Cringe feeling over car washes back in the day

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NaturalForty@reddit

Did they think about the bait? Of course they did, they were actively counting on it.

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sactownbwoy@reddit

In marching band we did some car washes. Non of the girls were in bikinis. Everyone wore our band shirts (guys and girsl) and shorts.

We were just raising money for band camp and trips. Wrestl8ng we didn't do car washes, probably should have, were broke. I'm sure some of the other sports did, but I don't recall any of the girls out there in bikinis.

I do recall one time for band we partnered with one of the local restaurants to be valet and servers. I was a valet and being one if the few people that could comfortably drive a stick (surprisingly this was around '95-'96) I got to park some really nice sports cars.

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CodeNameFrumious@reddit

What about that one time at band camp?

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VanillaCola79@reddit

In my little hometown the high school cheerleaders also ran a fireworks stand during the 4th of July holiday. Too bad I was gay. They brought their folding lawn chairs and towels, lied out covered in baby oil in front of the stand.

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Entire-Flower1259@reddit

Now if it had been the wrestling team…

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TheSwedishEagle@reddit

gif

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TheSwedishEagle@reddit

I saw one the other day. Older teen girl (17? 18?) wearing a crop top and jean shorts holding a sign. I couldn't help but look if only for a second. I felt like a predator. I can only imagine if I had actually gotten the car wash.

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Grand_Taste_8737@reddit

I thought the "topless" car wash was pretty cool until I realized they simply didn't wash the top of the car. Lol

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R0CK1TMAN1@reddit

I loved the high school cheerleaders washing my car when I was in school with them. Some of them wore bikinis but it really was like a mentos commercial you donate they spray some water here and there everyone laughed you move on. By today’s standards it would be a cancel corral but it was very not serious.

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CrankyDoo@reddit

Maybe because I went to a Catholic HS car washes with bikini clad girls was most definitely not a thing.

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WolfAtNeck@reddit

As a teen boy, I loved seeing it. Now as a guy over 50, I want no part in getting my car washed by the cheerleaders even if they are more dressed.

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Jld114@reddit

Yeah, I’m a woman and I’d only do it if my kid were participating.

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OldLifeguard-00@reddit

If my kid were participating… and it was a school event, I’d be asking questions to the party planning committee

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CeeTheWorld2023@reddit

All I remember, was they did a shit job washing my car….. always had to swing by car wash and rewash.

But yeahhhhh charity !

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Textiles_on_Main_St@reddit

Well thats still a thing that exists. lol. Goddamn kids never really get in there and scrub.

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D-Alembert@reddit

Probably better they don't scrub than they cluelessly scrub with something abrasive...

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bloviatingbloviator@reddit

We had these at my high school in my relatively small town. Probably over half of the male population of the town got their car washed, easily almost every high school boy with a car and most college dudes who knew about it got washes. Bikini tops were OK, but not bikini bottoms....so daisy dukes it was. The cheerleaders made a ton of money...they didn't have to do any other fundraisers.

The sponsors and administration looked the other way due to the amount of money coming in plus the fake concession to modesty about the "no bikini bottoms" thing. Not saying any of it was right or OK, just explaining how it happened.

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NeverEverMaybe0_0@reddit

Gym shorts, too.

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The_Info_Must_Flow@reddit

I thought "bait for creeps" was the whole idea?

Boobs part fools and their money very effectively, as human experience attests to, forever.

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NeverEverMaybe0_0@reddit

Why creeps? Sex sells to everyone; this is holy writ on Madison Avenue.

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Ivotedforher@reddit

Yeah, but who wore sunscreen?

Thats what I thought.

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ThatLiberalGirl@reddit (OP)

lol never have, why bother now? 😂

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bludknut@reddit

Skin cancer. Melanoma can be deadly

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OldSkooler1212@reddit

At a company I worked at that only had about 200 people in it, in a ten year or so period one guy died from melanoma in his 30s, and two 50 something guys died from it. The father of one my younger friends recently died from melanoma in his late 50s or early 60s.

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MysticKei@reddit

When it was suggested at my school, the organizer admitted he got the idea from a known p**n movie and most of the girls refused to participate. Rather than cancel the guys did the carwash in....costumes 🫣

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chamrockblarneystone@reddit

Bikini Car Wash was not porn! Grade C boobie movie

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MysticKei@reddit

It was a Debbie movie 😣

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oldirishfart@reddit

Did she do Dallas?

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MysticKei@reddit

I believe that's what she's known for

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in-a-microbus@reddit

In costumes! That's awesome

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CaterpillarDry2273@reddit

Lol I posted something about this before. I think about it all the time, as I was on the dance team and we had car washes in our bikinis. I'm pretty sure we had some creepy guys, but we were clueless. As a parent, I don't think I would want my daughter doing that now. I don't think they cared back then. I mean I had PE teacher who would sit in front of the girls locker room door waiting for us all to come out, and his giblets were always hanging out of his small 80's shorts.

