Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

OwlFancier posted:

How does America handle changing rooms at gyms/swimming pools?

They're communal here with a few cubicles for people who aren't comfortable with it.
American media tells me they handle it through extremely homoerotic encounters.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

AARO posted:

In the 1960's and before, not only did people of the same sex shower and change together but they were often forced to swim nude in school. The classes were divided by sex and often the boys, and sometimes the girls, were made to swim nude by their swim teachers. This would obviously be unthinkable today and a teacher who suggested it would probably be arrested. Did no one care back then? How did this take place?

The swim teacher was a chester.

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

You keep the underwear on and let it be gross until you get home. Or, if you live within walking distance like I do, you change at home.

And you never, ever go into pools.

TomViolence
Feb 19, 2013

PLEASE ASK ABOUT MY 80,000 WORD WALLACE AND GROMIT SLASH FICTION. PLEASE.

Maybe if Americans had a bit more of a free body culture they wouldn't all be gross fatties on rascal scooters.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
Same thing in middle and high school here in Canada, but I haven't seen anyone being particularly "shy" in change rooms at pools or gyms. Steam rooms/saunas generally require a towel, though.

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

AARO posted:

Yet in many European countries they have nude beaches. Germany has nude public parks.
I just moved to Germany and yeah people don't really care as much about nudity here. Like my son (4) goes to a nature kindergarten that exists in a large public park in the city, and after school a couple of the kids were playing in the mud and eventually just took off all their clothes while playing and nobody cared. Basically impossible to imagine this occurring in the states.

edit: also the changing room/shower area at the Google office here in Munich is unisex, although I'm unsure how much of the reason for that is different cultural standards and how much of it is just wanting to be more space-efficient.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Sep 25, 2016

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

Cicero posted:

I just moved to Germany and yeah people don't really care as much about nudity here. Like my son (4) goes to a nature kindergarten that exists in a large public park in the city, and after school a couple of the kids were playing in the mud and eventually just took off all their clothes while playing and nobody cared. Basically impossible to imagine this occurring in the states.

Have you ever read Brave New World?

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.
A long time ago yeah.

rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy
America is unusually religious for a developed country, so I can't help but think that's partly to blame. Maybe the fact that continental Europe is mostly Catholic, and the anglosphere is mostly protestant? Though that's probably reaching.

BabyFur Denny
Mar 18, 2003

Waffles Inc. posted:

for whatever it's worth, i graduated high school in 2006 in USA midwest and at no point at any level of my education did anyone of either gender use a shower after PE; there was absolutely a social pressure to not. if someone were to strip nude and shower they would absolutely be shunned and everyone would be weirded out

at the university gym i go to there is absolutely a generational divide with nudity; older dudes walk to/from the showers without a towel at a much much much much higher rate than younger folks. younger guys will put the towel on their waist and take off their underwear underneath it, and the older the guy the more likely they are to just let it hang free

i don't think it's controversial to say that previous generations seem to be more comfortable with same gender nudity, the question i think OP is asking is why that is
So you just walk around in all that sports stank for the rest of your school day? You Americans are absolutely disgusting. Ever heard of body hygiene?

At the nude beaches here you usually see the older people giving less of a fuss about letting their body parts swing around freely, but I think it's less a generational and more of an age thing. Once today's kids are 70 years old they're probably be the same. At some point you're old enough to not have to give a gently caress about appearances any more.


rudatron posted:

America is unusually religious for a developed country, so I can't help but think that's partly to blame. Maybe the fact that continental Europe is mostly Catholic, and the anglosphere is mostly protestant? Though that's probably reaching.

In Germany it is the atheist eastern part where free body culture was promoted heavily during the socialist regime. So I don't think Catholicism plays into that.

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe
This might have been a reasonable debate to have a few years ago, but now it's a stalking horse for Europeans to bully Muslims for dressing modestly at the beach, so we have to put it on hold for a few decades.

Ragnar34
Oct 10, 2007

Lipstick Apathy
The human cock is Satan's gearshift.

TheImmigrant
Jan 18, 2011
I'm American, and unafraid of nudity. I shower most mornings, naked, with other people at my gym. Sometimes I go to the nude beach on Assateague Island, over in Maryland. I've been naked, with many other Americans, on Fire Island. I watch American movies depicting nudity. I have sex, naked usually, with another American.

This one is like "French people stink of garlic" or "Spanish people eat lots of tacos." - harmless stereotypes held by unsophisticated people.

Waffles Inc.
Jan 20, 2005

BabyFur Denny posted:

So you just walk around in all that sports stank for the rest of your school day? You Americans are absolutely disgusting. Ever heard of body hygiene?

