The Slate published these musings:

Locker room nudity is healthy and normal. Fear of it is irrational.

I am all for the freedom of choice, and I am sure that no one will even try to stop the gym/fitness industry from building new locker rooms that would grant more privacy to its members. Their business- they should be calling the shots.

Essentially, like every other service provider, the gyms, too are trying to throw in as much as possible to somehow 'justify' the rates they are charging. The game has been going on for while now, and it IS getting a bit tired with the consumers, too.

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The part where I do not quite see the things in the same manner as the Slate author does is this one:

True, schools are neither prisons nor army barracks, and should not be FORCING their students to do anything that they expressly do not want to do. Yet, good educators will try to help each and every kid who upon reaching a certain age still has issues with using group showers and locker rooms to overcome.

Growing comfortable with your changing body IN PRIVATE is not a workable strategy as much as learning how to swim on dry land really does not work, despite many valiant attempts to do so.

You really have no other option but to be comfortable with your body in private. You do not have choice a different bodies that you can use to increase your comfort levels, do you?

The whole idea is to be comfortable with your body if surrounded by your peers. By locking yourself away from them, the chances are that you'll never really get there.

Reaching the age of 6 and HAVING TO go to school is very scary. Having to do your homework and pass the tests, and be possibly one of the less popular/successful kids in the class is VERY SCARY, too. If you adopt this point of view, practically every aspect of your life becomes scary to quite some extent. The chances are that if you keep nurturing this paranoid side of your personality, sooner rather than later, EVERYTHING will turn out to be scary albeit, to various degrees.

My buddies and I grew up with the clear cut idea that we should be going to school in September of that year like all the other kids did. We were told in clear and honest terms that we may not really like it, that school meant all sorts of hardships but that it was both inevitable, and the only way for us to become productive adults.

At some point in time, we all ended up changing in common locker rooms, taking group showers, and some guys had more problems with it than the others. The few dudes who were on the shy side got quite a bit of help and support from their school buddies and friends, and couple of days into the process, all the shyness simply disappeared.

From there on, most of us started growing up in the locker rooms of various sport clubs we belonged to, and on the nude beaches we frequented in summer.

By the time we reached the age of consent, most guys knew all the facts of life only too well. Yup. Some dudes were bigger than the others. Some dudes were more athletic than the others. Some dudes were more open to the play than the others. Nothing was written in stone, and basically, no one out there was spending his life hating you and wishing you evil. If asked for help, most dudes would lend you a hand. Nope, you were not the center of the known universe but a group of your good buddies around you mattered.

Growing pains are inflicted upon people for a reason. I am the last one here to support any undue brutality, hazing or any nonsense of any kind. But trying to accommodate for normal human insecurities at each and every turn of the way is highly counterproductive.

Educating young guys, and preparing them from the challenges that lie ahead within an acceptable framework seem to work so much better.

KD

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