Welcome to the Old Days

No Bathing Suits Allowed

This page revised 2/5/25, other pages show their own revision dates

  • Blog Purpose

    Through at least the third quarter of the 20th century organized nude male swimming was widespread.  The practice was mandated or encouraged in public schools, colleges, private organizations like the YMCA, Boys Clubs and the Boy Scouts and in municipal programs and in informal settings.  The existence of this largely extinct public practice was well documented in newspaper and magazine articles, advice columns, visual art and accounts of personal experience.  However, the most compelling evidence is photographic.  The internet is full of reproductions of pictures purported to document this era, but the provenance of these images is murky in many cases.  Moreover, it is well known to anyone who has followed this topic that some of these images have been outright falsified. 

    The principal purpose of this blog is to investigate and analyze this photographic trove to tease out the real from the fake.  It will also take note of the nuanced differences in rules and policies among institutions where this practice occurred. Readers who are serious students of this phenomenon are encouraged to participate by providing material and experiential information. I also invite comment on my methods and conclusions as seems appropriate.  The overall objective is to pool data and knowledge to raise the level of understanding about the era of organized public nude male swimming.

    Update:  As this blog has aged, I have become aware that the original topic constitutes a (small?) subset of the greater body of information that encompasses the practice of nude male swimming, organized and informal (aka, skinny dipping). Also, the meme of nude males swimming became embedded in the popular culture, so that images – real and fanciful – appeared in the popular press in illustrations, advertisements, etc. – all for family consumption. This realization has caused me to widen the scope of the material posted.  As a result, this blog contains over 800 photos which have been more or less organized into topical pages.

    Resources

    The photographic collection was obtained from various internet sources, mostly without context or attribution.  As a result, this investigation was informed by numerous blog postings detailing personal experiences and containing documentary evidence. It is in this context that the photos are considered. More about that later.

    I have organized the links to my main blog references on a page that I have designated Resources.  The Historical section contains the aforementioned testimony and documents.  Another section called Technical Resources has been included containing links to sites that provide background on specific topics.

    A quick overview of the Historical Resources follows.

    The first link accesses what nearly everyone will acknowledge is the premier site for this topic. It is a no-nonsense review of the documentary evidence from newspapers, magazines, published industry practices, etc.  It eschews any questionable sources and hearsay and references no opinion blogs.  The research and collection of information for this site apparently spanned decades. One noteworthy attribute of this reference is that it is a living document.  It has undergone multiple revisions in both format and content in the time I’ve been aware of it. It continues to solicit material for consideration.

    This website contains a large collection of vintage swimming pictures – many without attribution.  I have presented and analyzed a few of those pictures in this blog.

    The owner(s) of the site are not identified on the website itself. I have noticed that claimant to the ownership has posted to forums under the moniker “Sangria.” He has also Identified himself as Brad Thompson in another blog message. He apparently hosted a forum under Nude Sleepers beginning in 2014 as BradVFSW.  The forum appears to be active as of this writing. The link to this forum is the second item under Resource 1.

     The next two resources serve as a Rosetta Stone for identifying and “outing” many of the Photoshopped fakes that swamp the internet.

    Resources 4 and 5 contain a few vintage pictures with attribution as to time and place – a rarity.

    Resources 6-14 are blogs and forums.  They are presented in roughly declining order of credibility. Some of the entries toward the end of the list seem little more than teenage sexual fantasies. It should be acknowledged that this topic attracts would-be creative writers who spin fictional yarns implying that they are actual experiences.  Teasing these out from factual input is a persistent challenge.  A few perspectives on that follow.

    One rule of thumb I apply is that if the recitation seems too detailed, it is probably false.  The idea that a contributor can provide very granular recollections after six or seven decades should be regarded with suspicion. One giveaway is that in some of the forums’ correspondents prompt the story teller with follow up questions and the latter obliges with progressively more (titillating) detail. 

    Another genre I regard with suspicion is recitations in which hot, young female instructors handle the boys’ genitals to assist their achieving “relief.” 

    On the flip side, I have read many accounts that seem genuine because they probably comport with my preconceived notions of how these episodes would play out.  In other words, I want very badly to believe them.

    One pertinent example was an understated narrative of the writer’s experience swimming nude in high school team meets before an audience of females including his classmates.  He related how he would routinely have post-match meet and greets with these young ladies (as well as their mothers, siblings, etc.) while still attired in his birthday suit.  He capped off his narrative with an epilogue in which he encountered one of these fans at a class reunion many years later.  The female classmate related that her attendance at those events was her fondest memory of her high school days.  The narrator responded that they were his as well.  I found that the author posted this nearly identical story in three forum threads that I came across.  It seems however that the epilogue incident occurred at his 35th class reunion in one telling, his 40th in a second and his 50th in yet another.  This tended to disabuse me of the veracity of this otherwise very believable account.

    Summarizing, my impressions have been developed from reading many blogs and forums over the years.  What has been included in Resources represents a small portion of that body of information, some of which has disappeared from the internet. For what it’s worth, Resource 13 is a valiant attempt to preserve postings from defunct sources.  Finally, I should note that the included links are only a representative sampling of all of the blogs and forums currently available on this topic. I have many other links that I have not included because they add little to the discussion.

    The Technical Resource links are topics that I googled for help with historical context.  They are self-explanatory.

    The Task

    During my investigation I have discovered (or been made aware of) widespread fakery.  While I consider this type of activity reprehensible, some seem to just sit back and uncritically enjoy the ride.  When blogs on this topic were still hosted by Tumblr, I recall a correspondent asking the blog owner whether he thought there were any fakes among his postings.  The owner responded that he preferred to believe that all of the images were genuine.  Based on my research, I don’t think that blog owner was unique.  Indeed, this topic feeds into the crowd dedicated to the CFNM fetish, so the more fantasy the better.

