Nudeiquette

I find when I go to the gym, there's a scattered etiquette about public nudity in the ladies' locker room. There are, of course, special changing areas reserved for the particularly modest. These often have either curtains or those doors of whatever foreign material is rarely seen outside of public bathrooms and retail centers. I personally shy away from these. This is not so much motivated by amoral immodesty on my part, as much as the fact that they resemble women's changing rooms. Well, they are changing rooms. But these mimic those particularly cheap clothing stores that always have that terrifying combination of bad light and warped mirror that could depict a perfect-10 model as a geriatric obese hag of a rhino, and  which otherwise remind me of traumatic moments attempting to suss out the horrible world of jeans sizing(!!!). These horrible little cubicles of shame are almost always used by the swimmers. People coming from the showers or just changing into their workout clothes don't generally bother with them and I'm pleased to be of their abstinent-ilk.

There seems to be an interesting stratification amongst the non-swimmers. Younger, more in-shape women are invariably more modest. Anyone can wander around in bra and undies (why not, most of our workout clothes provide less coverage anyways), but if the bathing-suit-parts need to be displayed, they tend to be: 1. displayed at an angle from any potential viewers. Wherever there are people talking, angle away from them at least three-quarters of the way. A nude back is much less rude than boobies. 2. Displayed piecemeal. Half a breast with a towel wrapped around the belly button somehow seems less naked than spread eagle nudity. 3. Flashed and covered as quickly as possible. 4. Done as anonymously as possible - never ever making conversation with anyone around you or acknowledging them (kind of how I imagine male behavior at a urinal - which clearly I do on a quotidian basis).

Age and, err, bodily-divergence-from-cultural-ideals-of-feminine beauty (down with the Patriarchy, I am woman hear me roar!) seem to have a liberalizing effect. Older, heavier women tend to be much more comfortable sharing their naughty bits for all the world to see - cellulite, stretch marks, hairy moles, novel steatopygic flops and flaps, and all. These thoroughly comfortable women will lounge splay-legged and chatting with their friends completely undressed. It's an interesting phenomenon. I like to think they feel they've been on this planet long enough they've earned this bit of shamelessness. If it weren't rude, I suppose I might even stare. In fact, I occasionally do. Bodies - the ones that don't resemble what we see frequently in mass media - are fascinating things. Perhaps that's their point, somehow. I have developed a certain aesthetic fondness for those wrinkles and oddities, far more intriguing than the airbrushed vapidity of our ideal beauty. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind being smooth and perfectly formed, and I do rather prefer to admire those little lines that show muscles instead of age... but there is something really exquisite about crumpled deflated cellulutic formations and all the textures of the human body. I immediately imagine it in wood, or charcoal. So yes, perhaps they know this - these women - and are happy to let me glance briefly in admiration for the years of trials, victories, and experience that have stamped themselves on these women's bodies.

But, back to modesty: FI find myself far more modest before a workout than after. Before a workout, I can change my entire outfit without flashing anything less benign than a section of rib. After a light workout, I usually might linger longer in underwear and maybe bobble a boob from time to time. After a long or hard workout, all bets are off. I am nowhere as shameless as the empowered old ladies, but the further complication involved in donning one outfit while taking another off, or of strategically balancing a towel, just eludes my Kentucky-Fried-Brain. At these points I do still angle away from any potential viewers, but with far less energy. I think to myself when I go into the gym that if I'm really comfortable enough to fish through my bag while standing topless after a long workout, than why would I care so much more at different times. I feel ultimately that it's due to our vague communal stance on locker-room nudity. Perhaps I too, feel that the right to full-asexual public display is something that must be earned. Somebody should get on that and set some Emily Post standards .

Another locker-room question that needs resolving is just how far ought one go in treating the locker-room as her own personal boudoir. I see women hovering in odd and awkward places with entire makeup bags full of product, two or three moisturizers, hair dryers, and all sorts of other odds and ends that vaguely resemble torture devices and have only crossed my path during a brief foray into the performing arts. Perhaps this is more odd than rude, but somehow I feel that locker rooms should be treated as a cycling space, each person utilizing the space quickly to allow a comfortable turn around and avoiding the awkwardness of trying to angle boobies away from a space packed to the brim with hair ironing glamour girls. I'm just saying...