Swimming (Amateur)

Humans are one of the few species with the instinctive desire to swim without the instinctive ability to do so. Monkeys swim, both for practical purposes and recreationally, but they do so instinctively. Many mammals, from mice and dogs to elephants and moose, swim rec-reationally, but again their ability to do so is instinctive. Humans need to be taught—or to learn through trial and error—but they have the advantage of learning quickly, and of a broader range of motion in their limbs than most non-aquatic animals.

The four competitive swimming strokes are the butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and front crawl (freestyle).

The density of water is very near the density of the human body, which not only helps make the body buoyant but makes swimming an ideal form of aerobic exercise: the water supports much of the weight of the body, putting less stress on joints and load-bearing bones. Naturally, competitive swimming can lead to repetitive stress injuries, such as “swimmer's shoulder,” a tendinitis of the rotator cuff.

Different swimming strokes have developed over the years, and swimming was considered a fundamental skill both of the samurai in Japan and the knights of Medieval Europe. The close of the Middle Ages brought about a conservatism in Europe and a new height of body shame that discouraged swimming (which in many cultures had been performed naked). The fact that “swimsuit” and “bathing suit” are synonymous dates to an era when swimming was encouraged only as a form of bathing, and in the Victorian era, this self-consciousness and dislike of public displays of skin led to the use of the bathing machine.

Used primarily in Britain, where beaches were sex-segregated until 1901, the bathing machine was a small changing room on wheels, allowing bathers to change [Page 692]into a bathing suit, be wheeled out into the water, and bathe discreetly, with the bathing machine blocking any view from the shore or other bathers.

At the opposite end of that extreme is skinny dipping. Although swimming has been done naked through most of human history, “skinny dipping” really only refers to unclothed swimming after the adoption of the swimsuit. Among mixed company, skinny dipping may be a racy and forbidden activity, but need not be sexual; throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, it was often part of teenage sexual exploration. Same-sex skinny dipping is likely to be innocent and asexual, and especially in rural areas is often just a pragmatic concern.

Rural communities often have a “swimming hole”—a spot in a river or other running water that accommodates swimming, with a shore near enough the surface of the water to be easy to climb back onto. These are often picturesque locations, especially in nostalgic memory and the popular imagination. In the generations before fast-food restaurants, malls, and the like, a swimming hole was often a gathering spot for teenagers, particularly in the summer.

The urban equivalent of the swimming hole is the public pool, though public pools have lifeguards, rules, and parental supervision, making them characteristically different from the swimming holes of many small towns.

...