    Getting back to the pictures, I categorize counterfeit images as follows:

    1. Altered photos (Photoshopped) making clothed males appear nude
    2. Reprints of recent color images as greyscale (sometimes with cropping) to make them appear vintage
    3. Repurposed pictures presented as examples of period nude male swimming when they are actually from vintage nudist and gay publications or from recent European nudist events that have been decolorized. Sometimes the deception is achieved by applying misleading captions or labels.

    Having dwelt on the fakes, it is only fair to add that there are many genuine photos of organized nude male aquatics.  Some of these are presented in the first page titled The Good.  Two subsequent postings will show undeniable fakes (The Bad and The Ugly).  Thereafter we will dive into the exhilarating fun of trying to determine which of the remaining photos are authentic documentation of this practice in this period of time. Various relevant and tangential topics are also examined in separate postings.

    With regard to the foundation topic, we should set some limits on the breadth of our search and for the criteria for genuineness.  The temporal period is from about the 1880’s (the beginnings of publicly sponsored recreational swimming facilities and the genesis of modern pool construction) to the 1970’s (the demise of the public institutional practices we are studying).  Geographically, we are focused on the US, although the plethora of European, Canadian and Australian images demanded attention and have therefore been included.  The context is institutional swimming (clubs such as the YMCA and schools from elementary through college), not casual skinny dipping.  But once again, the huge volume of these latter types of images makes their inclusion practically unavoidable.

    As alluded to previously, beyond the issue of authenticity or fakery, there is the matter of learning what it was like in the era before paranoia about sexual exploitation became prevalent.  We’ll see where our studies take us.

    One final point is that based on the images, there is anecdotal evidence that organized and casual nude male/suited female swimming has persisted in unidentified quarters since its disappearance from US public institutions.  Maybe the practice was simply downsized and driven underground.

Post Script: I intend for this website to be a living document. Therefore, I will be making changes from time to time as new information becomes available. I invite those with relevant information or material to submit it for consideration. In the meantime, please enjoy the website!

87 thoughts on “Welcome to the Old Days”

    1. Thanks for the correction. That explains all of the hockey pix in the yearbook! I thought it was northern California, but I guess it wasn’t far enough north. I’ll make the change. Glyph

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  2. Under “Special Topics” you begin with a photo of boys around a pool, labeled in the negative “swimming championships Broadview YMCA”, and in the margin, “City of Toronto Archives”. You ask, “Are they or aren’t they?” A simple search on the City of Toronto Archives ( https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/accountability-operations-customer-service/access-city-information-or-records/city-of-toronto-archives/using-the-archives/using-the-database/) for Broadview YMCA Swimming finds that photo, in better resolution, as well as five others of the occasion, and your answer: they are.

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  3. Hello Glyph, Send me an email address, and I can send you a bit more. I’m not fond of the public comment format.
    As a text-based resource, try Yellow Fever’s forum, https://forums.delphiforums.com/yellowfever3/ (Delphi requires registration) You’ll find over a thousand posts on swim classes.
    My current research focus is post-war US. You will find newspaper articles at Fever’s showing nude swim meets with male-only audiences, and ditto for Parents’ Night at Learn-to-Swim classes. I’ve yet to find proof of nude swimming with women spectators.
    You will also find clothing optional institutional swimming, where some opted not to wear suits.
    I think I’ve seen photos of marathon swims with nude males and topless women. Toronto, if I recall. There’s a video of British school, slightly pre-war, of a swim meet with boys competing in suits – but changing in full sight of women spectators (https://forums.delphiforums.com/yellowfever3/messages/?msg=2116.1) There also exists a post-war Eastern block photo of an elementary school swim class, with some nude boys mixed in among the boys and girls.
    I mostly look for words, not pictures. Almost without exception, CFNM photos are naturist events, European beaches, staged, or photoshop.

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  4. Excellent site.
    I do, however, wish to take exception to one of the conclusions concerning the authenticity of the pictures.
    Under the category of Teams, item 4 Girls with Bares appears to show several nude males behind a row of female swimmers. The moderator went neutral on this.
    I found this a few years ago, did a reverse image search and found it was the University of Virginia’s swim team 1976-77. The original image shows the guys in suits; the guy on the left, in fact, is wearing trunks with a loud striped pattern that stands out.
    Unfortunately, I no longer have the url; the internet is often compared to a library, but books don’t change their titles, urls frequently disappear.
    I do, however, have a screen shot of the original, and if anyone wants it, post a request.
    Live long and prosper!

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    2. I compare the internet this way: The internet is like they gathered all the libraries in the world, lifted and flew them by helicopter and then dropped them all in the Grand Canyon. All the information is there but it isn’t organized and you have to wade through a lot of garbage to find anything.

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  5. I just discovered this site today. This is a subject that I am very interested in. There are certain groups that want to erase any historical information that boys swam nude in school and at the YMCA. I am especially interested in accounts of females who were spectators where the boys swam nude. I have read some of these accounts, and I believe that there is quite the possibility that they are true. I am very concerned that the people who experienced this, whether male or female, are now old and dying off. The deniers are, of course, happy that any memories of this activity are going away. This was going on at a time when I was in school, but my school didn’t have swimming, and I was totally unaware that some schools did. I was aware of the YMCA nude swimming because one of my male teachers told me about him swimming there. I am going to try to keep up with this site.

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      1. Very simple. Religious people love rewriting history in order to prove their religion true. So if their religion calls nudity a sin, they want to erase all traces where nudity was portrayed in a neutral or even positive light.

