I agree with some of what you say Jock… but I’d disagree about the reason communal nudity declined.
In my generation, young men did not casually get naked. There were no after PE showers or anything like that. The only time there was communal nudity was when it was unavoidable… and then it was still often avoided.
So the change happened a lot earlier than the internet. Perhaps you could make the argument that the onset of porn available in the home on TV and video…. But personally I think the shift happened as culture became
More overtly sexualized.
Men, in general, do not like themselves to be viewed as “sex objects” except on their own terms. (And, in terms of the traditional ear I grew up in, by women.) and single sex spaces (such as swimming) disappeared and popular culture became more specialized, nudity—even if it was a single sex space—became more sexualized.
The older generation that didn’t have a specialized view of nudity were thought of as my generation as somewhat creepy. WHY are they insistent of standing nude in the locker room and shaving when they could just get dressed? Must be because nudity WAS the point…. Ned therefore creepy.
This went somewhat hand in hand with a “no homo” thinking. Since nudity was by nature sexual, then the only reason anyone would care if there WASNT nudity must was that as a sexual object. So no one had any social incentive to challenge it.
Perhaps a byproduct of this was that men’s self impression got skewed. Certainly men don’t want to seem weaker or different in that context. (Again, I’m generalizing here about male perspectives.) and the further their self appraisal got form their impression of “normal”, the more incentive for modesty.
As someone who finds the psychology of size in men interesting, it’s why the “college wrestlers in singlets” thread is interesting. Because there are the macho athletes who, even though modestly is fully entrenched, still get photographed with their VPL on full display. And many of them seem very small relative to the social norm. So it’s a complete 180 from how most men behave these days.
