The Disappearance of Everyday Nudity

"Undressing, it turned out, was now permitted only in small private stalls-which struck me as odd. This was a gym with a pool, where someone could go directly from a shirts-on locker room to a shirtless swim. But the logic was clear enough: The space had been redesigned as "universal," for people of all genders. The locker room, once a place for casual and normative nudity, had quietly become a place where modesty was expected."

"My Seattle gym is far from the only one to adopt the practice. Though public nakedness isn't completely gone, many of the everyday spots where Americans once encountered unclothed bodies-locker rooms, school showers, public pools, bathhouses-have either vanished or shifted away from collective nudity. In 2017, Athletic Business, a trade publication for sports-facility design and management, reported that communal showers without curtains or dividers had virtually disappeared from new construction."

Locker rooms and other everyday sites of public undressing have shifted toward privacy and modesty. Newly designed facilities favor small private stalls and individual changing areas over open communal spaces. Pools, gyms, school showers and bathhouses increasingly eliminate open showers and encourage separated changing to accommodate diverse genders. Trade publications report that communal showers without dividers have largely disappeared from new construction and that privacy is now a dominant design trend. The cultural norm of acceptable same-sex nudity that persisted for over a century has eroded in recent decades. Common language for nonsexual, routine nudity has diminished alongside its social visibility.

Read at The Atlantic