Author:
jean the frenchie ( happy)
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Date Posted: Friday, December 19, 2025, 10:55: am
In reply to:
James
's message, "Re: physical exams required for school or sports" on Monday, December 15, 2025, 12:10: am
To "James "
I an born and have been raised and I live in France
My knowledge of what happened in other countries is only due to dicussions on forums or readings on books, neswpapers and so on.
For instance, I don't know really how it was in England but I can have an idea since I have read often similar relations than that of your country about the rule of swimmming in the nude for boys at school in a recent past.
You say that the european seems to have a more lax way of viewing nudity compared to the United States, I am not sure that it is true.
In France or Italia or Spain, I have never read or heard anything about swimming in the nude for boys at schools or summer camps.
Of course, much more years ago, until begining of the 20th, the nudity was common on beaches as we can see in some paintings, at least for young men, even male teenagers (at that time the teenagehood was not recognized, you were a child until teenagehood and after you were an adult.)
I presume that in France the nudity of young men was during a long time considered as more normal than that of girls, the disrespect of privacy and modesty of boys or even young men was not a big deal except if it was considered as offensive by women.
There was also a long tradition of nudity for draftees at the physical examinations for military service to decide of their fitness after 18 age, and the set ut of the exams was very similar in many countries with public nudity in front of doctors and a draft board commission composed of many persons who were not medic persons but it was normally in a complete male environment ( there could be a few exceptions of course and may be more in other countries than France, but I doubt that the presence of women as part of the medical staff or observers was common in a western country )
For the same reasons, the nudity at mandatory school physical examinations, or for summer camps, or for sports, or for entrance in apprenticeship was rather common until the middle of 60 's, and that time very often with a female medical staff and sometimes also administrative women like secretaries to check identity or take notes on forms.
So you can consider that we were less prude at least for males at occidental countries than in the United States but I am not sure that it is true, since I have read on discussions many relations of physical examinations of boys in different situations who were not different in the United States.
What surprises me much is that we have never appied in France the rule of swimming in the nude for boy's students at school despite the fact that until the middle of the 60's we had no mixed schools in France, so it would have beeen easy to decide of that rule and we were generally following the ways of life which prevailed in Unted States but I presume that the french authorities did not know it(it was not like today for informations ), since it was not spread in all the united States but only in some states.
If they had known it,I am quite sure that they would have decided to do the same.
As regards the old messages, unfortunately, I am like you, I do not know what we must do to find them again, I have not understood why the discussions have been suppressed, it was so easy to suppress only the messages which were injurious or with forbidden situations or ideas.
I remember also of a post of a lady who had been when young an observer of the procedure of entrance in a home for waywardboys and that she was telling that she had seen all the examinations of boys even pre-teenagers whi was performed in the nude in public.
I don't know in first hand how it was carried on in France for such situations in the past but I have ready seen some similar situtions at boardind schools in movies and read in books that the boys were standing in line naked for showering and physical examinations in front of female nurses and possibly members of the administrative staff.
So I believe that the rellation in her message was true.
Sorry to not be able to help you for the old messages
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