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Nudity in the Locker Room

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Clarissa

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A blogger says women who prance around the shared locker room naked bother her and adds:

I know my uncomfortableness might sound like I have body issues but I am very comfortable with my body (most days) but I still think my private parts should not be expose anywhere, even in women’s only locker room.

No, dear blogger, you don’t have body issues. What you have is a high degree of respect for your personal boundaries and any attempt to violate them disturbs you. And that is very normal and healthy.

Nobody has the right to inflict their nakedness on us without our explicit consent. Wanting to work out at a gym does not equal consent. Nothing equals consent. Somehow it’s supposed to be less intrusive when people of the same gender with us wave their body parts around us than people of another gender. I honestly don’t see much difference, though.

Now that I go to the gym, I have also noticed that, in spite of the many opportunities my gym provides to get changed behind a curtain, some people still choose to turn their nakedness into a public spectacle. I find that rude and obnoxious.

The need to strip in front of strangers who have not asked you to do so is not extremely healthy, by the way.

59 responses to “Nudity in the Locker Room”

  1. Pika Avatar
    Pika

    I find gym nudity entirely culture-dependent. If you ever go to a gym in Scandinavia, there is no way to avoid it, because the showers are open (faucets on the walls of a room with nothing separating the showers). And noone bats an eye. In southern Europe however, there is usually a separate shower + changing room for each person with a door that can be closed or a curtain to drag over the shower entrance. In UK, it’s kind of half in-between these two extermes: there is a separate room with cubicles for each shower, but you can not close the cubicle, so you are only half-protected. It really just depends on where you are and I find it best to do as the locals do.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Notice how much this depends on the overall sexual health of a culture: Southern Europe is the healthiest of the bunch (because of the climate), the UK is somewhere in the middle, and the Scandinavian countries with the biggest issues in this area.

      And in Russia there is an entire culture of banya where groups of people wash each other and beat each other with birch-twig bunches. Supposedly, this is done for cleanliness but given the extremely poor sexual health in the country, we can all guess what purpose this tradition serves.

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      1. David Bellamy Avatar
        David Bellamy

        “… the Scandinavian countries with the biggest issues in this area.”

        Really? I have always had exactly the opposite impression.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Have you heard of crowds of people traveling to Norway for the purposes of sexual tourism? 🙂 No, it’s just the opposite. Norwegians and Swedes travel to Spain, Italy and Turkey for the purposes of sexual tourism.

          I just imagined somebody thinking, “I want some good sexy time, so let me go to Oslo.” 🙂 No, it doesn’t really work. 🙂 🙂

          From what I hear, Swedes are now outlawing prostitution, so things are getting even worse.

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      2. Stille (@aperfectbalance) Avatar
        Stille (@aperfectbalance)

        Worse than outlawing it, they’ve outlawed frequenting prostitutes but not prostitution itself. This makes prostitutes less safe than they were before since now screening for clients is much harder and the clients are all non-law-abiding types.

        What’s the connection between climate and sexual health, by the way?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Direct sunlight assists in the production of an essential vitamin that helps lower depression and heighten libido. This is why people in colder countries have the highest suicide rates and people in the warmest countries report the highest degrees of happiness. And the gap in material well-being does nothing to reverse these numbers.

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      3. Stille (@aperfectbalance) Avatar
        Stille (@aperfectbalance)

        Vitamin D supplements sound even more awesome than before then.

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  2. Evelina Anville Avatar
    Evelina Anville

    I guess I find it difficult to see what’s so disturbing about this. If I was at work in my office, nudity would bother me.It would even bother me on the floor of the gym itself. But in a locker room? I guess it’s just a different space…….Some women are very very free with their nudity and it does make me chuckle. I don’t walk about naked at the gym. It feels too strange to me. But I certainly change in the locker room at the gym. I change from my regular bra to my sports bra, change from my street clothes to my gym clothes, go from gym clothes into a large towel to shower etc etc. It’s so much easier to change near the lockers then it is to cart all your clothes back and forth from the shower to the locker. And at the end of the day, it’s just a body. Do you feel the same way about topless beaches in Europe? Those don’t bother me at all.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      We have separate little rooms with curtains right where the lockers are, so this is definitely not about convenience. And even if it were, I don’t see convenience as a convincing argument. We don’t walk naked in the streets, no matter how convenient it might be in hot weather.

      A nudist beach is absolutely fine, I’d never have a problem with it because everybody explicitly consents to be there. But the moment one person decides to inflict his or her body parts on others without seeking their consent, that’s a problem.

      Or take naked parties. Id never go, but if people want to attend them, great. However, if at a regular party one person decides to strip because it’s more convenient or he digs doing that, then it’s not OK.

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      1. Robin Lionheart Avatar
        Robin Lionheart

        You would never have a problem with nudist beaches “because everybody explicitly consents to be there”… unlike those beachside locker rooms that unwilling people keep getting dragged into.

