, and the weather is great so why not. A couple of years ago I saw something similar and it was the opposite time of the year to now and a lot less warm.

Comment by: Brian on 1st May 2025 at 19:36



"Neal how about you tell them all to remove tops and conduct PE barechested tomorrow instead, and see what the reaction is to that. You should use this opportunity just to try out standardised shirtless PE lessons for once. I support you allowing them to do PE shirtless, and why not, now you should just drag the other third along to the concept of the proper barechested PE lesson that you have decided they will do and get the whole lot doing so.........."

WHY???

I always find comments like that a little bit concerning.

Comment by: Andrew K on 1st May 2025 at 12:33
Mike F having always played football as skins vs vests at school i think it was a good idea on your teacher's part to switch teams at halftime and have everyone go barechested at some point. Our teachers never chose to do that.Once your vest came off that was it. Little wonder the girls thought we were mad.




Why did they think that Andrew. I concur with you though, if we took our stuff off it stayed off for the duration.

I've actually played shirts versus skins tops against a team of girls who were the shirts at school a couple of times. 43 year ago this month to be precise - May 1982. We rarely mingled outside for PE and just did our own things away from each other with our respective teachers.

One games lesson a lot of boys got chosen and pushed into doing a game of field hockey against the girls. We were already outside and some boys were shirtless and others not, common practice when we were doing athletics which we began after Easter going into summer.

A number of boys picked to play the girls at hockey were already shirtless so those others who were not had to take our tops off to make up the team "colours". There were about 10 or 12 of us, we played the girls and lost, they always played hockey, we rarely did.

Someone on our side asked for a rematch and we were promised we could have one next week again with the exact same boys team. When we came to it the next week we were all outside in tops and the girls acted all disappointed we weren't skins like last week, kind of jokingly. They'd obviously enjoyed playing a bunch of bare chested boys and it was certainly a novelty for all of us. The girls teacher was nearby and decided it was up to the boys what we did, and the usual suspects who went skins any excuse in PE got their tops off kind of showing off a bit in front of girls and that made the rest of us feel we had no choice but to do the same as they were not intending to put them back on again. I remember a few girl 'come on, come on' comments to those who were dragging their feet about taking their tops off but we all did it and played them a second time, losing yet again. We never played them again. I was not into hockey for boys anyway. Their teacher watched us play and seemed enthusiastic about us playing them as skins. Our own male teacher who had chosen who was going to peel off to play the girls the previous week was with the others boys doing their more usual things.

Now it's always presumed that only men wolf whistle at women or girls but this is just not true. I remember some of the girls clearly wolf whistling at us boys aiming for reactions on both occasions we faced them as skins for field hockey against them. Half our boys team felt pressured into it. There were a couple of girls on their side who fancied boys on our side, one liked me a lot, and they were clearly over the moon to get a chance to play boys like us without our shirts on for a bit, and we were fifteen year olds at the time.

I had no problem taking things off in front of boys, but taking things off in front of girls like that, especially some you know might like you a lot, made me feel very sheepish.

After PE everyone, boys and girls went for showers. You could easily hear the girls in their showers from our changing rooms not far away, and in their area there was a thin frosted window often open a couple of inches. We sometimes wondered if the showers were beside that window but it was impossible to see in even with it open a couple of inches, the angle to look in was just not there. I used to think about what it might be like if they suddenly made us all share and I think I had a dream about it.

Comment by: Greg2 on 1st May 2025 at 11:51

I quite like Scandanavian and European cinema and a lot gets shown on Saturday nights on BBC Four, often subtitled. I think the one being talked about is Swedish maybe? They are so easy going on all things showers and taking clothes off it's unreal at times. I bet most school still showers over there.