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      2. In the UK, it isn’t so much religious people (other than devout Muslims) as plain old prudes, and obsessive pædo-phobes.

        I can give you a concrete example. A couple of years ago I found an article in a local history website about the village of Meldreth in Cambridgeshire. It was about the swimming tank that was installed in the early 70s in the grounds of the local primary school. There were photos of the official opening, in which the children were using the tank with swimsuits, and, some years afterwards, three colour photos taken, probably, by a staff member or parent, showing (one of them clearly showing) both boys and girls using the pool in the nude. This was fine, until some woman commented that she could see a bare bottom, and, surely, that could not have been allowed! That got a response from somebody who had actually attended the school as a pupil in the late 70s who said that not only was this allowed, it was obligatory. When it was their turn to use the pool, boys and girls had to strip naked in their classroom, then troop out to the yard and use the pool in the nude. At the end of the session, they would exit the pool and go back inside to dry off and get dressed. He also added that no-one objected, and he and all the children loved swimming naked. Very shortly afterwards, the photos (apart from the opening ceremony, where children were all clothed) were deleted, thus removing the evidence that what the later commentator said (not removed) was true.

        Fortunately, I got screen grabs of the deleted items and have them, along with one which I found elsewhere in a blog about Shears Green primary school of their pool also being used by nude boys and girls. These form the only photographic evidence I can find (so far) of nudity in public-sector schools in the UK, in the primary or secondary age groups. Photographs of relatively recent nude male use of school pools (including those in this site) in the UK are all private-sector establishments. It makes it possible for people to doubt (or, often, to pour scorn on) assertions that public-sector schools had their pupils swim in the nude. This is very annoying, when I know that my county primary school unofficially allowed both boys and girls to swim naked if they wanted to.

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      3. Personal recollections like this help us to understand how we got here from where we were. From my perspective it documents the downward spiral of our societal attitudes. Thanks very much for this.

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      4. Contemporary American society is in denial about anything and everything in any way out of sinc with the prevailing social norms. I have been a member of the YMCA for at least 40years. YMCA’shave been transformed in the Family YMCA. Christian fundamentalist ideology infected the YMCA with its diseased outlook on life 20 years ago. Things are so strange at the YMCA that I belong too; for instance, no adult males are allowed in the boys locker room but adult women are allowed in the boys locker room. Since unmarried males are not all that welcome because it’s assumed that you could be a child molester. The Y now prefers married couples, families, and single women. Single unmarried males are tolerated.

        There is a real spirit of fascism at the Y based on the promotion of mass hysteria about child abuser lurking behind every corner. Every executives job requirements required that they universally deny that manditory nudity for all males using the pool. If your unlucky enough to ask the wrong person about this past history you might end up getting arrested.

        What is your definition of fascism. The above description is my definition. Contrary to the generally excepted myth history in fact never repeats itself.

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  6. The Y in Nashville certainly gave swim lessons with all boys nude in the late 1940s at least, because my mom threatened me with having to go when I was a kid, and she told me that was the way they did it. I never went, which I now regret, because I never did learn to swim.

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  7. Hello Glyph,
    I just came across this site – really great job. Fake pictures are a problem in many areas, I am convinced that there are now more fake than real pictures on the Internet for some topics. This is probably also true for the topic of nude swimming in the USA. I have experienced this myself: I was a 16 year old European exchange student in 1982 at two high schools in Illinois and Wisconsin and we boys had to swim naked at both schools without exception. That was probably the final phase of nude swimming at US schools. From what I have seen and experienced at that time, I dare to say that many pictures are fakes at first sight. You can tell by the following simple points:

    We were at that time at the high school in Illinois 16 at that in Wisconsin 22 boys in the swimming lessons and if I looked around there I saw, with exception of a single boy in Wisconsin, practically only „bare glanses“, i.e. nearly all boys were circumcised. The circumcision rate in the U.S. was very high at that time. On the other hand, on very many allegedly old pictures, none of the boys has a circumcised penis, even on pictures of whole teams, you don’t see a single circumcised person – you can immediately classify these pictures as fakes.

    It’s similar with the pubic hair: at both schools, as a German exchange student, I was the only one among the boys who had shaved the scrotum and the penis and heavily trimmed the rest of the pubic hair – the US boys didn’t have that. When I then see how many boys and men on the allegedly old pictures have trimmed pubic hair or are even completely intimately shaved, I know immediately how I must assess these pictures.

    Also, at that time none of the boys wore necklaces (chains, etc.), let alone earrings, that was absolutely the exception. On the other hand, there were many boys who wore (leather) ankle bracelets, at both schools it was certainly more than half of the boys. However, the ankle bracelets were, I think also in the US a phenomenon of the 80’s, which probably did not exist before, but other jewelry should have hardly existed before with boys and men. Also there are conspicuousnesses in many pictures, which let doubt.

    And finally a fourth point: nobody wore a bathing cap at that time and swimming goggles were also extremely rare, e.g. I was the only one with swimming goggles in the school class in Illinois, in Wisconsin we were two. Likewise, no one wore flip-flops, we were always barefoot in the pool Hall , in both schools flip-flops or any kind of bathing shoes were even expressly forbidden, naked always meant barefoot there. And even if I went otherwise somewhere with the boys for swimming, so not naked but with swim briefs, I have never seen anyone other than barefoot. Again, there are often huge discrepancies in the fake pictures: you see whole swimming teams of guys naked, but everyone and even the girls around have flipflops on without exception….

    If I consider only these simple things, which I know from personal experience, then I have considerable doubts about the authenticity of many allegedly old pictures of naked swimmers, even if these criteria are certainly not always and 100 percent valid.
    As I said: great made and well researched site – keep it up!

