unless they too were photographed nekkid at their colleges back in their own undergrad days!
If it was the norm in those days for those schools, I imagine students would take it no more than a physical exam. It’s good “news” material but hardly a good topic for CC.
If the nude photos were taken in private as part of some physical evaluation, most students probably didn’t give it a second thought.
If they were done in a group setting, some might have been uncomfortable. That’s why I brought up the former custom of male Cornell students doing their swim test nude earlier in the thread. That involved being naked in front of a lot of people, and I wonder whether any of the students of the time were uncomfortable about it. These were my male classmates, and I don’t remember anyone saying that he was uncomfortable, but perhaps it was something a guy wouldn’t have been willing to admit to others.
Better yet, what if it was for medical science? Many of the researchers pursuing data on somatotypes were interested in conditions such as scoliosis.
However, they may have been used to being naked in front of other guys in their high school locker rooms (old style no privacy back then).
Marian, re post #22 – I think nude swimming in all-male environments was more common than you would think. I’ve been told that one reason that the major city clubs gave for not wanting to admit women was that the men could no longer swim nude in the pool. And I believe at least one major club in LA kept the pool area off limits to women for years after women were admitted for that reason. And think of locker rooms generally. I don’t think Cornell’s swimming test was all that unusual.
And, oh, I forgot to mention - I’m pretty sure that the tradition nude swimming was cited by many clubs as a reason to exclude women in the court challenges against the exclusionary policies.
Hillary was in the class of 69 at Wellesley, and they had the legendary “posture photos” taken. I was in the class of 75, and by the time we entered they had been discontinued.
When I started at the U of C as a grad student, for some unknown reason we all had to provide a urine sample. I wondered at the time whether it was part of someone’s research, since there was no rational reason for it otherwise.
Back in the day, most men starting college would already have had to go through a Selective Service System physical examination, which generally involved being naked in a room with lots of other young men for quite some time. And anyone who played sports – which was practically everyone male – had been in open locker rooms and showers. Being naked in a group of peers was not an unusual experience at all for a young man. That’s not to say everyone loved it, or felt completely comfortable, but it was not some weird thing sprung on them when they arrived at college. People’s sense of entitlement about personal boundaries in a context like that is much higher today than it was a couple of generations ago.
I’m not as certain about women’s experience.
It was not the norm for women, and the author of the NYT article noted that while most of the males faces were neitral in expression, many of the women were grimacing in anger or discomfort.
Personally, I learned all about the variety in female bodies in the dressing room at Loehmann’s. 
@Consolation hahaha! I did too!
I hope that both of you are female!
Men were only to be found in the sitting area supplied with Life magazines in the front. At least in the Norwalk store.
Also bored children.
^^^ Same scenario in Dallas. @TomSrOfBoston, yes, female!
LOL at the Loehmann’s comment! I had to work hard to “un-see” some of the things I saw in that dressing room. 
Oh, and I absolutely had “posture pictures” taken at my all women’s college ~1969.
My brother would go swimming at the YMCA with his boy scout troop - naked! I never understood this as they all owned bathing suits for beach swimming, but when they went to the Y they would swim naked unless, of course it was on a Sunday when girls could go to the Y too. It was just a boy thing, I guess. My brother is only 18 months older than I am so it’s not like it was a generational thing.
My BIL likes to go to the JCC where they all walk around naked for hours, take a steam, lounge around the locker room for a while, go in the sauna, etc. They do have to wear suits for the swimming as all the pools are co-ed, but there are many who wear tiny Speedos decades after they shouldn’t. If they ever should have.
^^ But that is voluntary nudity, not mandatory.
Also, some boys, of all ages, just like to, well, brag.
@TomSrOfBoston here’s the story of a student who refused to be photographed–and more:
“In September 1950, Sheldon and his team descended on Seattle, where the University of Washington had agreed to play host to his project. He’d begun taking nude pictures of female freshmen, but something went wrong. One of them told her parents about the practice. The next morning, a battalion of lawyers and university officials stormed Sheldon’s lab, seized every photo of a nude woman, convicted the images of shamefulness and sentenced them to burning. The angry crew then shoveled the incendiary film into an incinerator. A short-lived controversy broke out: Was this a book burning? A witch hunt? Was Professor Sheldon’s nude photography a legitimate scientific investigation into the relationship between physique and temperament, the raw material of serious scholarship? Or just raw material – pornography masquerading as science?”
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/15/magazine/the-great-ivy-league-nude-posture-photo-scandal.html?pagewanted=1
My daughter just started at Mt Holyoke, I sent her the links, telling her she should be glad she didn’t attend 60 years ago.
Oxford had Parson’s Pleasure and Dames Delight as nude bathing places on the local river. Parson’s Pleasure, in particular, appears in literature such as the novels of Edmund Crispin.
@crepes Thanks!
I spoke to a friend who is a Penn alum class of 1961. She never heard of this practice.
I doubt that parents would have flipped out back in the day when the alternative was Vietnam.