Getting a break from the daily grind of military life, whether at the front or in training, was a real treat. Here we have some British soldiers running into the sea for a swimming session. A very few have bathing suits, and a few others have small towels that they use to cover strategic parts, so this is mostly a feast for the Bum Brigade. I love the guy chasing a dog across the scene in the last half.
You hear people say "Oh we used to be so much more comfortable with nudity back in my day, back in the (fill in the blank)", but the more of this stuff I see the more convinced I am that attitudes toward nudity varied from individual to individual no matter what the decade. I've read personal accounts of men who say they were absolutely miserable having to get naked for swim class back in the '50s and '60s, and I know younger guys today in our "uptight modern era" who would do it without a second thought. We should all be wary of generalizations.
ReplyDeleteGeneralizations are always risky as there are always exceptions. Most of what we know on the subject of being comfortable with nudity is purely anecdotal, but historical records do indicate that all-male group nudity, mostly while swimming and showering, was more or less expected well into the 1970's. Were some men and boys miserable about it? Absolutely! Many of us, however, just saw it as the norm and were fine with it. I do remember one or two boys in my gym classes in junior high who were terrified, a few who really thought it was wonderful, and a huge group who just shrugged it off. That was in a rural school district where most of us were already quite accustomed to swimming nude as long as no girls were around, so there's that risky generalization thing again.
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