Mixed bathing is the sharing of a pool, beach or other place by swimmers of both genders. Mixed bathing usually refers to swimming or other water-based recreational activities in public or semi-public facilities, such as hotel or holiday resort pool, in a non-sex segregated environment.
In ancient Rome, mixed bathing at public facilities was prohibited at various periods, while commonplace at others. It is also possible that sex-segregated bathing was the rule at some facilities but not at others. [1]
In many parts of the world, mixed bathing was not generally allowed and moral campaigners argued that mixed bathing was immoral or immodest. Women's swimsuits were considered inherently immodest. To avoid the exposure of people in swimsuits, especially to people of the opposite sex, many popular beach resorts were commonly equipped with bathing machines. Legal segregation of beaches ended in Britain in 1901, and the use of the bathing machines declined rapidly. Another measure in the moral campaign was to ban sea bathing altogether or during daylight hours. Australian bathers were only permitted to swim during daylight hours after 1903. Before mixed bathing became culturally accepted from the late-19th century, public bathing, when permitted or practiced at all, was segregated on the basis of gender, using either separate facilities or using some form of divide or by allocation of times for use by men and women.[ citation needed ]
By the 1920s, the public in many Western countries began to flout the ban on mixed bathing in public places such as beaches, and the prohibitions began being repealed. The main objection to the prohibition to mixed bathing was that it prevented families and couples from enjoying the beach together. Following the repeal of bans on mixed bathing, beaches became a popular meeting place and place of recreation, especially for young people, and not necessarily for swimming.[ citation needed ]
It took longer for pools, including public pools, to permit mixed bathing. For example, when Tooting Bec Lido, an open-air pool in South London, opened in 1906, it was segregated by the sexes, with women and girls permitted to use the pool on one morning a week. Mixed bathing was not introduced until 1931, and then only at specified times. At the same time, an "aerator", or fountain, was added to help pump the water round the pool and keep it clean. The main reason given for this act of modernisation was because more women would be swimming there and higher standards of hygiene were apparently needed. Dulwich Public Baths also in South London allowed mixed bathing in 1946. [2] London's Hampstead Heath has three open-air public swimming ponds; one for men, one for women, and one for mixed bathing. The popularity of the swimming pool at the City Baths in Melbourne, Australia increased with the introduction of mixed bathing in 1947. [3] Until YMCA began to admit females in the early 1960s, young men who used their swimming pools were required to swim in the nude. This was regarded as a sanitary measure. When girls were admitted, the wearing of swimsuits became mandatory. Similarly, in some English schools, Manchester Grammar School for example, nude swimming was compulsory until the 1970s. Swimsuits became mandatory when they started admitting girls. [4] This was also the case for some American high schools [5] and junior high schools [6] and in some summer camps.
Although mixed bathing is commonplace today, [7] this was not always the case, [8] and it continues to be illegal or contentious in some parts of the world. In Muslim countries which are re-imposing sharia law, mixed bathing is being banned. For example, after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, it closed down the Crazy Water Park, one of the Gaza Strip's most popular entertainment sites, for allowing mixed bathing. [9] [10] [11] Strict Orthodox Jews, [12] Muslims, and fundamentalist Christians in the Southern United States (e.g., Southwide Baptist Fellowship and Methodist denominations that teach the doctrine of outward holiness, such as the Evangelical Wesleyan Church) do not engage in mixed bathing. [13] [14] Many countries have anti-sex discrimination legislation which extend to the provision of sporting and recreational facilities, including private facilities. However, there are usually provisions for exemptions being granted, and exemptions have been granted in some cases for women-only bathing on the basis, for example, of religious and cultural sensitivities.
In Japan, nude mixed bathing was the norm at public baths until the Meiji Restoration when sex segregation was strictly enforced at sentō-type baths.[ citation needed ]
A swimsuit is an item of clothing designed to be worn by people engaging in a water-based activity or water sports, such as swimming, diving and surfing, or sun-orientated activities, such as sun bathing. Different types may be worn by men, women, and children. A swimsuit can be described by various names, some of which are used only in particular locations or for particular types of suit, including swimwear, bathing suit, bathing attire, swimming costume, bathing costume, swimming suit, swimmers, swimming togs, bathers, cossie, or swimming trunks, besides others.
