Prudishness in These United States amongst Guys

At University in the sixties, and in junior high and senior high earlier than that, all shower rooms were one big room, with only shower heads. And we never gave a thought that the others were naked, it is what you had to do to shower and get dressed again. In fact, I don’t even remember giving my fellow grad students a second glance as we talked over the game we had just finished (we played volleyball 6 times a week, with 5 practice sessions and one tournament, and several hand ball games a week). In fact, I saw my fellows nude 6 or 7 times per week, with now not even being able to remember who might have been blessed with a long penis or not. I moved to Europe in 1980 for twenty years, where nudity on sea beaches and on lake beaches is routine, and where fancy hotels in their wave pools and saunas on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights required full nudity or else. And no one would think of allowing anyone to come into a sauna with any clothes on (they would automatically be made to feel ridiculous and they would have had to leave to stop the peer pressure). Only once did someone object, and that was after the Iron Curtain fell, in 1990, a Polish woman objected to me being naked just past 5PM on Saturday (the cut off time for allowing those with clothes to remain), she stormed to the bar, and when explained too that it was now nude time, she stormed out.
I spent a couple of decades in Europe, and it must be only our culture, for nobody gives a damn about privacy as you are undressing. Maybe in prudish Spain, but in Northern Europe, anything goes. Examples follow. At University, my experience in Volleyball got me to be invited in my research group to go volleyballing with them on noon on tuesday over at the medical school nursing building which had a gym. To my surprize, there was only one dressing room, and it was being used for our decidedly mixed group of researchers (even number of guys and gals to make up a team of six on both sides of the net), and bikers going out for a spin in the 1.5 hours we had as a dinner break also used it. Everyone was instantly nude, dressing and finallly showering at the end, and redressing. It did not phase me in the slightest. I have a feeling that our current crop of very prudish young men would have had a fainting spell, just the once, since they obviously would not have come back a second time. The other thing is about my fitness club, where machines were in great supply. It was one big dressing room for the men, with a large opening leading into a shower space with about 8 heads. The attendant was a fully dressed matron who picked up towels etc and kept things tidy, as we sat, walked, showered and dressed fully unclothed. Did not phase anyone. People can get far too prudish by half here in America. This getting used to women in Men's Spaces got me in trouble once back in North Dakota. I needed to go to the john (a one) at my old college, so I walked into the john, wipped it out in front of the woman cleaning without even a thought about it, and she threw her cleaning stuff down and stormed out. God was she mad.
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I echo many of your comments as I am of the same generation brought up in the UK. But even in the UK guys became more inhibitede about carefree nudity. In addition, guys wear baggy trousers and for swimming shorts rather than speedo types. As if even the outline of a penis or balls is indiscreet. Could this be a US influence?

Here in Thailand people can be very embarrassed about bulges and VPLs and often wear underwear under their swimming costumes. I suspect that Western inhibitions about nudity have played a part here.
 

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