Fortunately they’d stopped the posture pictures a few years before I was in school, and AFAIK the students were clothed. But regardless, it had been something that everyone had to do, so it was just accepted as a rite of passage.
I was in a Loehmann’s dressing room one time next to a VERY tall person in VERY large espadrilles and a slip. It became apparent that this customer in the ladies dressing room was not a female.
At my gym back in Europe, the saunas and steamrooms are coed and generally nude. Additionally the showers are gang style (single-sex) showers; one gets over one’s discomfort very quickly. One of the Houses at Harvard had a pool until the late 80’s where nude swimming was not unheard of.
I think this is not the norm for women at all. I think the only time I’ve ever been truly naked in a group of women was during a 60 mi breast cancer walk when we all took showers in a group setting and we all had no choice but to walk around naked. And of course there were women of all shapes and sizes and many survivors with scars.
The only other times were at a Hungarian thermal bath and a Russian bathhouse (where they scrub you and beat you with twigs everywhere) - but when in Rome … Lol.
At my local public high school, I was told that it was common for the male students to swim naked in gym class circa 1960. The female students got to wear bathing suits - BUT THEY HAD TO SHARE THE suits provided by the school.
Yes, I would think that many women in the 1960s would have refused to pose on religious grounds. It is hard to believe that the photos wouldn’t have been diverted for someone’s non-scientific purposes. The universities insist the photos were all destroyed.
This was true at my college, too. I think it had something to do with fibers getting in the swimming pool filters. The suits provided by the schools were made of fabrics that didn’t shed fibers. Other bathing suits might not be.
Unfortunately, the provided suits were exceedingly unflattering to many girls.
I can’t imagine which women attending Seven Sisters colleges, or the equivalent like Pembroke or Penn, would have had it even occur to them that they had religious grounds for refusing to have their pictures taken naked. Very few women who were Orthodox Jews or Muslims attended colleges like that at the time, and Evangelical Christians were hardly a blip on their radar screens. Mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Reform and Conservative Jews . . . I don’t know of any strong, religiously based extreme modesty traditions there. Someone raising religious objections to being photographed nude for scientific purposes would have been regarded as some kind of off-the-charts nut.
Exactly, @JHS
My mom graduated from Smith in '50. I will have to ask her about this.
We have this tendency to think that the “past” was way, WAY more conservative (and religious) than it was.
I think it really varies. The senior crowd that took a water aerobics class at our Y, were very comfortable with their bodies and never bothered to cover up much if at all. The showers have curtains, but there is no changing area with them - everyone just goes back to the benches in the communal locker room. I think the big nudity taboo in this country began in the 50s.
In Germany there was nude sunbathing in the public parks. No one thought anything of it.
I think you’re right - by the time you get to that age, it’s “whatever, I’ve got a body, deal with it.”
“We have this tendency to think that the “past” was way, WAY more conservative (and religious) than it was.”
Romani, if you haven’t read Stephanie Coontz’ book The Way It Never Was, run, don’t walk to the library.
I don’t care what you say. I did have to walk five miles to school in three feet of snow.
Okay, maybe it was more like 4 blocks.
But do you remember how deep three feet of snow is for a fourth grader?