Here's a good example from a nine parter called Skaidi, this was shown on BBC Four a few years ago now, it looks a lot more recent than it is, I think it's from the 90s. It's very nicely made. In it from 8 minutes there is the almost must have full on shower scene that many of these dramas from there seem to stick in. But the great bit about this if you watch from 8 minutes is the part at 8 minutes 21 seconds and you notice these boys are so relaxed they are even having a communal shower with each other with the door wide open out onto the corridor for anyone to look in on, as one of their mates fully clothed is, who then starts a fight, sound familiar Greg! Here in the UK we boys would all definitely have closed that door!

https://tv.nrk.no/serie/skaidi/sesong/1/episode/FBUB10000994

The NRK website is quite good and you can watch a lot of Scandanavian Norweigen programming on it without a login which is unusual. There is also a similar historical films archive site with a similar name with content going back over 80 years.

Comment by: Matt C on 1st May 2025 at 02:44

I'm genuinely unsure what to think about your prefect age difference with you. If you're a twelve year old with a seventeen year old in school, is that really so bad to share if you are all genuine school pupils at the same place doing the same thing. If I had been a sixth form prefect, I never was, I'd not have chosen to do that myself. It just shows that everyone's comfort level is different.

I loved the 'I suppose these are no longer our private parts' comment. That is the kind of thinking that could only come out of the mouth of children.

Looking at the peeping girls film, I know they are actors and it was fiction but nudity is nudity and it reminded me of the real life one from schools TV, I was surprised to see a sudden close up as the camera lowered down on one of them, but this must have been trying to convey the girls eyes from the viewer perspective. I agree it is quite brave for child actors to do things like that knowing they will always be available, and that film wasn't even that old was it.

The closest example in reverse I can think of is only with adult men peeping at women in Porky's from the eighties, done for comedy value, and the joke ends up being on the males anyway when one of them pokes his appendage through the peep hole and one of the girls grabs it and won't let go!

There are not many of us, male or female, who wouldn't peep if we knew there was a group of our friends of the opposite sex taking a naked shower and we could watch incognito. Maybe Alan wouldn't but the rest of us would and don't lie and say no.

Greg I really find your own thoughts on being peeped at and then what happened afterwards all quite compelling. You sound like a nice guy and I'm sorry you lost the fight. Did your good looks match up with a good physique? Maybe there was a lot of jealousy over you.

You'd always see these lads in PE when we did skins against shirts who were absolutely desperate not to get picked to be the skin, so they didn't have to pull the school vest off and bare their chests to do things like basketball. These were often the very same boys who made regular attempts or made excuses not to shower or not to even do PE at all.

My PE teachers weren't ones for listening to excuses not to do things when told. Someone on here made the point, what if you refused to take a top off, what could they do. Well I can answer that because I saw my own PE teacher tell someone to raise his arms above his head a pull his vest off him once in PE when he was told to be a skin and wanted to be a shirt.

Changing room towel dancing was for soft lads and completely self defeating anyway. We did have towel flicking moments sometimes at each other and then one day someone got their towel thrown in the shower and soaked through. This is when we discovered that a wet towel when flicked at a bare backside can really hurt a lot more than a dry one.

I never shared the shower with a PE teacher but when I went on a week long field trip to Cornwall in 1979 we shared a dormitory in a lodge near Padstow 14 boys and two teachers, and in the morning we moved along the landing together wrapped in towels and found ourselves all naked with our two geography teachers on a number of mornings before we set off for the days trekking. We thought it was amusing but we didn't think it was wrong.

Neal how about you tell them all to remove tops and conduct PE barechested tomorrow instead, and see what the reaction is to that. You should use this opportunity just to try out standardised shirtless PE lessons for once. I support you allowing them to do PE shirtless, and why not, now you should just drag the other third along to the concept of the proper barechested PE lesson that you have decided they will do and get the whole lot doing so. You obviously thought it was a good day to do shirtless PE so why not just tell them all to do it and be done with it.

It's good to see you make them all shower at least. It's no hardship to make any of them do that, or barechested PE. These should be the very basics of any PE.

The calibre of the posts on here at the moment is exceptional, I'm sure others must agree with me.

It's been good to have some public schoolboys on here and boarders, alongside us common old state school urchins, as well as the female input and some renewed teacher input.

Matt C - 'As some joker once memorably shouted aloud in our school changing room when we first showered - "I suppose these are no longer our private parts". This was in our first term secondary school showers, perfect timing and observation out the mouth of a fellow twelve year old, and it even managed to make our quite hard faced PE teacher laugh out loud along with some of us.'