    Greetings from Germany!
    Axel

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    1. Great comment, Axel. Thanks for sharing all that information that provides a snapshot of what was (still) happening in the mid-West at that time. Glyph

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    2. Sometimes ankle bracelets, often elastic, have clothes locker keys attached. I think that was more usual than wearing the key’s holder around the wrist or neck.

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  8. Just discovered your blog. I see you have already found my own Pinterest pages (@cambridgeguy) on vintage swimwear and high school yearbooks. Like you, I am interested in the faking of vintage images, how and why it is done. One aspect that I don’t think you have drawn attention to is so-called CFNM images with clothed females along with naked males. There seems to be a particular fetish interest in this and almost all such images I have seen are either faked (male swim wear replaced by nudity) or are modern, pretending to be vintage.

    I want to comment on a few of your “unknown images”. Your image 2 (boy with girl) I am certain is faked. I came across a blog that referenced the original colour image (the guy in blue trunks) from a French fashion site but it has since disappeared. Image 3 (check me out) is modern and I have a colour version of an image from the same session. I agree with you that images 10 and 11 are from modern nudist events. Image 15 (bust a move) is from a modern CFNM photo shoot and I have other images of the model being observed by men and women in evening dress. Image 16 (oldie) is also actually modern and I have a colour image from the same session.

    Why do fakers go to all this trouble?

    Thanks for the great blog. I can send you the untampered images I have mentioned in my post if you are interested.

    Richard

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    1. Thanks for your comments, Richard. To your point, it is clear that many of the fakes are inspired by/aimed at the CFNM fetish folks. I surmise that since there is not enough historical photographic evidence that these situations occurred to suit (no pun intended) these people, they manufactured it. Beyond that, I am as confounded as anyone why some people find it necessary to deliberately post false information on the internet – particularly when there is no economic incentive.
      Of course, I am very interested in any images or other data you might have related to this topic. Note that my e-mail address is curator@pixnudeswim.com. We can have a more in-depth exchange.
      Glyph

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  9. I just encountered this site today, and haven’t gotten through all of it, but I’m impressed — this is a topic that interests me (I’m old enough to remember the practice’s existence, though it didn’t happen at my high school, which was brand-new in the 1960s when I attended).

    Anyway, given your thoroughness in all respects, I’m surprised to have seen & saved a photo that you apparently haven’t seen: a version of the first Diving picture, but with nobody besides the diver present — no women in the background. I don’t have your analytical tools, but my immediate guess would classify this as a reverse of the usual case: the nudity is real but the spectators were photoshopped in later. (Of course it’s also possible that in reality he wore a suit and the nudity was then added….) I’d be happy to share this if you’re interested.

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  10. Additionally (now that I’ve seen all the pages), I have a color version of #8 from “Leftovers” — the 6 young guys posing for a picture around the pool ladder. That’s one I’d really like to know about: unlike most, it has always seemed real to me, but under what circumstances was it shot? A European health club?

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    1. Good to hear from you, Rinaldo. If you’ve read my end sheets (Welcome to the Old Days and I See Dead People), you know that I am under no illusion I have tracked down every image out there. I continue to rely on people like you who have collected stuff that I haven’t come across. I guess that my content has grown and been improved by at least 40% since I first posted less than a year ago, due to contributors. Yes, please share whatever you have. Use my e-mail curator@pixnudeswim.com for future correspondence. Thanks. Glyph

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      1. Done. By the way, New Trier High School, referenced more than once as the source of photos here, was located in the next suburb north of the one where I went to high school. My own high school was brand new when I began there in 1961 (population growth had necessitated the division of the township into two, and the building of a new campus). On the first day of school, our gym instructor mentioned that when we got to swimming later in the year, we’d be wearing “your birthday suit” (which was the procedure at the old school across town). But when that segment actually began in December, suits were required (supplied by the school). My guess, looking back, is that they realized that our new pool was not as sheltered from the outside world as the one in the old building — it had a wall of windows to outside, and another at the spectator entrance level; there was no way prevent outsiders from looking in.

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  11. Thanks for the items you sent along via e-mail, Rinaldo. I’ve posted them for the group.
    Your recollection is interesting and adds context to how this practice gradually disappeared from US schools. My Yearbook page shows New Trier’s swim team was wearing suits – at least for their pictures – in the 1950s. I suspect that there was a two tiered (no pun intended) system in place – nude in gym, suited for the team.
    Glyph

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  12. In the section “Still More Unknowns” I can identify images 7A and 7B. Years ago (1990s or 2000s?) I subscribed to a European nudist magazine, from whence these were taken. A group of middle-aged nudists using a public pool in the Netherlands were joined by a female synchronized swim team. The female nudists were cropped out iof the images.

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  13. In the Off Topic section, two images, namely 10-Pup Tent Couple and 19-A Day At The Lake were taken in color. I have seen both. These may be “fake” in that they are relatively modern photos with color removed to pass them off as vintage images.

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  14. Regarding images 9A and 9B in Leftovers, that indeed is a photo of Dutchmen. I remember seeing it in a European nudist magazine I subscribed to years ago. The original is in color and the woman is nude. I’ve seen versions of this image where the women is wearing a bikini, again in the same all-black color as the one-piece she wears in these images.

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  15. Some thoughts on 17A Breezy Day and 17B Picnic on the Lake in the Off Topic session. There is a third image in this series which consists of the mustachioed man (who is nude) and the swimsuited woman and no one else. He has a mischievous look on his face and is snuggled up against the woman, which suggests to me he is her husband or boyfriend and not her father. I’m guessing these are from the ’70s: the boys’ hair length suggests late ’60s at the earliest, and the woman’s modest swimsuit (full hip coverage, very low leg openings) suggests something dated. Of course, the question for these images (like the other Off Topics) is, who took the pictures? My wild guess is the husband of the fully clothed woman.

