How’s that for a title to get indexed by the search engines? Sorry to disappoint if you were looking for something less salubrious.

I went swimming this morning and when in the shower afterwards I started to muse on the reasons for the shower habits of others. There seems to be some key difference in behaviour. The reasons for them? Well, I can only speculate, which I will happily do with no scientific backing for my theories.

I have a view that being naked ain’t no big thing. However, I think that due to a lack of thought – a perennial problem as people don’t actually try to think – there is an instant assumption that nudity and exposed genitalia immediately have a sexual connotation. At times they do, but fer chrissake I am just talking about showering in a single-sex changing room. Cleaning is, or should be, the only concern in these circumstances.

To set the scene it is a pretty standard set-up of four showers in a row and two private cubicles.

Broadly speaking I have observed the following types of behaviour:

• Get under shower, strip down and shower, rinse the swimmers/goggles etc and wash. Get out, towel off. Simples. I guess the reason that this seems the most logical thing to me is that I fall into the general cohort of Western European guys that do this. However, no eye contact and no chatting. We’re butt naked after all. No mixed-signals. Not British etc etc.

• Straight into the private shower cubicles, shut door. Now having seen this behaviour I have tried the shower in each of these to see if I am missing out on some gloriously hot and powerful shower. Nope, they are both worse than Shower Three in the bank of four which, incidentally, is the hottest and most powerful of the six showers and the one I always try to snag. Mostly Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern folks doing this. So is it shyness and is that an upbringing thing? E.g.: are there latent hang-ups about getting your junk out in the view of others? Suppressed homophobia or fighting inner urges? I just wonder why.

• Shower in the bank of four but don’t take your swimmers off. – Mostly Asian guys seem to do this. Does look a shade pervy when hand is thrust into front of budgie-smugglers and vigorous soaping is undertaken. This changes to comical as they work their hand around to clean their bum. Houdini would have been jealous of the contortionist goings on to achieve this.

After my pseudo-scientific observations I can conclude, unsurprisingly, that there seems to be a wide variety of male showering practises, driven primarily by cultural background. Hardly a topic for historical research into the whys and wherefores as I can’t imagine the words used when trying to put together a proposal for research that wouldn’t lead to many arched eyebrows.