“The Curious Decline of Communal Showers”: This Blog’s Comments on a Video Essay
For this post, I want to highlight a brilliant video I saw during last week. This video relates to an increasingly frequent topic - the phenomenon of everyday nudity.
This video was posted in August 2016 by American youtuber “lengthyounarther”, and is entitled “The Curious Decline of Communal Showers”. The poster is “gay” identified, a fact that he acknowledges very early in his video. He thinks it makes him biased, when in reality, he’s no more biased than most other men.
The poster grew up during the decline of mass communal showering. In his youth, he knew the ubiquity of mass communal showering, though he didn’t personally experience it until his teens, when he went to Boy Scout camp. In his adulthood, he experienced the current taboo of everyday nudity among the young, and what effects it’s having on them. Because he has seen both worlds, his viewpoint makes him a valuable and authoritative source on this issue.
Before I go further, I must stress that I’m making no comment on the rest of his videos. I neither endorse them nor condemn them. I’m limiting my commentary to this one excellent video.
Below is the video in question. Please watch it in full. The whole video runs 31 minutes, but I guarantee that it will be worth every second. The poster put up an intelligent, perceptive and provocative commentary that should be viewed by everyone.
These are some main points I wish to highlight:
He notes an age difference about who gets naked in the locker room. As this blog noted in the past, older men are much less inhibited about getting naked. This is because, owing to past attitudes, these men had no qualms about getting naked when they were younger.
He notes that some microcultures in the U.S. still practice communal nudity. However, they are usually environments hidden from the general public - the military, certain gyms, sports, private schools, etc.
He notes that both “gay” and “straight” people are equally terrified of everyday nudity. In fact, according to him, “gay” people are actually far more scared of this practice. Interestingly, for both groups, their apprehension is caused by the central tenet of modern sexual philosophy - that same-sex eroticism is inherently abnormal and aberrant. “Straights” are afraid of it because the practice is too “gay”. “Gays” are afraid of it because it might expose their sexuality, which they feel insecure about. Doesn’t this show that nobody wins in the “Straight”-”Gay” dichotomy?
He notes that communal showering contains a social element that is highly appealing. It encourages closeness among males that can be relaxing and refreshing. He says further that it’s good for body image, saying it’s hard to be “jealous when you’re just out in the open seeing everybody else.” It also establishes an egalitarianism that’s hard to see elsewhere in society.
He realized that his fear of communal showering was much ado about nothing. In Boy Scouts camp, his “straight” friends pressured him to join them in the communal showers. Once he got a taste, he couldn’t get enough. Communal showering immediately became an enjoyable experience to eagerly anticipate. While at camp, he went from being in communal showers once a week to being there once a day. When it came to communal showering, the only thing to fear was fear itself.
He notes that the United States is unique in its prudishness about communal nudity. When he visited Iceland, he noticed that no one there had qualms about same-sex nudity, whether they were natives or visitors. Old and young freely got naked. The only ones who raised a fuss were, in most cases, tourists from the U.S.
There is one aspect I must disagree with him on. One argument he makes is that communal showering usually isn’t homoerotic, so there’s no reason to fear it. To me, there is definitely homoeroticism infused into communal showering, and inside everyday nudity in general. It’s just a different kind of homoeroticism that the “gay” world cannot comprehend.
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