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  16. Regarding 11-Nap By the Creek in Off Topic, I have more than one version of this. They all have the nude guy in front. The differences are the group in the background. In one version, the women sitting down are wearing skimpy bikinis and the woman standing has a modest two-piece suit on. The standing men look like someone has done a poor job of Photoshopping their speedos away. In the version you have, the Photoshopping is more believable but it’s curious that all the women are wearing identical swimsuits.

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  17. Image 3 (It’s Still Growing) on Leftovers caught my eye when I first saw it years ago. Are you sure this is legit and not photoshopped? Curious that on a public beach all 4 women are wearing identical one-piece tank suits.

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  18. Interesting ides: Instead of Photoshopping the guys out of their suits, put suits on the girls and convert a nude beach scene to a CFNM situation. Possibly.
    Let me state for the record that unless I call and image genuine or it is posted on one of validated pages such as The Good, The Good Too, Swimming Lessons, Special Topics, Not so Special topics, its authenticity is up for grabs. I solicit readers for any images or data that would validate or invalidate an image.
    Glyph

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  20. Very pleased to find this site and the documentary images. I have a couple more on-topic pictures that I will send over, a documentary image of a boys school swimming pool in the early 70s and one also taken by my father in the 1940s.

    I went to a boys school in the UK from 1954 to 1965 and we swam naked. I don’t recall it was a big deal for anyone. The pool had been built in the 1930s and the windows were high and the pool could not be overlooked.

    In the early 60’s the system changed. Junior boys continued to swim naked but there was a swimming proficiency test at around 11/12 years old and if you passed you were allowed to wear trunks with the swimming proficiency badge sewn on. I recall three or four boys in my year did not pass after multiple tries and they remained naked and continued with lifesaving and other swimming tuition. They were teased by the swimming instructor. They tended to be the academic, un-athletic boys and I always found the drive to shame them for their nudity very odd as a year before everyone irrespective of age or proficiency would have been naked.

    One final thing to say, that the pool was open on two evenings a week. One evening was for boys who were swimming in competition. They swam naked irrespective of age (when practising not in competitions obviously) and it was considered quite acceptable for boys of all ages to go along and watch from the decked seating above the pool and appreciate the speed of their swimming and their diving. No women were present at any time I hasten to add.

    The other evening was for any boy in the school who wanted to go along for a recreational swim. I recall there was quite a lot of ‘horsing around’ between the older boys in their swimming trunks and younger boys or the boys who had not yet passed their swimming proficiency and so were naked. In many ways the swimming instructors encouraged this and it was seen as completely innocent.

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  21. As a social scientist by training and a visual artist by avocation, I have been interested in the cultural perception of the human body. I am also old enough to have experienced the end of the nude swimming era at the U of Maryland. This personal experience is only one of many that make me aware of the changes that have occurred in my 70+ years.

    In spite of my knowledge of psychology, I am surprised when anyone of my generation expresses any negative reaction to swimming nude. Being a child of the 1950s, instead of the conformity and modesty towards the nudity of adults, I only remember the freedom that children had back then. Some of my earliest memories are of the Chesapeake Bay beaches, where our mother was not concerned about changing me and my slightly older sisters from bathing suits to dry clothes regardless of our being briefly naked. I don’t remember much before five, but as an older child there were always families nearby who allowed their children from toddlers to preschool age to run about naked, sometimes playing in the sand and water without clothing for their entire stay.

    As teens in the 1960s, everyone had to take a shower after gym, with no privacy. As the smallest kid in my grade, I was bullied almost everywhere except in the shower. We got to college at the height of the protest marches on Washington DC, which is very hot in the summer. Dozens of Freaks (we never called ourselves Hippies) skinny-dipping in the fountains was the inevitable result. On campus, students running about naked was first called streaking by the campus paper at UMCP. [https://today.umd.edu/terp-trendsetters]

    Since I took swim class in 1968, the same year as “CAMA” whose blog entry is under item #11 in Historical Links, I can say this is entirely fake or embellished beyond recognition. The fact is, the pool at Cole Field House was not entered by students in street clothes, but through the locker/shower room, so we were already naked when the coach came in. My class was of manageable size, 30-40, and the instructor and his TA were of course in bathing suits. He said with no sign of aggression that suits were not allowed because everyone knew that undergrads would not wash them effectivly between classes, contaminating the water. No one was shocked, we had heard about the nudity requirement already. I never heard anyone say anything negative, we all had fun reliving at 18 and 19 the freedom we had as kids. Anyone who now looks back with embarrassment must be projection current attitudes; or they don’t want to admit what they did back then; like Bill Clinton saying he tried pot but didn’t inhale.

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    1. Thanks for sharing your personal experiences, Fred. Yes, I agree this topic (like many others) is subject to revisionist memory as well as revisionist attitudes. I’m repeatedly amazed by how quickly people adopt current conditions and assert that “things” have always been this way even though they have lived through times when they weren’t.
      I’ll probably add a note to the link you referred to indicating that it is probably fictionalized. Truthfully, it is probably one of the lesser lies contained in those accounts that I’ve linked to.
      Glyph

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  22. There is a public Facebook group dedicated to remembering the Boys and Girls Club of Olneyville of Providence, Rhode Island. Several years ago someone uploaded a picture of the 1980 swim team at a meet. It kind of looks like one of the boys at the bottom is lacking a swim suit but it very difficult to say for sure due to the photo’s quality. Do you think this would qualify as historical nude male swimming?
    https://www.facebook.com/share/k55HgExcDK7Fev1G/?mibextid=WC7FNe

    Also, image 16 in the Diving page is altered. The original image doesn’t appear to show anyone in a tank suit
    https://miami-history.com/ymca-in-downtown-miami-1918-1978/

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  23. Generally, I approach this subject from an objective, dispassionate and less biased view. Although I do wish that communal nudity would make a come back, I do not have any CFNM fantasies. I’m not that interested in the subject in the first place and only interested in the historical truth of the matter.