Matt, this comment made me smile, what a great kid to come up with that one liner, I wish I'd done that in my time, that's a beauty, very funny indeed.

Comment by: Andrew K on 1st May 2025 at 12:33
Mike F having always played football as skins vs vests at school i think it was a good idea on your teacher's part to switch teams at halftime and have everyone go barechested at some point. Our teachers never chose to do that.Once your vest came off that was it. Little wonder the girls thought we were mad.




Yes, whenever I did things like this there was never any switching halfway through, you tended to stay the way you were chosen, so if you didn't like being shirtless, tough luck. Knowing the teachers I had they'd have considered any shirt switching to be faffing around wasting precious lesson time.

But I'm one of those here who did lots of generalised shirtless PE anyway, turned out the same, and your girls comment is perceptive. I know some girls at our school found it highly amusing to see us doing PE so much without our shirts. Not just the once in a while class share, but we had to walk past classroom windows with our tops off back to change so got seen that way too. If you were sitting in the maths block at any level from the ground to second floor you could see the boys coming or going to PE in either the school gym or out on the field. With all our clothes, bags and valuables in the changing room they locked the door when we went out so we'd frequently be loitering waiting for the door to be unlocked to get back in, and a lot of that loitering was shirtless, giving the maths block an eyeful, so any girls at the time (or boys I suppose) who liked what we looked like or saw someone they fancied got a bit of a show if they dared gaze out the window without being noticed.

As my school day ends, a follow up to my only other comment I left here in February.

Our school gym was very hot today and we offered the chance to any boys who wished to do so to remove the top if they desired in all the lessons throughout the day there. The same applied yesterday. Up to two thirds of the boys chose to do this and take part bare chested, between 15 and 20 in our class sizes of 30. This was a discretionary decision however due to the unseasonable heat as a lot of pupils had been complaining. It will apply tomorrow also.

Normally if someone has not come to PE with the correct kit top the sanction is a bare chest.

We are a school that requires showers are taken after PE and on days such as today I am pleased that is the case because they are very much needed after vigorous exertion and some do sweat a lot more than others noticeably so and have a lesser or higher heat tolerance during activity.

Much like Mike F has noted from his time, we had a similar type of set up doing football at school as well, mid to late 70s, there was a north and south school with different PE tops but the north and the south school never interacted with lessons, even PE, other than sports day for the whole place. So much like Mike the whole PE group in my north school wore the same exact top, and for some reason the concept of a bib or sash did not register, perhaps on purpose because this allowed the excuse, if that's what it was, to do skins with boys, which is the way we went too, just like Mike, and in all weathers. Unlike Mike however, who seems to have had quite fair minded PE teachers there, we didn't play it different by halves. If you were chosen to be a skin for PE that day then you remained a skin for the entire time outside. Not only that but you could quite easily find yourself being a skin the very next time we did it too for the whole lesson, whilst you had to look on and know other boys were shirts possibly two, three or four lessons on the trot. All I know is that I felt more a skin than a shirt in those games, but everyone seems to say that don't they.

We also had to run the cross country without our shirts on unless the weather was very bad indeed. We were always running shirtless cross country on what I would describe as normal benign unremarkable kinds of autumnal and winter days. It wasn't as bad as it sounds actually once you got moving and used to it but not everyone saw it that way. I was getting stuck into that kind of set up for PE from the word go at 12 in 1974. That autumn for me was a real learning experience and introduction to much tougher PE, and making whole classes of reluctant boys march nude into cool water communal showers that went with it.

What fascinates me about being a secondary schoolboy in the 70s is why the PE teachers I had were so determined to throw us all outside stripped to the waist in some often less than favourable conditions to be shirtless in. Why was it seen as something that boys like me should leave the warmth of the changing room and get out into the cold without shirts on to run for much of the next hour or so, or kick a ball about outside without my top on, and if I had to do that why didn't any teachers follow suit?

