As if I needed another reason to hate George W. Bush September 21, 2006 zuzu NO TOWELS IN MY GYM TODAY.
I don’t know what he was doing around here (prolly the UN), but the laundry truck was not allowed near the building. Towels ran out at about 5:30. I got there at 6:30. This is the second time I’ve had a gym-related run-in with GWB. The first was during the RNC, when I got stuck on the wrong side of Lexington after leaving my gym just as he was scheduled to come through. I flipped off the limo.
That’s nothing; a Manhattan location of my gym closed the men’s locker room the last time I was there. Sorta defeats the purpose of the whole “use your pass to work out during a break at work!” thing.
That’s nothing; a Manhattan location of my gym closed the men’s locker room the last time I was there. NYSC? That’s the one I go to. Mine’s in the Met Life building.
I went to the gym Tuesday morning before class and forgot flip-flops for the shower. Since I have a serious fear of germs and the gym floor is nasty, I showered in my socks. Everyone looked at my like I was crazy. And to make it worse, I’m already the crazy locker room girl who gets completely naked and doesn’t give a shit — I have to lotion up, you know? But freshman girls do NOT like that at all. So this time, I was crazy naked girl who was also showering in socks. Whoops.
But freshman girls do NOT like that at all. Jill, I feel like I should have read some background on this or heard it from a friend, but I don’t know anything about women’s locker-room norms. What is it that younger women take issue with? I’m guessing that your nudity highlights that they are so self-conscious that they don’t want to be naked where other women can evaluate them. But I don’t really know.
It’s probably unfair of me to target the freshmen. Undergrad women in general, it seems, get extremely uncomfortable with locker room nudity. At the NYU gym, there are undergrads, grad students, professors and community members, and I tend to use the locker room closest to the pool, so you get lots of swimmers in there with the women who are doing non-pool exercise. As a general rule, the older women change into their suits without hesitation, and don’t mind getting completely naked after they’re done showering. The younger women often change in the bathroom stalls, or not at all. I swim occassionally, and when I work out in the mornings I have to shower before I go to class, so I end up changing in the locker room with them, and I have no problem getting completley undressed. But as soon as I do, there’s a general feeling of discomfort — the younger women either look shocked, or make concerted efforts to look away. A few years ago, there was even a letter to the editor of the NYU newspaper from an undergrad female complaining about the naked women in the locker room. It’s really strange. I’m not sure what the problem is.
a letter to the editor of the NYU newspaper from an undergrad female complaining about the naked women in the locker room. Pardon me if that sounds really, really crazy. If they are self-conscious and want to change in the stalls, that’s their choice (sad as it may be). But to object to other women changing at their lockers in the locker room? How could they even formulate an argument that your nudity adversely affects them (aside from, as I said, making them ashamed of their own self-consciousness)? What did the letter writer say the issue was?
While that’s probably true, Zuzu, I guess I thought it would be out-of-step for it to be outwardly directed in any overt way. I would expect women to 1) be really self-conscious in the presence of naked women; and 2) make nasty judgments about the bodies of other women; but not to say other women shouldn’t be naked in their presence. Hell, the whole culture is about the display of the bodies of women that fit narrow standards (and criticism of those that don’t).
A few years ago, there was even a letter to the editor of the NYU newspaper from an undergrad female complaining about the naked women in the locker room. WTF? Were there letters in response being like, “Um, what’s your problem?” Cause I sure hope so. The whole POINT of separate locker rooms is ’cause people get nekkid. Geez. It’s a vagina/butt/boobs, sweetheart, nothing that you haven’t seen before (one hopes, if you’re in the ladies’ locker room). I swear they won’t hurt you. Even religious conservatives usually have no problem with same-sex nudity (as long as there’s no funny business or sexual desire that accompanies the nudity). Maybe now that gays and lesbians are accepted as a natural part of the NYU community, some young women feel that the nudity in the dressing rooms is no longer “safe,” i.e., completely non-sexual. Not that there weren’t same sex people in gyms since they were invented, but now that they know they’re there, they feel squeamish? I don’t know. I’m rambling and grasping at straws to try to understand this strange, strange response.
When I was in junior high and high school, it was a locker-room sin to get naked in ANY way. Even taking your shirt off while wearing a bra or undershirt was enough to get you called a lesbian and ridiculed for weeks. Whenever I would watch movies about kids in school and there were scenes where they would all shower after gym class, I seriously did not understand it. Our changing rooms didn’t even *have* working showers and there was a general aura of fear regarding getting your gym clothes on, while showing the least amount of skin possible. I’m really glad I lost that really restrictive fear of nudity/being naked around other people. You don’t realize how stifling it is until you get out of it and look back to think “Wow, that’s a little crazy…”