    Having said that, I have noticed that the “lies” frequently promoted fall into four main categories:

    CFNM fantasies: Although it was common for guys to swim naked during this time period, public nudity was severely discouraged especially in front of women. Go back in time to about fifty years earlier and any woman who ever saw a naked man or any man who got naked in front of a woman was severely punished. Thomas Eakins got fired for letting women draw from a live, nude, male model. There might have been a few localized exceptions to this as the nudist movement was just beginning to spread into America but these exceptions were an extreme minority. I am severely skeptical that they would allow a female nurse to examine a male. The attitude toward women at the time was so disrespectful that female nurses were often treated only a little different from prostitutes, expected to provide comfort but not expected to have any knowledge of male anatomy.

    School competitions: In Ancient Greece it was commonly believed that men should compete naked and that it was wonderful to publicly admire naked male athletes. The fake photos and stories often try to portray Western Civilization of the early and middle twentieth century as being just like Ancient Greece. These historical periods were not similar in the slightest. Twentieth century men might swim nude for fun, exercise and cleanliness but organized teams or competitions in the nude were extremely rare. Policies varied across the country with some pools requiring nudity while other pools forbade nudity. So any competition between one pool and another would not be nude.

    Sexuality: It is typical for modern people to confuse nudity with sexuality but this was absolutely not the case for men of the early and middle twentieth century. In fact, the reason it was okay for guys to skinny dip was because the commonly held belief was that it was impossible for men to have sexual thoughts about men (unless they were mentally ill of course). It was extremely taboo for men to get erections outside of sex with a woman in the missionary position under the covers in complete darkness. If a man was caught with an erection in the light, it was taboo even if the man was with a woman. (Of course what happened behind closed doors stayed behind closed doors. You just never talked about it.) Woman on top at that time was equivalent to what bestiality is today.

    And finally, publications: Although male skinny-dipping was common, pictures were rare and almost never published for public consumption. There were two notable exceptions: Life magazine and National Geographic magazine, but as far as I can tell, such picture only appeared in one yearbook, never in any other yearbooks and never in newspapers.

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  25. “More Unknowns” #17: I have seen the version of that image where they are wearing swimming suits. I downloaded the image but it was so long ago that I don’t know where the file is if I still even have the file. (Some of my old computer memory got corrupted.)

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  26. “Leftovers” #18 is from a stupid porn. The “story” is the young guy accidentally locks his suit where he can’t reach it. He tries to sneak out but winds up tricked into pretending to be a swim instructor. Then when the real instructor shows up, they trick him into stripping like the young guy. Told you it was stupid.

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  27. “Leftovers” #31 was an educational program about health. Although the boys were willing, it was not a pleasurable experience being filmed while being examined by a doctor.

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    1. Embarrassing Bodies. Dawn Harper.

      the team travelled around, sometimes visiting teams. Other guy was Dr Christian Jessen. This one was prob a check your balls segment.

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  28. “Special Topics” #17 (It’s always 17 for some reason). I found a much larger original of that image. It is clear that they are wearing suits. The reason it doesn’t look like it because the suits are almost skin tone and in the smaller resolution, they blend too well. I’ll make a copy of what I found if you want to see it.

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  29. wonderful pictures, very much enjoyed looking through them. Thanks for your efforts in putting this together. I’m sure I will spend more enjoyable time looking through them again!

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  30. For years, the fakes I stumbled across were enjoyable and invigorating. And not gonna lie – initially, I wasn’t happy discovering your Site (and my delusion), but an obsession with the subject matter and your work’s intricacies kept (/keep) me coming back. My interest has evolved into seeing these sorts of images critically and appreciating them for the authentic moments they capture instead of surface value. I created a Gravatar profile just to congratulate and thank you. Well Done !

    I wonder if there are plans to include moving images from the era of organized public male nude swimming(?) There’s a lot of film out there (“Byens Bad” and military training shorts from the 50s come to mind). 

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    1. Thanks for your comment. 

      I have not considered including videos partly because on-theme (organized nude male swimming) material seems scarce. Most of what I’ve seen is vintage newsreels, home movies or institutional promotions that contain perhaps 30 seconds of possibly relevant material in a 15-40 minute piece. Almost all of it is non-US (e.g., UK, Swedish, etc.). FWIW, some of the Old Swedes pix are outtakes from films that admittedly are relevant. It that case I think the stills cover the subject very well. I’ve been convinced to change my mind about the appropriateness of certain other material over time. I’ll keep an open mind on this topic.

      Glyph

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    2. It is interesting that you mentioned Byens Bad. The Scandinavian countries had a so much healthier attitude towards nudity. Some of their films that were intended for school children included nude children swimming, bathing, and exercising. A wonderful attitude!

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  32. I attended Steinmetz High School in Chicago, Illinois from 1964 to 1968, a Chicago public school. The school was built in 1934. Once a week, as part of physical education, there was a swimming class where it was mandatory for boys to be nude. The instructor wore trunks and a polo shirt. The boys had to take a shower before entering the pool. The shower was a gang shower and there was also a corridor with nozzles spraying in several directions (though it was rarely turned on) to pass through approaching the pool. The instructor would inspect each boy, front and back, for cleanliness before he was allowed into the pool. At the end of the class, the instructor would hand each boy a towel and the boy would dry himself while walking around the perimeter of the pool; then he would throw the towel into a large hamper before entering the adjacent locker room. This is what I participated in as part of my high school education.