It actually had the effect of making sure people never really exerted themselves in PE

spacetoaster
Feb 10, 2014

doverhog posted:

The culture war waged by the Republicans, and the rise of Jesus freaks. Also America doesn't have a healthy sauna culture so they are vulnerable to this kind thing.

There were no Jesus freaks before 1980?

Also, what's your definition for Jesus freaks? Is it just Christians or is it some special group that came into existence in the 80's?

Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat
The topic is something most Europeans and Brits recognise if they visit the US. A film in the US that showed as much skin as say a Danish TV advert would be a 16 or 18 rating. By the same token though a film with a level of violence or gunplay that americans feel ok for children would get the 16 or 18 cert over here.
Britain has moved a lot towards nudity acceptance just in my lifetime and is healthier for it.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

spacetoaster posted:

There were no Jesus freaks before 1980?

Also, what's your definition for Jesus freaks? Is it just Christians or is it some special group that came into existence in the 80's?

Well, that was before godless liberals made it legal to tell kids what "gay" is and illegal to beat it out of them, but now we have to worry about people catching a glimpse of a naked person of their own gender and doing a sex with them.

[/sarcasm]

I think it's probably related to ill-considered anti-bullying efforts. There was presumably a lot of dick-size-related bullying going on, and instead of teaching kids about their bodies and to not be assholes, clearly the right solution is to forbid proper hygiene and eliminate the source of the problem is the first place!

I'm pretty sure we didn't even have functional showers in junior high or high school, and certainly we wouldn't have had time to use them and get to the next class on time. It seems really, really loving disgusting now that I think about it, but at the time it was just normal.

doverhog
May 31, 2013

Defender of democracy and human rights 🇺🇦

spacetoaster posted:

There were no Jesus freaks before 1980?

Also, what's your definition for Jesus freaks? Is it just Christians or is it some special group that came into existence in the 80's?



Evangelicals, specifically in the context of the political right.

TheImmigrant
Jan 18, 2011

Ratzap posted:

The topic is something most Europeans and Brits recognise if they visit the US. A film in the US that showed as much skin as say a Danish TV advert would be a 16 or 18 rating. By the same token though a film with a level of violence or gunplay that americans feel ok for children would get the 16 or 18 cert over here.
Britain has moved a lot towards nudity acceptance just in my lifetime and is healthier for it.

I don't recognize any terror. Sure, continental European TV has more nudity than American or Canadian TV, both of which show far more skin than Egyptian or Thai or Chilean TV. No terror of nudity though.

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

Ratzap posted:

The topic is something most Europeans and Brits recognise if they visit the US. A film in the US that showed as much skin as say a Danish TV advert would be a 16 or 18 rating. By the same token though a film with a level of violence or gunplay that americans feel ok for children would get the 16 or 18 cert over here.
Britain has moved a lot towards nudity acceptance just in my lifetime and is healthier for it.

This seems outdated, there's a lot more nudity now on TV with prestige cable shows everyone watches.

Ofc watching beautiful actors be nude is fine. Why would you want to surrounded by ugly Europeen everywhere? I hope the Muslims bring decency to Europe tbh.

A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

Mantis42 posted:

This seems outdated, there's a lot more nudity now on TV with prestige cable shows everyone watches.
Who is everyone? Kids too?

spacetoaster
Feb 10, 2014

doverhog posted:

Evangelicals, specifically in the context of the political right.

Evangelicals are a couple hundred years old. The OP was specifically talking about recent history.

We used to swim naked and not think anything of it not long ago and evangelical christians in eastern europe swim/wash their cars/bbq in outfits (or lack there of) that would be highly unacceptable in the U.S.

Perhaps it's just a regional thing? Maybe with the advent of the 24 hour news cycle, cable TV, the internet everybody thinks there's a child molester/rapist/pervert around every corner?

I would imagine the sensational cases from the 80's might also have had an effect.

The McMartin preschool trial comes to mind.

owDAWG
May 18, 2008
2 Things.

1. America became ground zero for the obesity epidemic due to the amount of misinformation about weight loss and processed foods which on a side note makes the processed food and diet supplement industry billions. This has lead to our culture to stigmatize a large percentage of our population as "disgusting fatties" raising a great deal of self consciousness about our own bodies; not only being naked but also going out in public for fear of being judged.

2. The Christian Fundamentalist movement in the US tends to portray any open displays of sexuality as sinful and immoral. This mentality pervades our public institutions which enforce doctrine based on these beliefs not only in our schools in sexual education and the fact that any open display of sexual organs outside of your own home will be severely punished by our criminal justice system.

tsa
Feb 3, 2014

TomViolence posted:

Maybe if Americans had a bit more of a free body culture they wouldn't all be gross fatties on rascal scooters.

