As the time passed and the day swimming approached it became apparent many of the young women had elaborate plans to either avoid the swimming altogether or try to cover up as much as possible. The girls in grade 9 and 10 were almost unanimous in their plans to wear T-shirts over their bathing suits: “I am going to find a really humungus T-shirt and then they won't be able to see so much.” The most startling example of the need to hide her body came from Barb, a grade 10 girl. Prior to going swimming she had arranged with her physical education teacher to accompany her to the side of the pool. She was going to jump in with her T-shirt and shorts on and then take her shorts off in the water and toss them to the teacher: "That way no one will see my bum."

Two girls in grade 11 told me that most of the young women in their class were going to say that they had forgotten their bathing suits and then play volleyball on the court beside the swimming pool. Then there were those, and quite a few of them, who were planning to skip the event all together. Some had planned to forget about the swimming excursion and go to school to attend their regularly scheduled classes. Others told of plans to get delayed by a flat tire, no gas, visiting grandmothers. You name it, they had probably thought about it as an excuse.

The feelings and actions of these young women support the conclusions reached by Scraton (1992): “The annual mixed swimming galas and athletic meetings were identified as a main focus of harassment. In these situations girl run the gauntlet of persistent comment on their and personal appearance and sexuality. While some girls respond by attempting to hide their bodies by dressing in loose clothing, many others opt out to avoid being the target of innuendo and sexist comment. Clearly the assumption about women's bodies, as objects to be looked at, admired and criticized are intensified in settings of mixed of activity, particularly during the sensitive years of adolescence” (pp.92-93).

In frustration I asked the different group of girls if they realized that this half day away from school was supposed to be a treat. This question was frequently met with a look of surprise and many suggestions of what they would rather do with a half day devoted to physical education. Many wanted to bike, walk the trail at the river or go to another pool and swim with just the girls. I also asked them if their teacher knew how they felt about the swimming? Their response: "Well last year when we went, most of us, all we did was wear our shorts and a T-shirt, and she asked us why we weren't going in. We just told her we didn't want to, but she didn't get the hint." However, I think their teacher did get the hint as the day before they were to go swimming she told the young women that they did not have to wear their bathing suits and swim if they didn't want to. This news was greeted with sighs of relief and lots of smiles.

When we were discussing the issue of swimming with the boys, I shared with the young women the following experience of a young woman in a physical education class in Ontario: “We were in phys-ed one day, and we were swimming and we came back in. We were soaking wet, and there was a line of guys down in the locker bay; they all had these numbers, and when you walked by they'd hold up a number for you, like you were a 3 or a 10 or whatever, but they never said anything. They just held up the number and put it do They were all sitting in a row... you had to walk through the main hall to get to the change rooms. I was really mad and I told them so ... they laughed” (Staton & Larkin, 1993, p.13).

I asked the young women if something like this could happen at Murdoch. Many of them said that it could easily happen and quite a few of the young women had stories of similar incidents. They all felt sympathy for the young women in the story but few expressed any feelings or anger towards the boys. Some offered comments such as “boys are just like that” or “boys are I like that until they grow up.”

After hearing the story, the young women became interested in discussing strategies they would have used to avoid walking through that hallway or ways in which they could minimize the pain of the encounter. Some decided they would go in pairs, others said that all the young women should walk through at once, still others wondered if there was an exit from the deck into the shower room that the young women the story could have taken. I do not recall one young woman feeling totally outraged at the behavior of the boys. None of them said that they would tell the teacher. Many were happy that the young woman in the story had told the boys off but most assured me that they could not have done that. They explained that if they said something to the boys, comments would have become more frequent and cruel.