A female version of this rant:
Listen, I’m not trying to insult anyone, since they’re at the gym to stay healthy and we’ll all get wrinkles, but I really don’t care to see ALL of that full-frontal nudity in the
locker room. I’m indifferent to people seeing me naked when I change and indifferent to the women around me who are my age (and changing just as quickly … why waste time?). However, older women, like older men it seems, luxuriate in their nudity. Maybe they just have more time to kill. Doesn’t matter: I’m still not a fan of being accosted by unruly amounts of grey pubic hair and saggy boobs while they walk around naked when their clothes are two feet away. Shower, but pick it up, ladies. Walk around naked in your own home.
Another writes:
Your most recent post on the subject ended with a question about women’s locker room experiences. I can’t speak for all ladies, but here’s mine.
As a teenager, I remember locker rooms were fairly modest. No female classmate or teammate, myself included, would go completely nude in the locker room – not due to any fears about perceived homosexuality, in my opinion, but because we were afraid the other girls would judge our weight or our body hair. Adult women (in the community locker rooms of the local swimming pool, for example) did not seem to worry about stripping down. I took this as a signal that the older you became, the less you should care about locker room nudity – a lesson that carries me through to today. Now that I’m a grown woman, I no longer worry about whether a woman is looking at my naked body in a locker room, whether in a judgmental or sexual manner. If they are getting an eyeful, good for them, I say. I’m not ashamed of what they might see.
I’ve seen other women run the gamut between nonchalant nudity and painfully complicated modesty in the locker room, and age doesn’t seem to be a determining factor. And as a queer, I can say that I’m not getting any thrills if I happen to see these women naked. It’s a locker room. You’re in there for maybe ten or twenty minutes, tops. Just get over it, men, if you are all as sensitive about it as these posts make it seem.
Another:
I’m a 54-year-old female and I walk to and from the showers naked at my gym. I did it when I was a hot 30-something and I still do it. Maybe now I’m a cautionary tale to the young ones: “As I have sagged you one day will, too … no matter how much you work out.”
So do you think the discomfort is in seeing what time does to the human body? I think it’s pretty healthy to realize that we are going to get older and saggier and just learn to deal with it. We used to live in multi-generational homes where young people helped care for the old ones, but we are shielded for all that now … except maybe occasionally at the gym?
A younger woman writes:
The generational thing definitely exists for women too. One of my first memories of being a freshman in college (in 2002) is waiting in line for a shower stall with a group of girls my own age while the seniors aquatic fitness class showered happily in the open. Nine years of gym attendance later, I’ve either aged or just seen the advantages of not worrying about it. When I’m exhausted from working out, worrying about how well I’m holding up the towel while I search from my other sock is besides the point.
To the extent that I do worry about it though, I will say lesbians are the furthest thing from my mind. Mostly, I don’t want other (presumably straight) women to see, and potentially judge, what kind of underwear I’m wearing, what kind of shape I’m in, what sags or doesn’t sag without a bra, or whether I put a high priority on shaving my armpits when it’s winter I’m not going to be wearing anything sleeveless anyways.
Actually let me amend that; the fear isn’t really of being judged. The time my two female coworkers and I all decided to go to a dance class together, we split like a bunch of billiard balls the second we entered the lockerroom to avoid having to take our shirts off in front of each other. I really don’t think it was because any of us suspected the others of being catty bitches. Seeing each other topless was just more personal and intimate than we wanted to be – not in a homophobic way, but more in the way that you don’t tell everyone about your love life either.
An older woman:
In my generation, college seemed the time when women made a conscious effort to get past nudity. I don’t know if this was a particularly ’70s thing, but being willing to walk around alocker room (or dorm bathroom) naked seemed to have an almost political “I’m not ashamed of my body even if I could do to lose a few pounds” feel.
One more reader:
As I get older, I care less and less about how other women see my body. Old women don’t seem to care very much about who sees their saggy heinies. It’s kind of refreshing, actually. I’m looking forward to not caring at all.
The Dish 