America having a (slightly) higher obesity than other western countries is basically entirely due to poverty.

e: and southern "cuisine"

tsa fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Sep 25, 2016

Preem Palver
Jul 5, 2007

spacetoaster posted:

Evangelicals are a couple hundred years old. The OP was specifically talking about recent history.

Evangelicals being very politically active, generally along single-issue lines, such as opposition to LGBT rights or access to abortions, started in the late 70s when the Republican Party reached out to white evangelicals to garner voters in response to Roe v. Wade and the general advancement of minority and women's rights in the 60s and 70s. Before that, they were more evenly split between the parties or just didn't vote because they focused on their church and local community rather than government. This Republican outreach to evangelicals and the rise of the religious right is one of the largest factors in the batshit insanity that is American politics today, sparking the overall rightward shift of American politics witnessed over the past 35 years.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

tsa posted:

America having a (slightly) higher obesity than other western countries is basically entirely due to poverty.

e: and southern "cuisine"

What's inherently wrong with southern cuisine? It's delicious and, just like plenty of other great cuisines, is fine when you balance portion size and activity levels. The real issue is that, like Mexican cuisine, it originated for people who do a fuckload of physical work during the day, and as that doesn't happen as much any more, obesity rates increase.

It's also irrelevant to the nudity issue. Plenty of fat/obese people go nude in Europe and elsewhere without a huge feeling of shame. Also: they're more of an outlier than a fat person would be in the US!

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Who is everyone? Kids too?

You're really fixated on kids being exposed to nudity.

spacetoaster
Feb 10, 2014

Preem Palver posted:

Evangelicals being very politically active, generally along single-issue lines, such as opposition to LGBT rights or access to abortions, started in the late 70s when the Republican Party reached out to white evangelicals to garner voters in response to Roe v. Wade and the general advancement of minority and women's rights in the 60s and 70s. Before that, they were more evenly split between the parties or just didn't vote because they focused on their church and local community rather than government. This Republican outreach to evangelicals and the rise of the religious right is one of the largest factors in the batshit insanity that is American politics today, sparking the overall rightward shift of American politics witnessed over the past 35 years.

Maybe. But I don't think they're the main reason some people have such an issue with public nudity.

And exactly what kind of nudity we talking about here? Just at beaches? Because there are lot's of "pretty close to nude" people there and I really haven't seen it drop off since the 80's. It seems to have increased dramatically.

Thesaurasaurus
Feb 15, 2010

"Send in Boxbot!"

PT6A posted:

What's inherently wrong with southern cuisine? It's delicious and, just like plenty of other great cuisines, is fine when you balance portion size and activity levels. The real issue is that, like Mexican cuisine, it originated for people who do a fuckload of physical work during the day, and as that doesn't happen as much any more, obesity rates increase.

It's also irrelevant to the nudity issue. Plenty of fat/obese people go nude in Europe and elsewhere without a huge feeling of shame. Also: they're more of an outlier than a fat person would be in the US!

I think "Southern" here mostly means "White Planter", ie massive quantities of flour, sugar, and animal fats with every meal. Vegetables are fodder for poors, negroes, and other beasts of burden, and for a landed white to eat one is surely a sign of poor racial hygiene, or perhaps even *gasp* Yankee sympathies.

(No really, planter-aristocracy diets were unbalanced as gently caress; coupled with a stalwart belief that manual labor was beneath their dignity, obesity and related conditions were rampant.)

spacetoaster
Feb 10, 2014

Thesaurasaurus posted:

I think "Southern" here mostly means "White Planter", ie massive quantities of flour, sugar, and animal fats with every meal. Vegetables are fodder for poors, negroes, and other beasts of burden, and for a landed white to eat one is surely a sign of poor racial hygiene, or perhaps even *gasp* Yankee sympathies.

(No really, planter-aristocracy diets were unbalanced as gently caress; coupled with a stalwart belief that manual labor was beneath their dignity, obesity and related conditions were rampant.)

Are you saying you think southern whites were/are not poor?

Bip Roberts
Mar 29, 2005
I don't think making sweet tea supersaturated with sugar is a relic of the agrarian past.

TheImmigrant
Jan 18, 2011

Bip Roberts posted:

I don't think making sweet tea supersaturated with sugar is a relic of the agrarian past.