In Japan, onsen are hot springs and the bathing facilities and traditional inns around them. There are approximately 25,000 hot spring sources throughout Japan, and approximately 3,000 onsen establishments use naturally hot water from these geothermally heated springs.
Sentō (銭湯) is a type of Japanese communal bathhouse where customers pay for entrance. Traditionally these bathhouses have been quite utilitarian, with a tall barrier separating the sexes within one large room, a minimum of lined-up faucets on both sides, and a single large bath for the already washed bathers to sit in among others. Since the second half of the 20th century, these communal bathhouses have been decreasing in numbers as more and more Japanese residences now have baths. Some Japanese find social importance in going to public baths, out of the theory that physical proximity/intimacy brings emotional intimacy, which is termed skinship in pseudo-English Japanese. Others go to a sentō because they live in a small housing facility without a private bath or to enjoy bathing in a spacious room and to relax in saunas or jet baths that often accompany new or renovated sentōs.
Bathing is the act of washing the body, usually with water, or the immersion of the body in water. It may be for personal hygiene, religious ritual or therapeutic purposes. By analogy, especially as a recreational activity, the term is also applied to sun bathing and sea bathing.
Nude swimming is the practice of swimming without clothing, whether in natural bodies of water or in swimming pools. A colloquial term for nude swimming is "skinny dipping".
Public baths originated when most people in population centers did not have access to private bathing facilities. Though termed "public", they have often been restricted according to gender, religious affiliation, personal membership, and other criteria.
Sea bathing is swimming in the sea or in sea water and a sea bath is a protective enclosure for sea bathing. Unlike bathing in a swimming pool, which is generally done for pleasure or exercise purposes, sea bathing was once thought to have curative or therapeutic value. It arose from the medieval practice of visiting spas for the beneficial effects of the waters. The practice of sea bathing dates back to the 17th century but became popular in the late 18th century. The development of the first swimsuits dates from the period as does the development of the bathing machine.
The City Baths, located at 420 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, opened in 1904 as public baths, with swimming pools and bathing facilities. Extensively renovated in the early 1980s, it is now considered one of Melbourne's most architecturally and historically significant buildings.
Nude recreation consists of recreational activities which some people engage in while nude. Historically, the ancient Olympic Games were nude events. There remain some societies in Africa, Oceania, and South America that continue to engage in everyday public activities—including sports—without clothes, while in most of the world nude activities take place in either private spaces or separate clothing optional areas in public spaces. Occasional events, such as nude bike rides, may occur in public areas where nudity is not otherwise allowed.
The history of nudity involves social attitudes to nakedness of the human body in different cultures in history. The use of clothing to cover the body is one of the changes that mark the end of the Neolithic, and the beginning of civilizations. Nudity has traditionally been the social norm for both men and women in hunter-gatherer cultures in warm climates, and it is still common among many indigenous peoples. The need to cover the body is associated with human migration out of the tropics into climates where clothes were needed as protection from sun, heat, and dust in the Middle East; or from cold and rain in Europe and Asia. The first use of animal skins and cloth may have been as adornment, along with body modification, body painting, and jewelry, invented first for other purposes, such as magic, decoration, cult, or prestige. The skills used in their making were later found to be practical as well.
Bathing played a major part in ancient Roman culture and society. It was one of the most common daily activities and was practised across a wide variety of social classes. Though many contemporary cultures see bathing as a very private activity conducted in the home, bathing in Rome was a communal activity. While the extremely wealthy could afford bathing facilities in their homes, private baths were very uncommon, and most people bathed in the communal baths (thermae). In some ways, these resembled modern-day destination spas as there were facilities for a variety of activities from exercising to sunbathing to swimming and massage.
