The Origins of Nude Swimming in Illinois Public Schools and Community Pools.

Debunked Myths & Urban Legends. 

Claim - If a boy had an erection, the teacher would make him stand on the diving board with a towel hanging on it.

Truth - By the time a kid got to the diving board, his weenie would have been tiny. Secondly, the towel weighs too much and would never stay in place. Every guy knows this is 100% true.

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Claim - There was a chemical added to the pool water, so if a kid urinates, a red (or you pick a color) stream was visible in the water, so everybody knew who was peeing.

Truth - There is NO chemical that changes color when someone urinates in a swimming pool. Some dyes could cloud, change color, or produce color in response to urine pH levels in the water, but not a stream of color from an individual while peeing in a pool. These chemicals would also be activated by other compounds, producing false positives.

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Claim - Boys swam nude because the teacher(s) were perverts.

Truth - Read the article!

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Swimming pools were introduced in the U.S. by the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in the 1880s. In the following 25 years, those pools became significant sustainable revenue sources. Boys drowning was the second leading cause of death before age 16, after disease. The Y offered organized lessons and taught the fastest stroke possible, verified by the Olympics, the crawl stroke. In that pre-TV era, being the fastest was a big part of social entertainment.

However, in 1906, Edwin Foster, a Northwestern medical school graduate working at a YMCA (a typical situation), tested the water and discovered it was contaminated. This significantly threatened the business income because cholera and typhoid were transmitted through water. These diseases were still causing widespread, fatal epidemics that closed down cities.

In 1906, the standard YMCA pool procedure was to drain and refill the pool once a week. (This actually continued into the 1920s. In one case, in Spartanburg, SC, the 45,000-gallon pool was emptied and refilled twice a week into the 1920s.) In most cases, the men and boys swam naked, just like in rivers and farm ponds.

The YMCA National Council recommended using sand filters, which were known to be effective. What's available in the literature shows that by 1910, the first pool recirculating pump was installed, and by 1913, chlorine chemicals were being added to the water. (The Federal government was just beginning to require chlorination of public water.)

In 1926, the American Public Health Association published the first guidelines for swimming pool management. These guidelines were updated every one to three years, as needed. Those guidelines recommended that males swim separately, take a soap shower, and swim nude. Unadorned, undyed tank suits were recommended for females.

The APHA pool management guidelines were not about nude swimming but sanitary pools, which meant disinfecting the water. Consequently, male nude swimming was recommended in every edition until 1962. When one studies the APHA guidelines and those issued by other states, such as the State of Illinois in 1948, (where they flatly state that sanitation is best preserved if people are separated by gender and swim nude. That came from fourteen of the best swim coaches, sports physicians, sports professors, and water sanitation specialists the State could put on a board.)

Chlorine was challenging to use effectively because pH had to be managed in addition to having enough chlorine to kill bacteria. It was not discovered in 1939 what was called the breakpoint in water chlorination. It was then possible to make chemical tests that pool managers could use. However, WW II intervened, and the equipment for automatic chlorination was unavailable until the late 1940s.

A few months after the U.S. entered WW II, the L-85 Regulation was implemented. This mandated the minimum use of cloth for clothing since it was needed for munitions. It also stopped the sale of home sewing machines. During that time, it became patriotic for men and boys to swim nude. A review of camp archives shows that nude swimming at camp became virtually universal during WW II. However, hygiene and convenience were recognized, and nude swimming at camps continued into the 1960s, beginning to fade in the mid-1950s.

In 1948 and 1956, the Boys Club Operations manual required and recommended that boys swim nude. The YMCA and Boys Club Operations manual both stated it was incumbent upon the boards of directors to abide by the state and American Public Health Association guidelines.

The public school boards responsible for schools with pools also had to abide by the state public health and APHA pool management guidelines. That's why we swam nude in school pools.

By the way, pool filters get clogged with fabric fibers even today. 

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Case-in-point: put a load of shirts in a clothes dryer after cleaning the lint filter. After drying, check how much lint is in the lint filter.

It wasn't until the late 60s or early 70s that nylon suits became widely available. However, the fibers clogging the pool filter were only part of the story. The Public Health officials wanted to avoid telling all swimmers that their swimsuits were probably contaminated by polluted water from their last swim at the beach or outdoor bathing place. As corroboration, recall that they used to have laundry tubs of chemicals you were to drag your suit through and then rinse when you swam at a co-ed city pool.

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Girls were lent swimsuits because pool filters would get clogged with fabric fibers. Secondly, girls' suits were sterilized with safe chemicals that left no residue in the fabric to affect the pool water. Boys were never lent swimsuits. It was swimming nude or bringing your own swimsuit.

The 1948 State of Illinois Public Health Association pool management guidelines State, specifically stated that to preserve female modesty, they could wear unadorned, undyed tank suits after they took a nude soap shower. That's why females wore suits.

Now, as for YMCAs and nude swimming. If one researches this Nation's newspapers, one will find that when YMCAs ran ads for learn-to-swim, it was stated in both the display ad and the reporter's commentary that boys swam nude and only needed to bring a towel. In a few cases, the boys were photographed swimming naked, and the photographs were published in the town newspaper. It was a socially-expected practice since they were men and boys and had nothing to be ashamed of.

By 1962, most Americans lived in the suburbs, and most boys (who did most of the swimming) did not swim in polluted outdoor water but swam in city pools. Automatic chlorination was controllable to adjust for contamination in pools. Medicine had conquered Polio, and the medical profession was confident curative medicines could stop outbreaks of any disease that might be transmitted by pool water. Also, in 1962, there was no public outcry to end male nude swimming and no feminist pressure.

In 1962, the American Public Health Association dropped the nude swimming recommendation because it was no longer needed to preserve public health. This insight is important because it underscores why male nude swimming was recommended and required for more than 50 years. The Y and schools continued nude swimming into the 70s and, in a few schools, into the 80s.

So many people today do not know about the era of nude swimming. After mentioning swimming naked in High School to people in "you won't believe me… but" conversations, people thought it was creepy or that the instructors were pedophiles. Records show a few were good, decent men, but the vast majority of the thousands worked with boys as swimming teachers, coaches, or lifeguards. Naked swimming was just the way it was. It was seldom sprung on the class as a surprise. Typically, the students knew from a year or two before that they would swim naked when they reached that point.

It wasn't an urban legend but a normal part of life in a different and more self-confident time. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.