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    1. Thanks, Jim. It’s always good to hear readers’ experiences. The nuanced differences in practices between schools/institutions are continually interesting.

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  33. In the ‘Off Topic’ section you spotted that the ‘Lunch break’ photo had been altered – the original photograph was taken by the famous photographer Will McBride and can be found in his book ‘Coming of Age’ on page 19 – available on Internet archive and probably elsewhere.

    It is obvious that if photographed nude the boy, though good looking, would not have been so impressive!

    Yours sicerely,

    Liam Ostermann

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    1. Thanks for the info, Liam. I was able to view the book on line as you suggested and found the original of this particular image. I would have liked to be able display the original along side the fake, but the Internet Archive doesn’t permit that. I’ll make the appropriate text change to my site.
      Hang in there.
      Glyph

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  34. At the very end of the ‘Leftovers’ segment you include a picture of nude boys and a dressed woman and mention it was from a odd UK Channel 4 programme, it is less odd when you know the point of the programme was to encourage men to examine their ‘privates’ (an odd word under the circumstances!) for testicular cancer and various sportsmen took part. Maybe because they were used to being naked with each other? It was both serious and clearly also enjoyed having a reason to show lots of full frontal nude male, this was 1990s show and male nudes, while not unknown on UK TV back then, were not as common as they are now. So it wasn’t gratuitous, though probably still opportunistic!

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  35. I thought you mighty be interested to know the image ‘Boys of Tewkesbury’ in the section ‘Camp Swimming’ almost certainly was taken at a famous UK prep school (that traditionally meant a school for 10 years (or maybe even younger) to 13/14 after which you went to a Public School, which was a private school! talk about being separated by a common language!) called The Wells House School, which still exists. Rick Stein, a celebrity chef in the UK, talked about the nude swimming there in the 1970s (see:

    https://www.independent.co.uk/student/postgraduate/mbas-guide/an-education-in-the-life-of-rick-stein-master-chef-638439.html).

    What is interesting is that nude swimming, almost always outdoor in prep and public schools, was the norm until the 1970s or later, but there are almost no (and that really means no) photographs of this. I think many US prep schools had similar nude swimming until the same time. In terms of attitudes to photographing boys swimming naked almost all the US, and indeed those from Australia and elsewhere, photos come from boy clubs and other institutions aimed at poor, inner city or working areas. In a sense those boys were the equivalent of African women who were shown topless or in other states of ‘undress’ that would never have been accepted for white women. Going to a boys club in Harlem was the equivalent of a National Geographic expedition to ‘exotic’ climbs. These boys of immigrant or poor families, they were there to be studied and the results of efforts to ‘improve’ needed to be recorded.

    I know you have mentioned aspects of it at various points but I don’t think you specifically mentioned the strict rules governing what could be sent through the post. That is why until early in the 1960s Bruce of LA and his athletic Guild models in pictures and films always wore loincloths. Sending pictures of men with their genitals exposed would incur prosecution, confiscation of the material, fines and imprisonment. You could show bums ( I remember being taken by my dad in 1969 to a film called ‘My Side of the Mountain’ which shows its 13 year old star Ted Eccles getting undressed and swimming naked) nobody cared, with limits, to boy or man bums. But you couldn’t publish in yearbooks etc. the sort of full-frontal male nudes that people try and foist as real, and shoot down. This was a time when on I Love Lucy and many other TV shows and films you couldn’t show empty, never mind occupied, the marital bed.

    I know it is outside of the scope of the site but it is interesting the literary support for nude male swimming. For example the novel ‘The Folded Leaf’ by William Maxwell (1945) opens in a Chicago School swimming class and all the boys are naked. My father went to high school in Chicago in the 1920s and he didn’t learn to swim until he was in the army because he, and other boys, hated the nude swimming lessons.

    A bit off topic, but the reality is so much more interesting and varied than the cliched fake stuff.

    By the way I hope to buy a copy of the Will McBride book for Christmas or new year in which I’ll get in touch so I can send you a copy of the image.

    Yours sincerely,

    Liam Ostermann

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    1. Good to hear from you again, Liam. I have to admit that your message contained a few surprises, including the fact that you are apparently clairvoyant. I had only just been appraised that the picture in question was from an English “private” school. If you check the spot in Camp Swimming where you saw it, you’ll see that it has been removed. I was just in the process of preparing a corrected reposting along with a companion photo that just came to hand.

      With regard to the operation of the school, my googling found that it had closed in 1991. Here is the link to that document: https://www.wellshouseschool.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/WHS-History-for-menu-V2-by-Galen-B-0919.pdf

      I look forward to our future correspondence on the other points you touched on.

      Glyph

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  36. Thanks for this very interesting blog. Nude swimming was the rule at the Toronto Central YMCA I attended in boyhood and adolescence. I stopped going to the local YMCA at about age 16 or 17, which would have been around 1972-73. I am not sure when nude swimming was officially phased out.

