Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 8:19 am Post subject: Re: Any Advice For My Shy Daughter?
Mary Miller wrote:
My daughter is a freshman in High School, when the second half of her curent school year reconviens she will be starting her new gym class.
The gym teacher has a rule that all of the girls have to shower after their gym class everyday. I support that and consider it to be in my daughters best interest to do so.
Most of my daughters friends have told her that they don't have a problem with the idea of showering in the nude in front of each other. My daughter says that she's nervous about the idea of it.
Can anyone give me some advice on how to ease my daughters anxiety over showering in front of her female classmates?
Just tell her that everyone has one, I dont think that anyone should be shy or embarrassed by anything. You could do a strip show in front of your teacher and not be embarrassed now that will be cool.
I agree, in theory, with all the people saying it is a healty thing and it's nothing and the kids should just get on with it.
But, in practice, there's a problem. Bullying.
I was bullied at school - and "shower time" was a time of extra, special, extreme torment - and is still a time where merely raking over the memories can bring tears to my eyes - 30+ years after the event.
The school knew about the bullying - but did SFA about it. At one point there was even a teacher complicit in the bullying.
When schools actually have an effective, fully-functioning stragegy to handle bullying - then it might be OK to force kids in public nudity. Until that happens (and we're nowhere near achieving that right now) then kids should be allowed to shower in privacy if they want to - and I don't a stuff whether private showers cost more to build or maintain - no way can that justify the damage that can be done to kids.
How was bullying going on during showers? Our gym teacher was always in the locker room with us the whole time and she kept a close eye on everyone that we weren't smoking, fighting or getting in any trouble of any kind.
I myself never minded the shower thing and from what I could tell it didn't bother most of the girls, although there was one overweight girl that I know didn't like them.
1) I wasn't overweight. (and if I had been - it would have been even worse - and it still would have been no excuse for what follows)
2) The Teacher stuck their head around the door once, then usually went off to have a fag
3) The bullying was the usual combination of the crude and simplistic
(simple mockery, stealing the shampoo, teasing etc)
Combined with the nasty and calculating (every last blemish and physical characteristic was carefully noted to be exploited later that day, and tomorrrow, and the day after...)
The latter was the real problem. Even if the teacher had been there, they couldn't have prevented this in any way.
Imagine you're doing the normal "looking in the mirror" thing (I think most people do it!):
"Are my wxyz too big/small/wide/narrow etc etc etc ?"
"does my pqrs sag slightly?"
"how noticeable is that mole?"
Now imagine it isn't you asking those questions - but a gaggle of bratts in "evil mode" - and they're not only just asking those "little questions" - but they're answering them too. In the nastiest way possible, especially calculated to lower self esteeem. Over and over and over and over again - whether you want to hear the answers or not. A gaggle of bratts who have knowledge of every part of your body, and aren't afraid to share that intimate knowledge (and their judgement) with every last person, of every age and sex, who happens to be within earshot...
When you allow kids to have a little control over their own modesty - you're giving them a little bit of (useful) power to place some kind of a limit on insidious crap like the above. Giving this little bit of control is in no way an answer to bullying - but it can remove one particular and very nasty manifestation of it.
I was only wondering how the bullying was able to take place since in my case the teacher was always keeping a close eye on all the girls to make sure we weren't causing trouble. I realize that not everyone had the same situation as me.
Also I wasn't trying to suggest that you were overweight, just that in my class there was one overweight girl who I know hated showering in front of the other girls.
I apologize if there was a misunderstanding!
"Sweetcandy07"
The good news if I read corectly is that the girl has told her mother that she is now fine with the showering and she's over any embarrassement?!
Oh boo-hoo, so some girls have to expose their flawless teen bodies for the sake of good hygiene
I'm a 62 year old mother of four. I am fat saggy and covered in stretch marks. All of that and yet I am still able to change in and out of my bathingsuit when surrounded by other women in the locker room.
These teen girls have perfectly firm toned bodies and complain about being nude around each other.
Hell, if they want to switch with me I'll gladly take their perfect body and shower with the girls and they can have my fat body and stretch marks.
Come on, we all had to shower in junior high and high school and it wasn't a problem. If these girls today can go in public wearing the skimpy clothing that they do now then they can certainly take a shower in a girls locker room after their gym period!
I didn't like it either, I was a late developer and worked out a number of ways to avoid showering, I can probably count of one hand the number of times I actually did in the end Oh and I wasn't that stinky because frankly the amount of effort I would put in during gym meant I never so much as broke a sweat
I think the problem is Carol that youth is indeed wasted on the young, in that they (and me when I was that age) are so insecure about things that they are needlessly embarassed, while when you're older and a big droopy and strecth marked you've realised it doesn't matter, that other things are more important.
That said if I could have my pre-pregnancy tummy back (and still have my little one) I'd be delighted! It's a mess.
My High School didn't require showers to be taken by the time I was there, but my mother went to the same High School that I did and they did require showers at that time.
I wonder when and why they stopped requiring showers? It seems that if you were in school in the 80s on back you were required to shower but if you were in High School from the 90's (like me) or more recent then you didn't have too?
To tell you the truth I kind of wish my school had given us enough time in the locker room to be able to have showered.
Surprisingly it wasn't my own nudity that embarrassed me in the showers at schoo, it was the nudity of other girls in my gym classes that embarrassed me.
I guess with my own nudity I figured it's just me and my body so who cares? But it was when one of my friends would be standing at the shower facing me totally nude and she wanted to talk while we showered I felt funny looking at her while we talked.
I would just try to look down at the floor most of the time, but when one of the girls would start talking to me I would have to try to make eye contact, and then at that point no matter how much I tried not to I couldn't help but sometimes let my eyes wander downward a little.
To this day when I go to the gym with my sister-in-law and were showering I don't get embarrassed by her seeing me nude, it's me seeing her nude that is embarrassing to me.
It didn't bother me in the least to see my female classmates nude, it was them seeing me nude that was a little awkward at the begining of my freshman year of High-School. However, I have to agree that that awkwardness goes away really fast and you get used to it.
No doubt there are going to be a couple of people who will disagree with what I'm going to say.
But I must say that I feel that the best thing that a school can do for girls and their self esteem is to require that the girls do shower together in an open shower room
When teen girls shower and change clothes in the company of other females they are able to see with their own eyes that no human has a perfect body, that we all have flaws as well as nice features to our bodies.
The reason that some girls are reluctant to allow themselves to be seen au naturel is because they feel that other girls have perfect bodies but that they themselves have flaws.
In reality as we all know every last person has some flaws if even mild ones. When the girls see that their female friends have some flaws it helps them to realize that they do not have anything to be ashamed of.
Kids may feel a little uneasy the first time they shower or change in a locker room, but as others have mentioned that uneasiness quickly goes away.
It is NOT cruel or unfair to require teen girls to shower together in a locker room, quite the opposite is true in fact It is in fact a true gift to introduce girls to the communal nudity that comes with showering and changing with her peers as this will help build a healty self esteem that will last them a lifetime
And simply as mothers we too can help our daughters to have a healthy outlook about their bodies by our own willingness to be nude amongst other females in public locker rooms, and in the privacy of our own homes when there are not any males present.
Communal nudity with peers of the same sex can help youngsters to build a beautifully healty self asteem that will bring them blessings that will last them well beyond their chilhoods
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If these girls today can go in public wearing the skimpy clothing that they do now then they can certainly take a shower in a girls locker room after their gym period!