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ThatLiberalGirl@reddit (OP)

I get what you mean about clueless. One of my good friends was secretly “dating” a 30 year old local man and we were all just blown away by how “cool” she was for having an older guy interested in her. Now I want to cry realizing what it really was.

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whiporee123@reddit

If you were clueless, and nothing happened, why does it matter who or why anyone was watching? Even if they were creeps they paid, the organization got the money it needed and no one was injured or even affected by the assumed motivations.

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LayerNo3634@reddit

We were all decked out in bikinis holding signs. Our parents never thought anything of it. We thought we were hot stuff...and all underage.

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Flashy-Winter-3803@reddit

We wore clothes over our suites.

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tanhauser_gates_@reddit

Married With Children has an episode with this exact scenario.

Yes it was nuts and barely shrouded in relevance. But all the cars were lined up yo "donate" to the cause.

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Mediocre-Berry-6257@reddit

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Sixstringthings@reddit

Shut yo mouth about My Lucille!

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Far-Squash7512@reddit

No, we only ever did them at church to raise money for youth camp, so everyone just wore normal shorts and t-shirts or maybe tank tops.

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Normal-Philosopher-8@reddit

We had car washes, but it was often co-ed, and bikinis were not required or even suggested. A few girls wore them, and a few body builders went topless. Most wore one pieces with shorts or halters/shorts. Guys wore jams with or without TV. People were generous - from your next door neighbor to the pTA moms to the occasional creep.

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Ray_The_Engineer@reddit

Guys look at girls in skimpy bikini's. I don't recall this being unknown when I was young, by either gender. The protocol was that we would "sneak" a look here and there, but not stare, because everyone knew it was rude.

If "creeps" are guys that looked, oh well. If you mean a sexual predator, I don't know, I don't recall everyone sitting around worrying about it.

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no1oneknowsy@reddit

It's not the bikini part it's the hs part I think that's the issue

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304libco@reddit

Ours was opposite. I remember teen girls being mad they couldn’t wear bikinis.

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monkey_monkey_monkey@reddit

They did know it was bait for the creeps, that's why they did it. Creeps will pay top dollar to watch underage girls and boys rub on their car

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pogulup@reddit

Sex sells. Capitalism baby!

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Hopfrogg@reddit

Geez that's right, yeah looking back, wow, what awful boomer adulting. Didn't seem that bad back in the 80s but wow, if some high school tried to do that today it would be a big scandal.

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Helpful-nothelpful@reddit

Back then we didn't over think things and no one was offended for someone else. It wasn't sexual it was just normal. No one was forced to participate.

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changelingcd@reddit

Yes, they thought about it, and that's why they did it. How to put this delicately? Hardly anybody back then even tried to pretend that high school students weren't sexually attractive to adult men, and they knew that putting on bikinis would cause those men to hand over money to gawk. Folks today try to see 16 year-olds as children. Back then, songs, movies, TV, and everything else basically sold them as identical to 20 year-olds.

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Turbulent_Tale6497@reddit

Our high school totally did a Topless Car Wash with girls in bikini tops standing at the street corners, trying to attract people in. Of course the "topless" was "we won't wash the top of your car," but clearly the advertising wasn't even a little bit subtle

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Hungry-Violinist-729@reddit

Where I'm from they still wear bikinis for car wash fundraisers. Tends to be the dance team and cheerleaders.

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LazyOldCat@reddit

And it’s almost brat fry season!

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ted_anderson@reddit

We did a lot of car washes and we had a couple of guys suggest that we could get more people that way but that idea never really crossed our radar. Because you will get a little wet when washing cars but it's not like an 80's movie where everyone is spraying each other with the hose and laughing about it.

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ABrightOrange@reddit

Definitely. Like another post mentions, we could wear bikini tops with shorts. I was at one such fundraiser, and a friend kept doing a little strip tease like she was going to drop her shorts. We were visited by the cops to say we shouldn’t distract traffic like that. Cringe as hell

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IM_The_Liquor@reddit

I don’t think we ever had a highschool car wash fundraiser… if we did, it would have been supervised with a dress code standard for sure (girls weren’t allow to wear a 2-piece to swimming class in gym class, I can’t imagine bikini tops and Daisy Dukes would have flown to raise money for whatever). That being said, I live in a place that’s a frozen wasteland 50% of the year… so car washes without a heated garage bay aren’t all that popular anyway…

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59apache01@reddit

My high school and college didn't do them, so I can't say. Of course that might be because most of the girls at my schools had a beer gut and a car wash wouldn't have brought in a big crowd!

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Quintipluar@reddit

I saw it a lot on college campuses. Not high schools; that would be not okay, even back then. But if they are adults then I don't see the problem. The skimpy outfits are because sex sells, like it or not. Sex will always sell as long as there are humans with hormones.

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Sudden_Idea9384@reddit

When I was in college (second time), some girls worked at a local car wash the skimpier they dressed the more tips they got. This was in 2005.

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OldDudeOpinion@reddit

Your parent having an opinion wouldn’t have mattered….you would have done it your way anyway. We were raised so independent it made us tough to manage.

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ThatLiberalGirl@reddit (OP)

I guess you’re not wrong.

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