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  37. What a beautiful site! I’m not sure if you have any of these or are interested as they are not American, but they are historical regarding nude swimming. Here is an article with pictures of Russian Tsar Nikolai II Romanov swimming nude with other men:

    https://www.slobodenpecat.mk/en/fotografiite-na-koi-se-gleda-kako-ruskiot-czar-pliva-gol-povtorno-ja-zaintrigiraa-javnosta/

    Here are a some of his young son Alexei Romanov also swimming nude. One with his friend, one alone in the water, and the final one of being washed clean of the sand after a swim:

    https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b8/11/6d/b8116de7d3b5c38c0c879a94a8082837.jpg

    https://64.media.tumblr.com/52b04c5081ca082160b8de62ef51608a/a446f4d467af04e5-c7/s2048x3072/1b8b8296b8f69c57f2ceae6a2e8c98d4f7c3ca43.jpg

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=458628424318585&id=223304834517613&set=a.458628037651957

    Same one, only no logging into Facebook I believe:

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTzt6qg-_ZUZy10XO3ffLpNzCm8wJH83fQnDg&s

    Thank you so much for all of the photos and historical refrence you have provided; how I wish we still lived in those times of innocent freedom!

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    1. Thanks for those intriguing historical images. It is interesting to see how high up the social ladder the practice of males swimming nude extended.

      Yes, there are more than a few of us that regret the loss of innocence that existed in that era.

      Glyph

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  38. I think around 1990 I borrowed a book from the public library. It was a novel. But I couldn’t believe what I read on the first few pages. The author told me about a normal school swimming lesson. The only difference was that the boys were all naked. Only the teacher was wearing clothes. It wasn’t until the Internet came along that I looked for information about these nude swimming lessons. I did learn a lot about nudism, especially from England and the USA and of course from Germany. Lots of great stories about my first experiences. But it wasn’t until about 15 – 20 years ago that I finally found information about nude swimming lessons in blogs or forums. Some of the opinions were positive, but also negative.
    There are now really good websites on this topic. And also on the idea of ​​nudism. Unfortunately, the fight against nudity is increasing again. Even the places where nudism was practised in Germany are now visited by clothed people.
    Another little tip about a, or rather the only, nudist website in Germany. You can find it under the title FKK Museum.
    naturistengeschichten.de This is the web address for my homepage, which is about stories. Where I use a little of what I have found on the Internet about nudism or what I have experienced in the nudist club. As a scout leader, I have also had the experience that children are very quickly enthusiastic about bathing naked or going to the sauna.
    In any case, I think your blog is absolutely great.
    Greetings, Kai

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    1. Thanks for this, Kai. I have run across indications that the practice nudism is declining across Europe. Lack of participation by younger generations is blamed. Unfortunate state of affairs, but probably a pendulum swing that will return with time.

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      1. Yet British Naturism reports increasing membership, and a survey commissioned from IPSOS by them in 2023 showed that 1 in 7 of the UK population sampled (aged 16 – 70) described themselves as a naturist or a nudist. The survey also showed that the younger the age group of the respondent, the more favourable their inclination towards the practice of social nudity. Females were approximately half as likely to be as enthusiastic as males across the board, and the higher-status social groups were significantly more inclined to support naturism. This leads me to believe that if you were to look at a group of very young males from higher-status families, such as pupils at a boys private school, you would find them to be predominantly accepting of social nudity, and that the formerly standard practice of swimming in the nude at their category of school would find favour with them!

        The failure of organized naturism to get the support of young people is largely because there are not that many naturist families, which bring up their children as naturists. That means the children do not have many friends who are naturists, other than those they may meet at specifically naturist happenings, whom they may never meet again. These young people are not very mobile, and, while teenagers might not be specifically restricted, they are economically dependent on their parents to travel any distance, and therefore cannot readily independently meet other naturists of their own age. They do not have their own cars. Moreover, they do not want their parents around all the time when with friends. Yet organized naturism, rather than attempt to tackle this, shoots itself in the foot by banning anyone under 18 from any event, unless accompanied by a parent, and sometimes bans them altogether. There really is no chance of people falling over themselves to sign up on their 18th birthday to a group that has, to that point, specifically banned them since they became socially independent of their parents four or more years earlier!

        It also would be a good idea for official naturist organizations to try to get into schools, so that young persons (a) can become acquainted with what naturism is about, and (b) negotiate some means of offering a naturist experience to anyone interested, well before the magic age of 18.

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  39. A glaring exception to the “males swim nude” rule would seem to be the American Red Cross, which has taught water safety and swim classes since 1914. Pictured on the ARC site is Wilbert E. Longfellow teaching an all male class, everyone in suits. Based on his apparent age, and the fact that he died in 1947 at the age of 65, I would guess this picture was taken in th oate ’20’s or early ’30’s. https://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/news/2021/millions-learn-to-swim-through-swimming-and-water-safety-program.html The Wikipedia article on Longfellow also links to a picture of a mixed children’s class in a pool in 1967, all the boys in suits. This reflects my experience growing up in the ’60’s and ’70’s, when we always wore suits in our Red Cross swim lessons.

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    1. Extremely interesting that the ARC had that practice. Of course, having boys swim without suits was not a universal practice, but ARC is a huge exception. Thanks for this.

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      1. It’s so hard to be sure about such evidence, though — just the fact of a camera affects the situation. Some places or persons may have had a more definite “no photos unless everyone puts on a suit” policy. And of course by the 1960s the old ways were starting to change.

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  41. Under the category “vintage nudes” photos 24 to 31 are from a video from the 1990’s called “Pool Buddies”. I had a VHS copy but threw it away years ago along with my VCR. If anyone know where I could buy a DVD copy or how to download it, let me know.

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  46. Hi, in the section “The Unknown” picture 9 I strongly believe that the language on the T-shirt is Bulgarian, since you can clearly see the first two letters С and Ъ and partially the third letter – Д. It should be the word СЪДИЯ – referee. Also I have seen the logo with Prosperity at different sport venues in Bulgaria. However, nudism is not widespread in Bulgaria, so…

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