In team games, especially the outside ones, how come the only method that was used to identify a team had to be the skins method, even playing football in the cold? Does anyone really know the answer to this? We all seem to be guessing!

I wasn't dreadfully shy to take my top off, but there's a time and place for everything.

Inside in the school gym nobody would think to question the near permanence of shirtless PE we did but when you're going outside and you're 14 running a December 1976 cross country a couple of weeks before Christmas last lesson of the day and it's already sunset before 4pm, our school day finish, and the light is fading rapidly and we are all finally running back into school, no shirts on, sweaty, but pretty damned cold too with it, panting for breath and knackered, it was akin to an SAS training run at times not the local state secondary with a set of averagely fit boys.

One takeaway from such lessons as I've described is a sense that the PE teachers were never satisfied with us and there was always something for someone to be pulled up over even if we had given it everything we had.

The only thing I will say about all this is that I am sure we were all much fitter boys in those days.

Mike F having always played football as skins vs vests at school i think it was a good idea on your teacher's part to switch teams at halftime and have everyone go barechested at some point. Our teachers never chose to do that.Once your vest came off that was it. Little wonder the girls thought we were mad

Matt C on 1st May 2025 at 02:44

No I don’t think they were 13 either, but I think what I was meaning was that 13 is bang in the middle of change for boys, so some could still look 11 while others might appear 15 at that age. I was right in the middle for that age really. The annoying girls did seem surprised to discover these boy secrets which just fuelled their teasing.

I’m glad I wasn’t made to have primary school showers, but at that young age, just like you I expect, I suppose I would have just conformed as it’s surprising when so young how quickly we can all become so accepting; or is it institutionalised? But you’re right in that secondary school showers were just about getting through it, as our gym teacher was ever present and would have exploded if we’d messed about during those younger years. When I was 12/13 I had a few showers on a camping sites where I’d find myself in there with my younger brother, or at other times with friends. We certainly played about more in there at those ages.

A towel dance is pretty pointless if you’re all in there together a few seconds later. As much as I didn’t like school showers, another aspect I never quite understood that’s been mentioned is walking to and from the shower with your towel around your waist. How could that work anyway? Where do you put them when you’re in there, and collect them from again on the way out. You have to dry yourself anyway then when back at your place. Unless some schools had a completely different system?

"I suppose these are no longer our private parts". Brilliant! What a great quip, and so observationally true for that young lad to come out with that as he experienced that new odd and strange feeling that we all had to go through. What instant natural humour your classmate had. I hope his new gym teacher immediately gave him a House Point for that!

Hi Greg2,

One last detail I forgot to put in my last post.

The fact that the girls kept up the taunting for weeks indicates that your suspicion was right and they continued their spying on a regular basis. No sore bums for them and not even a detention, it seems. But boys must be beaten and made to conform.

I don't think the boys in Karl's associated film link being spied on by girls while they were in the showers are 13 year olds, they look more like primary age 10's or 11's to me at most. My first school shower was in a primary school in 1981 at the age of 10 (a newly built changing block) and seemed very similar to that shown scene from the film. We used to get into trouble for too much messing about and not enough doing what we were in there for, to wash ourselves rather than treat it as a skinny dipping water feature. No girls spied on us, that I know of!

A couple of years later secondary school showers had a very different feel to them, very little messing in them and just got on with it more seriously.

Both school made us shower even if we didn't wish to do so, at secondary they left us in no doubt that going in the showers was not optional but necessary and required by all.

The towel dance has been mentioned. I don't know why anyone would waste their time with that if your headed for the showers hanging it all out shoulder to shoulder with your class mates. You'd have definitely been ridiculed by someone if you'd played those games in our secondary school when changing out of your pants.

As some joker once memorably shouted aloud in our school changing room when we first showered - "I suppose these are no longer our private parts". This was in our first term secondary school showers, perfect timing and observation out the mouth of a fellow twelve year old, and it even managed to make our quite hard faced PE teacher laugh out loud along with some of us.

