Swimmers
Until the 1960s, men swam naked when there were no women around, and this included high school and college men's swimming teams. They practiced naked and only wore swimsuits for public competitions.
All these photos except the first are from the LIFE magazine photo archive. None were published in the magazine.
Swim practice at Stanford's Encina Gym in 1930. (Photo from the Stanford Libraries)
University of Michigan swimmers. Photo by William Vandivert, 1938.
These are not swim team members, just University of Michigan medical students playing naked in another pool during a break from studies. Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1950. An eagle-eyed follower of my friend's blog http://www.vintagemusclemen.com recognized the location as the pool in the Michigan Union building.
Yale swimmers hitting the showers. This photo, which has been widely reproduced online but sometimes misidentified, was taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1937.
7 comments:
I have photos of men in actual competition without suits and with females present. Don't know if they are college or high school, or the dates of the competition(s).
I've seen some photos like that, too, but I think that was the exception, not the rule. But practicing naked was commonplace.
Thank you for all your background information and research. Great stuff.
Glad you enjoy it, Dan. For me, the background info is half the fun.
The good old days at the gym with dad my first thought using public showers was to keep the swimming trunks on, he asked me with I was missing a ball and pulled his trunks down and I did the same.
Oh for the good old days when you didn't have to be ashamed to swim in the raw.
I learned to swim at the YMCA in the 1950s when being nude was required for sanitary reasons. It was all normal and natural. Everything was kept sparkling clean.
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