Mixed locker rooms and board shorts

[Bede735]

After recently moving house, I use a different local pool, which has different changing facilities to my previous one. The previous one had separate male and female locker rooms - the new one is mixed. Basically everyone gets a cubicle - but there is a greater area where men and women mingle - such as beside your locker or the shared shower room etc.

I'm led to believe most pools have this arrangement now, which I feel causes more men to wear board shorts, because women will see them more in their swimwear than if the locker rooms were separate.

Personally I'm not bothered...

[ReservedEnthusiast]

Gosh, I don't think I'd feel as comfortable in there in general. At least there are still cubicles! I've never encountered a locker room like that yet.

[Torchwatch]

These mixed locker rooms are called Changing Villages. When they started to be installed in new pools there was a problem of people drilling holes in the walls to view the person in the next cubicle.
Being 6'2" I find the cubicles too small and would far prefer the old style changing rooms with lockers around the walls and benches and coat hooks in the middle.
Although there are family changing room in the village (which are also used by schools and teams) if you arrive to swim with a few friends you all have to disappear into the personal cubicles to get changed.

In the old Victorian pool that was demolished in the 1970's there were cubicles down the length of the pool, men one side, women the other. At the shallow end of the pool was the clothing store, you collected a basket on arrival, queued to exchange it for a numbered rubber wrist band, and queued again to retrieve your clothes when you wanted to leave.

[Bede735]

Originally Posted by Torchwatch

These mixed locker rooms are called Changing Villages. When they started to be installed in new pools there was a problem of people drilling holes in the walls to view the person in the next cubicle.

Now I suppose they use their mobile phone video camera....

[PSDave]

Originally Posted by Bede735

After recently moving house, I use a different local pool, which has different changing facilities to my previous one. The previous one had separate male and female locker rooms - the new one is mixed. Basically everyone gets a cubicle - but there is a greater area where men and women mingle - such as beside your locker or the shared shower room etc.

I'm led to believe most pools have this arrangement now, which I feel causes more men to wear board shorts, because women will see them more in their swimwear than if the locker rooms were separate.

Personally I'm not bothered...

I don't understand. Why would guys switch to board shorts. If everyone is dressing in a cubicle, what difference does it make? And, again, why are you concerned about what other guys are swimming in?

[Bede735]

As explained, you have to put your clothes in a locker when women are standing next to you, and you also share a shower room with them. I can imagine a lot of guys would be uncomfortable with that.

I'm not duly concerned what they are swimming in, but theorising why that mode of male swimwear has become the norm.

[Torchwatch]

In the UK in the late 1980's there was a sudden fashion for loose fitting boxer shorts as underwear. These cheaply made and printed boxer shorts replaced cotton briefs that most men and boys then wore at that time. The boxer shorts were actually longer than the nylon football (soccer) shorts then in use and football players would either show a couple of inches of boxer short hem below their football shorts or would pull their football shorts down to hide their underwear. If a footballer sat down a viewer in the right position could look up both the football and boxer shorts to see the footballers private parts.
Football and other shorts became longer to hide the boxer shorts below and to stop people from looking up the wearers shorts.
There was a fashion for wearing long white shorts over black speedos, so the speedos could be seen when wet, then coloured and patterned long shorts became the norm for leisure swimming.
The current underwear preference is for boxer briefs, a cut similar to the square cut swim suit. Shorts are gradually getting shorter as their is less underwear to hide and the well placed viewer can't see up one's shorts.

Mixed Changing Villages with tiny cubicles are a pain but they don't really affect ones choice of swimwear.

[Schoolspeedo]

Originally Posted by Torchwatch

In the UK in the late 1980's there was a sudden fashion for loose fitting boxer shorts as underwear. These cheaply made and printed boxer shorts replaced cotton briefs that most men and boys then wore at that time. The boxer shorts were actually longer than the nylon football (soccer) shorts then in use and football players would either show a couple of inches of boxer short hem below their football shorts or would pull their football shorts down to hide their underwear. If a footballer sat down a viewer in the right position could look up both the football and boxer shorts to see the footballers private parts.
Football and other shorts became longer to hide the boxer shorts below and to stop people from looking up the wearers shorts.
There was a fashion for wearing long white shorts over black speedos, so the speedos could be seen when wet, then coloured and patterned long shorts became the norm for leisure swimming.
The current underwear preference is for boxer briefs, a cut similar to the square cut swim suit. Shorts are gradually getting shorter as their is less underwear to hide and the well placed viewer can't see up one's shorts.

Mixed Changing Villages with tiny cubicles are a pain but they don't really affect ones choice of swimwear.

I agree that boxer shorts are less evident with the trunks being more evident for mens underwear. I have no issue with mixer hanging rooms having encountered them in Europe and certainly wouldn't change my choice of very brief speedo bikinis.