When I was a twelve year old fresh face at secondary school one of the upper sixth form prefect used to be a part of our lesson sort of teaching some of us away from our actual PE teacher. I think he was 18 or very close, but to me looked 20 at least. I don't know what that was all about, but he was an arrogant so and so to us out of sight of the actual teacher who had him join in with us. When he took part he even walked into the showers with us even though it wasn't obligatory for sixth former to do that. He stood next to me one day and it was hard to believe he was actually a schoolboy like me, he was, I'd seen him in sixth form uniform. He caught me looking at him, to me what looked like a fully adult body, which it more or less was I suppose. Catching my eye as I took a sideways glance at him he smiled, lifted his eyebrows and simply said to me - "One day", which I presumed to mean he was saying I'd soon enough one day look like him. I wasn't keen on a sixth former, possibly six years older than me at the time, sharing with us, it felt an imposition.

Hi Greg2,

It's plain from the cut in that clip to the three girls walking out of school with their arms about each other that there were no consequences for their prying!

It must have compounded how you felt being taunted by those girls that you had all ended up with bruised bums for doing the exact same thing they did. That woman PE teacher you mentioned was a disgrace to her profession, quite frankly. But it was a very different culture in the sixties and seventies and boys weren't supposed to have feelings, and if they did have feelings they were to be taught to disregard them, and so that sort of casual disregard for boys was all too common. But it was disgusting that the girls were allowed to take that liberty.

Over the recent Easter weekend I caught up with my sister. The conversation turned at one point to the lack of school punishments nowadays. My sister was in favour or bringing back CP and I found myself telling her about my own experiences for the first time ever in forty-whatever years. She was astonished to hear that I was ever hit at school at all, given how shy and conformist I always was, although she herself was in the same teacher's class a few years later and confirmed that she remembered this teacher slapping the boys about. In turn I was very surprised to hear that my little sister, who I remember as always popular and having loads of friends, had struggled to fit in and been dropped en masse by her whole clique at twelve. Fuck them. I was even more astonished to learn that our other sister, who has a truly intimidating temper nowadays, had been badly bullied in her schooldays.

'It’s quite telling that the girls laughed but not so much the boys. Girls can be really horrible at times, as they were with us boys following the shower moment.'

Girls seemed to have a killer instinct for humiliation. I can think of two anecdotes from my own schooldays, one involving boys and the other girls, which I might post some other time but the last time I posted about one of them my comment was moderated so maybe not.

What I can say is, girls always had a certain level of privilege. They always knew they were safe. When formal CP was a thing in UK schools it was 95% of the time boys suffering it, quite often for the same things that girls would get a more lenient sanction for. Well, as you found out. They had more liberty to be horrible because they knew any consequences would be less. I have posted before of being an over-sensitive an anxious child who wanted to fit in. But I still ended up walking back to my seat with a stinging arse because my teacher, who our 'good catholic' headmaster refused to discipline, had lost his rag yet again and having to do the walk of shame past the girls whose eyes would be aglow with triumphant contempt.

I got used to the shorts eventually. But it was always cutting that boys were held rigidly to that rule while the girls weren't even forced to wear skirts or dresses and were allowed long trousers, including my eldest sister who started two years after me. We would walk to school, her in her jeans and me in my shorts. I have never forgotten that.

Karl on 29th April 2025 at 03:33

Karl, I watched that clip from the film and hadn’t watched that before. I suppose most of us must have looked much the same as those boys when only 13, thought there were a couple, and one in particular, who always looked about three years ahead of most of us, appearing much more mature. For all I know the girls might have had their door slightly ajar just like that and we hadn't noticed, as boys do jump and play about a bit in there at those younger ages. But it was the tormenting that followed for weeks that we all got a bit fed up with, I know I did. I think we did give back as good as we got with some insulting firing back, but it was all childish nonsense really. But I’m sure the girls picked up on my discomfort with the detail they went into, so continued to go for me with the little finger wiggling stuff which I tried to ignore. I was actually very average for where I should have been at that age, but such barely perceivable evidence of starting to grow up wouldn’t have been detectable from that distance!

