I've come to the conclusion that the change in the men's locker room is a strange brew: increased paranoia by narrow-minded men about being around other naked men and the fright of being compared in our increasingly body-aware society; the effects of over-protective mothers (the so-called helicopter moms) who are over reacting to the sensationalized cable-news driven obsession with each and every adult pedophile; and the almost ubiquitous absent fathers, who by their absence haven't socialized their sons into the fraternity of men.
Another reader:
I also see a territorial aspect to it. Are you going to squeeze past a naked dude on your way to your locker? No, you're going to go around or wait until he moves or puts something on. You notice that he doesn't just keep to their area – he likes to spread out either in front of their locker or in the steam room or the sauna. It gives him some control over other people in the room. This is some pecking order ritual from days gone by.
Another looks to the other end of the locker room:
As a college professor, more often than not, students will pee in a stall rather than use a urinal.
They're not sitting; they just won't stand at a urinal. (There would have been no end to the teasing if a guy did that when I was in school.) I've tried to account for number of people in the bathroom, spacing at the urinals, my presence, etc., but it doesn't seem to matter: Younger guys not only change clothes under a towel, they avoid urinals, too.
Kids these days are just really uptight about their bodies.
Another:
At the risk of sounding like an old man shaking my fist and exclaiming "Kids today!": What kind of world is it where teenagers are unfazed by the viewing of the most graphic and over the top pornography, but are so puritanical about locker room nudity?
Another:
Leave it to us Dish readers to think too hard about something very simple, and then resort to calling people homophobes or just plain sexist to address it. Look, I'm a straight guy. But I don't find men unattractive in general; I was openly bisexual in high school and made out with a few dudes here and there. I've even found myself ogling more than a few guys walking past me on the street, or staring in awe at Jon Hamm's jawline. But I'm just going to say it: dicks are ugly.
I don't like looking at them. I don't like the old-dude-at-the-gym's; I don't like Cillian Murphy's in 28 Days Later; I don't like Ron Jeremy's (but I do respect it); and I don't even like looking at my own. If dicks were an animal at a petting zoo, parents would shield their children from them. They would be tested on in laboratories in place of rats and nobody would give a damn. And its female counterpart isn't anything to write home about, either. Vaginas, by themselves, look like a sketch H.R. Giger threw away right before coming up with the facehuggers from Alien. But in a locker room, a dick is hard to miss, while I don't imagine there are that many women sitting down, legs akimbo, wordlessly calling attention to their crotches.
I love the human body in general, I find it fascinating and on a great body I won't shy away if there's a dick or vagina in the shot. I'm not squeamish; I'm not afraid of sex; I'm not a sexist/homophobe/Puritan/Santorumite. I just don't like dicks. Why can't I not like dicks?
A much less uptight reader:
I am a married straight male who attended college in the '90s. I was also in a fraternity, in a house that had communal showers. Nudity was never a big deal. But we even went so far as to have what we called "shower parties," which basically consisted of bringing in some chairs and cases of beer, and washing (not each other, mind you) in between Bud Lights. We got ready for going out on the town, and got our pre-game buzz on all at the same time. Hell, sometimes we'd just stay in and get drunk there.
Sorority girls at the time (all of whom had separate shower stalls in their houses) always gave us strange looks at first after hearing about these parties, and my wife (in jest) still says our fraternity had the gayest bunch of straight guys she ever knew. And, our response was always, "Hey, don't knock it till you've tried it!" (and, yes, we got the occasional gal to join in, which was always cool).
My college friends and I still laugh about those days and those parties, and I'd wager if we got together now back in that house, someone would still throw out the idea of having one. So, I tend to agree with those who think this is only an issue with people who simply were never forced to deal with nudity, like those in the military, fraternities or athletic teams were.
One more:
I've been reading the comments, noticing how many of the younger men seem to think they're objects of my gay affection in a locker room. They are not. What I will say, and it's why I love the YMCAs in New York, where communal showers are still the norm, is that being around such a diverse set of male bodies, specifically naked males bodies (the Y is great for that: young, old, fat, bald, hairy – we're all there in the mix) helped me tremendously when I was having body image issues. I thought I was fat and ugly. It was by being around the old guys who were comfortable in their own, very revealed skin, that I began to accept my own body, to see beauty in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder was me.
We will all get old if we're lucky, and I say thanks to the old coots who couldn't care less what the guy at the next locker thinks.
The Dish 