Since few swimmers in these neighborhoods could afford swimsuits or wanted to wear them, nudity among males was taken for granted. Building indoor pools, and the addition of pools to bathhouses, was done to address this problem. As the quality of urban river water declined, floating baths became a source of infection. In addition to health and hygiene, they were intended to prevent drowning in the open river, which was a frequent occurrence. A generation later, nude swimming in public pools as a widespread practice was forgotten, and in the 21st century sometimes denied having existed.įloating Bath at The Battery, New York City, 1908īeginning in 1870, the first public pools in New York City were outdoor "floating baths" of wood surrounded by docks that allowed river water to flow through them. After the passage of Title IX in 1972, requiring gender equality in physical education, most schools found coed use of swimming pools to be the easiest means of compliance. In the 1960s, indoor pools also started to become recreational with mixed-sex usage, which ended nude swimming at individual pools. Recreational swimming had been an activity for the warm months in outdoor pools or open water. As with other physical education activities, swimming was gender-segregated. As the century continued, more indoor pools were built by local governments and schools, primarily in northern states, to provide year-round swimming as a sport. Because indoor pools were generally male only, the health of swimmers could be monitored most easily by forbidding swimsuits, which often were a source of contamination, while female swimmers wore suits that were more hygienic. During the early developmental stages of filtration and chlorination, behavioral measures were also needed to keep the water clean. Īt the beginning of the 20th century, the primary reason given for nudity by officials was for public health, swimming pools being prone to contamination by water-borne diseases. Pre-pubescent boys might be nude in mixed-gender settings, including the presence of female staff during class, public competitions, and open houses for families. In their own classes, nudity was rare for girls based upon an assumption of modesty, but might include young children. For the first decades of the 20th century, male nude swimming was associated with a trope of the "old swimming hole" as representing childhood innocence and adult masculinity. The tradition of skinny-dipping in secluded spots had become more visible with urbanization, and pools were a means of separating swimmers from public view. Male nude swimming had been customary in natural bodies of water since the 18th century. Forty-two Kids by George Bellows (1907) depicting boys swimming from a pier in the East River, New York Cityįor almost a century in the United States, men and boys swam nude in indoor swimming pools, generally for education or athletics.
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