If you want to change out of swimmers after a dip at Terrigal beach, try to do so “modestly”. Slip up and you’ve breached the Australian surf life saving club’s no-nude policy.
Ocean swimmer Nada Pantle was threatened with “disciplinary action” when she did.
Pantle and Wendy Farley start their days with a morning swim, then shower in the Terrigal surf life saving club’s changerooms before heading to work.
But an email notice from the club urging no more nudity in changerooms in December confused their routine.
“I thought it was crazy,” Farley said. “Because how can you have a shower and dry yourself and change without being nude at some point?”
Then the club put up a new sign in the changeroom: “Shower in your swimming costume / change with a towel around you.”
Pantle then received a letter in February from the club, warning she had breached their no nudity-in-changerooms policy.
“The club is a family friendly environment and … nudity is not acceptable,” the letter read. “Should you continue to ignore the rules, you will be subject to disciplinary action, and/or … termination of your membership.”
Pantle was bewildered.
“I almost feel like I’ve been body shamed,” she told the ABC. “They didn’t say what I did … but it sort of implied I’d done something almost sexual.”
The policy is written by Surf Life Saving Australia and requires adults to avoid being naked in changerooms when children are there, or could walk in.
The purpose is to protect young people, said Jon Harkness, the chief executive of Surf Life Saving Central Coast.
Terrigal surf life saving club has 949 members, with over a third being under 16 years of age.
“They all potentially use those shower facilities,” Harkness said.
The club instructs patrons to shower with swimmers on, and “use modesty when changing” by wrapping a towel around themselves.
Farley said the rule implied “what you are doing is wrong, your nude bodies are wrong”. She said it was a “very bad message” to be sending young women.
“Young women are so focused on hiding their bodies and feeling ashamed of their bodies,” she said. “They are conflating getting changed with sexually abhorrent behaviour.”
The policy has sparked plenty of debate online, with one Australian Reddit user describing it as “baffling”.
Another, from Europe, wrote: “We got mixed saunas. Any public shower (public pool, sports club, gym etc) is an open plan and you definitely see naked people while changing … A naked body is only indecent if you teach it to be indecent.”
But Harkness defended the need for modesty.
He said it was “unreasonable” to view the rule as sexualising or body shaming.
“Nobody inferred that,” he said. “We were purely asking they follow the rules to constantly be modest within changeroom facilities.”
Harkness pointed to situations when young people had been exposed to nudity in the changeroom and felt “uncomfortable”.
“The change rooms are getting a bit old now,” Harkness admitted. He said there were plans in place to have them upgraded with more private stalls, “but they’re not quite there yet”.