Nor is using butter and bacon fat as staple ingredients.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
Look at Spain or France: they use tons of butter, animal fat, as well as other fats, as staples. One traditional Andalusian breakfast is seasoned pork fat on toast. Or fried dough dipped in chocolate. Even proper traditional gazpacho is full of fat in the form of olive oil. French cuisine uses lots of butter and cream too.

Fat on its own is not the problem, it's portion size and activity levels.

Edit: which is, again, wholly irrelevant to the issue of why North America is uptight about nudity. If you're in a society where obesity is normalized, you'd theoretically be less ashamed by it.

PT6A fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Sep 25, 2016

GABA ghoul
Oct 29, 2011

Eh, I don't think people in the south are whalelike because they use too much butter in their cooking. It's probably the pizza rolls and sugar water that does that.

Thesaurasaurus
Feb 15, 2010

"Send in Boxbot!"

spacetoaster posted:

Are you saying you think southern whites were/are not poor?

I'm saying that what we think of when we discuss "Southern Cuisine" usually means dishes that originated as white planter comfort foods (biscuits, gravy, fried chicken, pork and related meats, BBQ, cane sugar, high-fat dairy products, etc) but which became far more available and widespread with the advent of industrialized farming. A more-comprehensive definition would include greens, beans, rice, corn, catfish and crawfish, fruits and nuts, and so forth.

PT6A posted:

Fat on its own is not the problem, it's portion size and activity levels.

Edit: which is, again, wholly irrelevant to the issue of why North America is uptight about nudity. If you're in a society where obesity is normalized, you'd theoretically be less ashamed by it.

This is true though. To be clear, I wasn't blaming modern American obesity on Southern cuisine, merely explaining where "Southern Cuisine's" association with being fat and sedentary comes from (pre-war plantation owners, who were often fat and sedentary, but for different socioeconomic reasons than modern-day people who are fat and sedentary, and also largely poor).

Thesaurasaurus fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Sep 25, 2016

Drunkboxer
Jun 30, 2007

Ratzap posted:

The topic is something most Europeans and Brits recognise if they visit the US. A film in the US that showed as much skin as say a Danish TV advert would be a 16 or 18 rating. By the same token though a film with a level of violence or gunplay that americans feel ok for children would get the 16 or 18 cert over here.
Britain has moved a lot towards nudity acceptance just in my lifetime and is healthier for it.

There's a shitload of nudity in everything now. Turn on a tv now and again, grandpa. Also sex scenes are almost always boring as gently caress for some reason. Probably because they're fake and grind the movie to a halt for 5 awkward minutes of actors fake-loving.

Who What Now
Sep 10, 2006

by Azathoth

Thesaurasaurus posted:

I'm saying that what we think of when we discuss "Southern Cuisine" usually means dishes that originated as white planter comfort foods (biscuits, gravy, fried chicken, pork and related meats, BBQ, cane sugar, high-fat dairy products, etc) but which became far more available and widespread with the advent of industrialized farming. A more-comprehensive definition would include greens, beans, rice, corn, catfish and crawfish, fruits and nuts, and so forth.


This is true though. To be clear, I wasn't blaming modern American obesity on "Southern Cuisine," merely explaining where the association with being fat and sedentary comes from (pre-war plantation owners, who were often fat and sedentary, but for different socioeconomic reasons than modern-day people who are fat and sedentary, and also largely poor).

I'm reasonably sure fried chicken was a food for poor blacks who didn't exactly get the best chickens, usually being scrawny and gamey. That's why there's the stereotype of black people loving watermelon and friend chicken, it was the food of the poor.

Armani
Jun 22, 2008

Now it's been 17 summers since I've seen my mother

But every night I see her smile inside my dreams

Leofish posted:

Hang on -- what? Where was this???

The Dark Secret of Swimming Pools (nsfw):
http://thedollop.net/wp/episode-78-smollop/

Admiral Bosch
Apr 19, 2007
Who is Admiral Aken Bosch, and what is that old scoundrel up to?
what's more curious is that this is completely untrue in the american military, at least in the (generally really homoerotic) marine corps

since group showers are a thing in boot camp, you stop giving a gently caress pretty quick, particularly if during some exercise later on you end up staying in a squad bay environment. it's just not that big a deal

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

EndOfTheWorld
Jul 22, 2004

I'm an excellent critic! I automatically know when someone's done a bad job. Before you ask, yes it's a mixed blessing.
Cybernetic Crumb

AARO posted:

No one showered after gym at my school and people who even changed completely (changed into new underwear) were called gay by the other kids.

Fun* fact, it used to be the other way around. Modesty was considered a largely feminine trait. So guys who were shy about showing their dinguses in the locker room were acting like girls.

*not actually fun

  • Locked thread