Swimming Nude in America

  I was jumping around the Internet and I found a site about the old days in the United States.  It was a site about swimming nude at the YMCA.  That got me to remembering when I was a kid and my mom took me over to my cousin Bill's house.  I was going to spend the night at his house.  His mother told me he was not home and that he was over at the YMCA swimming.  She said I should go over and join him.  I told her I did not have a swim suit and she told me that I did not need one because the swimming pool was for nude swimming.  I could not believe it.
  I headed over to the YMCA but met Billy on his way home.  I asked him about the nude swimming and he said yes you had to be nude and they did not allow swim suits.
  Billy and his family were poor.  There was no YMCA in my part of town.  I was thinking that because the kids were poor that the YMCA had a nude swimming pool.
  I forgot all about it until I was reading on the Internet today.

  I think I was about 10 years old at the time I heard about nude swimming at the YMCA.  All these years I been thinking that a YMCA, because kids were poor, had nude swimming.  From reading the site I now see that it was at all the YMCA sites and that it was common for boys to swim nude in the old days.
  It was common for men to swim nude until the late 1960s at many places. 

 

"...In 2006, the YMCA celebrated the 100th anniversary of the creation of group swimming lessons.

In the mid-20th century, it was not unusual for participants in YMCA programs to swim in the nude. One reason cited was that the cotton or even older wool swimsuits would clog up the filtration system. Another reason was dirt and soap would be released into the pool from the fibers of swim wear. Filtration systems used in swimming pools were not as advanced as they are today, and far less chlorine was used making it easier, in those days, to degrade the cleanliness of the water thereby promoting the growth of bacteria. Females were never allowed to be present in such a setting..."  Wikipedia

  It is odd that for so many years and so many places boys and men would swim nude and the world did not come to an end.  There was a major change to our way of thinking at some point.
 

  Things have changed in the United States.  These two photos are from:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/YMCAnaked/

  No information on the photos.