Wrong.
While on the face of it hidden away from female eyes, whoever designed the boys' changing room at my secondary school didn't take account of preteen and teenage behavour. There were two crucial flaws in its layout. This needs a bit of description, but bear (bare?) with me.
You would pass through the changing room door to a small entrance area, with an equipment store to the left and a privacy wall to the right, shielding the rest of the changing room from view. A gap at the far end of this partition led into the main changing area, a single big open space with lots of benches. At the far corner was an open doorway which led into the shower block. This was another open space with shower heads dotted around most of the walls and a narrow dry area to one side for hanging towels. You couldn't see into the shower block without passing way beyond the privacy wall. This setup left no privacy to speak of, for boys who were shy around each other, but it was safe enough from prying outside eyes. In theory.
Flaw number 1: The girls PE classes sometimes used the equipment store too.
Strangely, there was never any shortage of girls volunteering to take things to and from the equipment store at the start and end of their classes. If they used a lot of kit, it might sometimes even take two volunteers.
Did anyone really think that, having been given permission to enter the boys' changing room, adolescent girls would be able to resist stepping just a few feet further and having a quick peek around the end of the privacy wall? If they timed it right, they might catch sight of their male classmates in their underwear, or even less if they caught them heading to or from the showers and drying off before getting dressed. Who knows whether our teachers had a naïve view of their female students' innocence, or whether they just didn't care?
Often boys would notice a girl (or girls) having a look around that wall, but sometimes a quiet figure, partially hidden, could go mostly unnoticed amid the bustle of a full changing room. I remember one guy stood naked, chatting casually after his shower, blissfully unaware he was giving a full rear view of his nudity from head to foot to two girls stood less than six feet behind him (one of whom was his sister, which may have made it worse!)
By contrast, one of my classmates was sat naked once on a bench directly facing that entrance, his legs spread slightly apart. He saw a girl peer in a second after she saw him. He yelped and buried his exposed crotch with his towel. He was self-conscious about being quite small down there and was understandably shocked at a girl seeing it. As she ran off laughing, he let out a cry of absolute anguish, "I've been seen! BARE!!!"
Flaw number 2: Our genius school building designer decided the shower block needed a fire exit.
Yep, there was a fire door leading directly from the dry side of the shower block into one of the school halls. If the door was open, you could see the entire shower area and any boys showering in it from outside. Since the door could only be opened from inside the showers, this was thought not to be a problem. It's not like anyone out in the hallway could open it and take a peek. This did not, however, take account of the willingness of juvenile boys to prank each other.
The classic movie/TV scenario with this set-up would be to push some poor, unsuspecting boy out naked into the hallway, then shut the door behind him, leaving him without any cover and unable to get back in. Nothing that extreme ever happened to my knowledge, although I knew a couple of bullies who certainly threatened it, and the thought that it might happen to you was terrifying enough.
What did often happen though, was some guy or other who was at least partially clothed would run through the dry area and fling the door wide open when other boys were in the showers. Most times there'd be no one in the hall outside, we'd all laugh about what if someone had been there, the door would be hastily closed and the offender might have water thrown at them in revenge. You play that kind of roulette game enough times though, and sometimes someone is going to get seen.
Probably the most extreme incident of this I witnessed was when I was part of a class passing through the hall. The fire door was wide open and a couple of boys from another class were holding a third boy prisoner, totally naked with his arms spread, unable to cover. He was thrashing around to get free, which of course made everything between his legs thrash around as well. He had quite a lot to thrash around too. I don't know how many people saw before he was able to cover, but it must've been several. As we moved down the hall, the girl immediately behind me grinned and said, "Now there's something I didn't need to see!" I suggested no one had forced her to look, but she retorted, "I had to, I couldn't help it!"
