HUNG OUT TO DRY Swimming and British Culture
Introduction
As I began my research into the British swimmer I was shocked to discover that public swimming had meant nudity for all. Illustrated on page 6 is one of many old photographs that picture children bathing. As you can see, it was once incredibly popular; but why was it only boys that swam? More puzzling still is their lack of costume and embarrassment. Such pictures expose a very different Britain to that of today. How we British have changed! Just imagine the reaction such scenes would cause these days! Looking further I discovered that our changing attitudes toward nudity underpinned the prejudice that has developed towards the swimmer. We accept that attitudes evolve with time. Yet we British have changed completely from accepting total nudity for swimming, to viewing such as perverse or even kinky today.
Over the years it has taken me to compile this book, attitudes have dramatically changed. Today fears for the safety of children have completely reshaped our culture. Who would have thought that even parents would eventually be excluded from school sports days so as to protect children from predators? Yet it would seem that we have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Parents and children are now paranoid about safety, yet at the same time whole sections of our bookshops are devoted to child abuse accounts. The nation has developed a thirst for lurid details of inappropriate intimacy and children are in effect abused twice over as their 'dirty linen' is aired in public. Daily, newspapers rob them of dignity by poring over the details of such scandals, and the internet fuels the problem making child exploitation all too easy. So, as the nation has become obsessed with stranger danger, opportunities for paedophiles to fan their desires are proliferating. As important as it is to protect trusting children from exploiters, you will discover that the vast majority of abuse stems from an entirely different source, in effect we are stopping up the draught around the window whilst leaving the door wide open! Feelings naturally run high on this topic and so I have decided in this revision to censure some of the illustrations. It is hoped that with this revision all readers will be able to look at these images without embarrassment. Each picture appears for a reason, with this modification I trust that all will be able to look beyond the undressed state of early swimmers, to focus on the message that each print conveys. This book covers far more than the history of British swimming; it explores the link be-tween swimming and changes in British culture that reach into our individual daily lives. Without these photographs, the true magnitude of the social changes we British have experienced cannot be fully appreciated, they provide a win-dow onto our past, revealing the extent to which swimming has influenced Brit-ish culture. If you want to understand what has made the British what they are, you are holding the answer in your hands!
Our way of life is unique; we are branded with a smutty sense of hu-mour and we display a fascination for nudity in newspapers and magazines. Yet at the same time we are uncomfortable with exposure in even the most natural of settings. Take for example a new mother that nurses her infant in public. The British reaction of embarrassment moves the 'offender' to feel self-conscious, and in future to feed out of sight for the sake of 'decency'. How did we come to develop such attitudes? Through this book you will come to see just how dra-matically the culture of our nation has changed, and how we have subtly influ-enced the customs of other peoples. It exposes the underlying reason for the prejudice shown towards swimming in the great outdoors and in the first chap-ter you will see how the attitudes of our nation have transformed beyond recog-nition in the last hundred years. The revelations contained herein will show how and why the British people, once proud of their swimming heritage, developed their prejudice towards swimmers. To begin with let us look at the history of swimming, its rise to popularity and its fall from grace.
Contents
