The Supreme Court and nakedness in gym class
Savana Redding is the young woman who was strip-searched by school administrators because she was implicated falsely in some bogus ibuprofen drug distribution scheme at her school when she was 13. You've probably heard about her case, since it's gone to the Supreme Court, but if not, here's a good start, and another. The Court hasn't handed down a verdict as of this posting; it's expected in June.
One line of questioning asked how the strip search compared to changing clothes in gym class. From an article on Bloomberg:
Let me describe the situation in gym class in the three years I was in junior high school, more than 30 years ago. Trigger warning for, well, I don't know what to call it.
You'd head for the shower wrapped in a towel. The gym teachers stood at the entrance of the showers and watched as you took off your towel, walked under each of the shower nozzles on three sides of the shower room, so they could see you from all sides. Then you were finally allowed put on your towel again.
If you didn't get wet enough, you had to go back.
The showers were also really very hot, though if you complained, they always yelled at us "it's just 98 degrees, body temperature, it isn't too hot." Bullshit, showers at home didn't burn my skin like these showers did.
It was like a sick combination of Fear Factor and a naked beauty pageant.
Oh, and showering wasn't optional. You were required to shower unless you were menstruating. They kept track of dates you begged off from showering because of your period, with a chart and a clipboard. If your period came again too soon, or lasted too long, you'd get quizzed on it.
If I believed in a hell I'd wish those teachers into it.
One line of questioning asked how the strip search compared to changing clothes in gym class. From an article on Bloomberg:
Justice Stephen Breyer questioned whether a strip search was necessarily such a traumatic event for students accustomed to changing clothes in front of others for gym class. “Why is this a major thing to say, ‘Strip down to your underclothing’?” Breyer asked. “How bad is this — underclothes?”I have a visceral reaction to this line of reasoning. Not because I think what happened to her is so different from gym class, but in my case, because it was so similar.
That line of questioning drew an objection from Ginsburg, the court’s only woman, who suggested that both Savana and her accuser were subjected to a much more invasive search than they would encounter in the locker room.
“It wasn’t just that they were stripped to their underwear,” Ginsburg said. “They were asked to shake their bra out, to stretch the top of their pants and shake that out.”
Let me describe the situation in gym class in the three years I was in junior high school, more than 30 years ago. Trigger warning for, well, I don't know what to call it.
You'd head for the shower wrapped in a towel. The gym teachers stood at the entrance of the showers and watched as you took off your towel, walked under each of the shower nozzles on three sides of the shower room, so they could see you from all sides. Then you were finally allowed put on your towel again.
If you didn't get wet enough, you had to go back.
The showers were also really very hot, though if you complained, they always yelled at us "it's just 98 degrees, body temperature, it isn't too hot." Bullshit, showers at home didn't burn my skin like these showers did.
It was like a sick combination of Fear Factor and a naked beauty pageant.
Oh, and showering wasn't optional. You were required to shower unless you were menstruating. They kept track of dates you begged off from showering because of your period, with a chart and a clipboard. If your period came again too soon, or lasted too long, you'd get quizzed on it.
If I believed in a hell I'd wish those teachers into it.
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6/25/2010 4:47 AM
annamalai1977 wrote:
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That's absolutely horrendous :(
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Thanks, hexy. It was a long time ago, but it still makes me unhappy to think about it. So I'm very aware of how a young woman forced to expose herself to accusatory authority figures would feel.
In Redding's case I think it's actually worse, as she was alone, singled out. At least us girls had each other to complain to, and while it's sad to think of it as "routine," that's kind of how it became.
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My school district required students to take gym class 5 days a week every week from the 1st grade through the 12th grade and we were required to shower after each and every gym class from the 7th grade through the 12th grade.
The showers were 100% out in the open in the middle of the locker room. They were on polls with 4 shower heads on each poll. The design of the showers meant that you always had one girl facing you from about 3 to 4 feet away, and one girl on each side of you from just a few feet away, not to mention that you were visible to everyone in the locker room while you showered. There was no where to hang a towel, so we had to just walk nude back and forth to and from our lockers.
We were required to spend at least 10 minutes showering. If you tried to stop showering before the 10 minutes was up you were sent right back in again. The gym teacher would always stand there watching everyone shower, and it wasn't uncommon for some of the female teachers that weren't gym teachers to stop in the locker room if it was their lunch break so that they could BS with the gym teacher. And whereas I don't think that any of them were in there for the purpose of staring at us in the nude, it was common for them to occasionally glance over at us in the showers.
When I was in the 10th grade our gym teacher would even shower with us because her next class that she had to teach was a health class, and she didn't want to be sweaty during that class.
The thing that I found to be the most shocking to me was how so many of the girls seemed to revel in strutting around the locker room in the nude. I was very shy, and even though I understood the importance of showering after gym class, I still found it embarrassing anyway. But it seemed like at least half of the girls loved to walk around completely on display to everyone else in the locker room. I never understood why many of the other girls liked to stand around totally nude and chat with their friends?
I can understand why schools required students to shower after gym class, but I will never ever agree with strip searching a child. If someone tried to strip search my child at school there would be hell to pay to put it mildly!
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Janice, thanks for your comment, and sorry it took me so long to approve it.
I guess maybe some of those young women were simply unashamed of their bodies? That might be what some would consider the outgrowth of an ideal society, but it's not this society. It's great that they are comfortable, but if you're not, having to march around like that is demeaning.
When I was a teen I wasn't self-conscious being naked at home among my family, but in a semi-public place like a locker room, I didn't like being exposed.
The setup in that shower was not respectful of girls who want some privacy. Is it too much to ask for a stall, even an open stall?
It also sounds like there's an overly authoritarian element to the setup with the rule requiring a minimum ten minutes in the shower. High school students have reached an age where they can decide how long they need to shower, thank you very much.
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She was strip searched by the school administrators? I have to problems here: the strip search that steps over her legal rights as a free person and the school administrators that don't have the right authorization to do this search... It's outrageous. Please keep us posted on how the trial is going. If that girl ever wants to file a motion for leave to file cross-complaint I would gladly help.
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Haha! Supreme court in a naked class! Just in the title I can't stop laughing.
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