A few have mentioned bullying. It wasn’t that long after that episode that I started, quite out of the blue, to be singled out and picked on. It was always boys who weren’t in my form, so ones I didn’t know too well, though the same age group as me. I mentioned the older looking lad in the showers, well he was the first one to start. I was never one of the smaller kids, in fact I know I was exactly 5 feet tall at the age 12 as I still have an old school book where we all had our heights measured and wrote out a class list. It started with him deliberately pushing me as he walked past with others in corridors etc, which I remember surprised me the first time.This started to bother me, and had I been a submissive sort I could so easily have become one of the traditional bullied kids who suffer for it throughout their schooling, but I wasn’t like that. I was becoming annoyed with myself for letting him do that, so the next time I saw him walking towards me I’d already told myself what I must do: I pushed him right back, which I think surprised him. There was a bit of a scuffle and a teacher came out and did the usual shouting, but nothing more than that. This lad then said to meet up after school for a fight! So, I met him after school and several other kids appeared to watch. He walked up to me, kneed me in the groin, thumped me in the face a few times, and generally beat me up! He was bigger and stronger than me and I couldn’t do anything about it. I was disappointed with myself but had to accept it. The odd thing was he never bothered me again after that. He was captain of the school football team and I was a member of the team too so we had to get on somehow, but I was forever disappointed that he beat me like that.

A month or so later when I was 14, a different lad ran at me from behind in the playground. I felt someone jump on my back which caught me unawares and I fell to the ground, scraping my face on the right side, leaving marks that lasted weeks. I remember him pushing my face down as I tried to understand what was happening. At the time I didn’t have a clue why he did that and I was so worked up with emotion, that having pushed him off followed by bit of a scuffle, the bell went to go back in. I didn’t go back into school but ran out and went home as I was so emotionally worked up wondering why I was starting to be picked on. I realised this wasn’t helping so went back to meet him coming out at home time. I knew where he’d be and waited on a corner to jump him as he had me. We started fighting until my grandfather (of all people) who worked in an engineering works nearby ran and broke us up with some other men.

There were I think two more incidents with other boys who challenged me for no apparent reason. It wasn’t a particularly rough area, and usually most people were civil and friendly, but from the ages of 13 to 15 that seemed to be how things were for me, and it all seemed to start following that strange shower peeping moment.

I really was not a trouble maker at school or a bully to anyone in any way, in fact I kept myself to myself with just my own friends in my form. But for 18 months or so some boys seemed to go for me, but I always fought back if there was any trouble, which I think surprised some lads as I’m sure they expected me to be a pushover for some reason. I suppose I didn’t look like the sort to fight back, but how wrong they were!


Nigel on 29th April 2025 at 15:52

Nigel I read your post and felt so sorry for you following that incident with the paints. Had you noticed anything building up with these particular lads before this took place, or was it out of the blue so to speak? Why do you think they picked you to do that to? It’s quite telling that the girls laughed but not so much the boys. Girls can be really horrible at times, as they were with us boys following the shower moment. Was there any subsequent trouble for you following on from those boys, or any others?



Yours Truly on 30th April 2025 at 08:23

I was at junior school in the 60s and it was quite normal back then for boys to be only allowed to wear shorts at junior school, and with a mother who came from Berlin, my shorts were…short…compared to the other kids. I was ridiculed about this at times, and remember older girls singing, ‘Who wears short shorts’ which I think was a recent song, though I didn’t know of it then. One time that sticks in my memory was when I was on a week’s school trip up in Northumberland. We were staying in a Youth Hostel and one morning when a coach was waiting to take us all out for the day, as I ran on the coach all the kids started laughing at me because I was wearing for the first time a pair of black leatherette shorts which my mother had made for me (she was a skilled seamstress) especially for this trip. I must have tried them on at home and they were shorter and a little different looking than what others would wear I suppose, but I was really embarrassed about something like that for the first time, so turned and ran off the coach, keeping everyone waiting, until I reappeared wearing jeans. I was 10. I refused to wear those shorts again after that, though my younger brother inherited them 4 years later when he was the same age. It would have been into the 70s by then, by which time I think kids wore shorts of a shorter style. It seems I was just ahead of my time!