A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground or built above ground, and may be found as a feature aboard ocean-liners and cruise ships. In-ground pools are most commonly constructed from materials such as concrete, natural stone, metal, plastic, composite or fiberglass, and can be of a custom size and shape or built to a standardized size, the largest of which is the Olympic-size swimming pool.
In Judaism, especially in Orthodox Judaism, there are a number of settings in which men and women are kept separate in order to conform with various elements of halakha and to prevent men and women from mingling. Other streams of Judaism rarely separate genders any more than secular western society.
The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is a group in the Palestinian territory of Gaza Strip, responsible for enforcing traditional Muslim codes of behavior (Sharia). According to journalist Khaled Abu Toameh and Middle East researcher Dr. Jonathan Spyer, the group forms part of the police forces of the Hamas de facto government.
Islamism in the Gaza Strip involves efforts to promote and impose Islamic laws and traditions in the Gaza Strip. The influence of Islamic groups in the Gaza Strip has grown since the 1980s. Following Hamas' victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections and a conflict with supporters of the rival Fatah party, Hamas took complete control of the Gaza Strip, and declared the "end of secularism and heresy in the Gaza Strip". For the first time since the Sudanese coup of 1989 that brought Omar al-Bashir to power, a Muslim Brotherhood group rules a significant geographic territory. Gaza human-rights groups accuse Hamas of restricting many freedoms.
Bara Bröst network is a cultural movement of Swedish feminists campaigning for the right of women to swim topless and to bare their breasts at beaches and in public pools.
The Loretto Baths, in short Lollo, is the oldest open-air swimming pool in Germany. It is located at the foot of the Lorettoberg in Wiehre in the city of Freiburg im Breisgau. When it opened in 1841, it was the city's first public swimming baths. Its uniqueness lies in the partial separation of sexes. There is one pool which can be used by women only, but also one for the whole family. To this day, it is the only pool in Germany that has a separate pool for women.
McIver Women's Baths is a heritage-listed women's baths at Grant Reserve, Coogee, City of Randwick, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1876 to 1886. It is also known as Coogee Women's Pool and Ladies Baths. The property is owned by Randwick City Council. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 18 November 2011.
The racial composition of swimming and other aquatic sports has long been influenced by the history of segregation and violence at pools as well as the building patterns of public and private pools in America.
Nude swimming in US indoor pools was common for men and boys, but rare for women and girls from the late 1880s until the early 1970s. For much of that time period, indoor pool use was primarily for physical education or athletic competition, not recreation. Male nude swimming had been customary in natural bodies of water, which was not viewed as a social problem until the 18th century. When the tradition of skinny-dipping in secluded spots had become more visible with urbanization, indoor pools were first built in the 19th century in part to address this issue by moving male swimming indoors. For the first decades of the 20th century, male nude swimming was associated with a trope of the "old swimming hole" as representing childhood innocence and adult masculinity. In their own classes, nudity was rare for girls based upon an assumption of modesty, but might include young children. Prepubescent boys might be nude in mixed-gender settings, including the presence of female staff, public competitions, and open houses for families.
The ordinary man in the early twentieth century thought that mixed bathing was wrong simply because that view had been effectively preached to him from his earliest years; on the other hand, the utilitarian may think that there is nothing wrong in it because he has thought the question out in the way described above, putting himself in the place of all those affected, and decided that he can best serve their interests by rejecting the prohibition on mixed bathing, because, as he says, it does nobody any harm.
The question of mixed bathing and swimming remained a very vexed one throughout the period. As has already been mentioned, prior to 1800 it would appear that mixed bathing, while not common, did take place from time to time.
It is very likely that the non-Jewish population rejected mixed bathing just as much as the Jewish population did.
On the other hand, fundamentally sound and devoted Christians in the South are nearly always shocked when they find that fundamental Christians in the North have mixed bathing at their summer Bible conferences, and elsewhere Christian men and women and young people go swimming together and sometimes do not feel it is wrong.