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    2. Z Avatar
      Z

      I do it and am not offended by it but I am from Berkeley. http://recsports.berkeley.edu/facilities/rec-centers/hearst-gym/ … We are sexually unhealthy and you can tell because we were studying on the nude sundeck and then “parading” through the gym to check out a nondescript black swimsuit so we could go up and swim … we could have brought parangs, I guess, but it would have meant having one more thing to carry around campus all day. 😉 Seriously: I never reacted to anyone being naked in the locker room as inflicting their body on me. I did think, when introduced to these naked locker rooms in junior high, that it was a kind of assault on the person forced to be naked. That is because it was required; later on I only went to locker rooms by choice, and there were no spying teachers.

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  3. Ellie Avatar
    Ellie

    I change quickly and discreetly for this reason. Most people are respectful at my gym and although there is nudity, it is easy to avert your eyes as you know where to expect it.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      We also have mostly normal people at my gym. But in Montreal I remember this being a constant issue. Some women seemed to come to the gym exclusively to saunter purposelessly around the locker room naked.

      Again, it’s cold, there isn’t enough soon, so people’s sexual health suffers.

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  4. musteryou Avatar
    musteryou

    It was necessary in bootcamp. And one had to have a very quick shower, too, in under three minutes.

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  5. ladyleahjane Avatar
    ladyleahjane

    My best friend and I have noticed this in our recent trips to the gym (we go every other day). She’s Nuu-Chah-Nulth and uses the changerooms, as do I, but none of the other people in the locker room use a change room. We both come from cultures where being nude around others is generally not acceptable, but interestingly, conversing about topics that are considered more taboo in larger Canadian culture is fine with us. We’ll talk about sex and bodily functions with each other comfortably, but other people think we’re unusual for our lack of discomfort around the topics.

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  6. good enough professor Avatar
    good enough professor

    Well, not exactly bootcamp, but I did hard time in boarding school as a highly selfconscious teenager, with vigorous required afternoon physical activity and required “dressing for dinner” and a 20 minute interval between the two involving a communal showerheads-out-of-the-wall bathroom. It cured me of my body consciousness far more effectively than any books and lectures on self-esteem and left me unable to give a damn who sees me in the locker room (and the one I would use–if I could actually get myself to the gym–is basically benches-in-front-of-lockers, with few provisions for privacy). I get in, I get changed, I get out. It’s never really occurred to me before reading this post to consider other people’s nudity. Once I realized at 14 that everyone was as funny looking naked as I was–that there were no perfect bodies, really–I lost interest. But maybe the nerdy-centric gyms I’ve used over the years just didn’t have people interested in displaying themselves in this noticeably obnoxious way?

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  7. John Hayden Avatar
    John Hayden

    Far as I know, the typical male locker room provides little or no privacy. Men simply change quickly in front of locker and shower quickly. I think many of us are a little uncomfortable with it, but it’s what you expect in a men’s locker room. General etiquette is no gawking.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Yes, I just discovered from my husband that the male locker at our gym doesn’t have any rooms with curtains. I’m from a different culture, so I don’t know what this means. I know that for my father, for instance, it is easier to face a firing squad than to change in a male locker room without a curtain.

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      1. Z Avatar
        Z

        My source on this says that what he finds inappropriate is senior faculty striking up professional conversations with junior faculty while naked.

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      2. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “so I don’t know what this means”

        It means that in a place where lots of men take their clothes off, they don’t want there to be any….. rendezvous points. The less privacy the more things stay on the up and up (so to speak….).

        I’m not sure if this is US in origin or an inheritance of the English boarding school system.

        I rememberthat in the 7th grade (12 yrs old) we were expected to start dressing out for PE (and shower after) and that the boys were just expected to go ahead and do it and as little thought was given to how we felt about the process as possible.

        Once while overhearing some teachers talk I gathered that there were…. issues involved with the girls (lots of drama about having to undress around other girls or female teachers) and dealing with it took a lot of time.

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    2. Tim Avatar
      Tim

      We usually have the choice between a shared lockerroom and single changerooms. I usually take the shared room, because it is quicker. I think the appropriateness of the behaviour of the men in these rooms is mostly determined by their age (or something that correlates with it).

      Younger man usually change quickly and without much talking, while older gentlemen are usually taking more time gossiping with other older men. The worst I have ever witnessed was some old bloke propping up his leg on a bench so he could comfortably use his hair-dryer on his balls.

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      1. John Hayden Avatar
        John Hayden

        Yes, the older a man gets, and/or if he plays team sports and is therefore in locker rooms on an almost daily basis, the more accustomed you get to the locker room atmosphere. On teams that dress together daily, the atmosphere becomes very informal, and everyone simply accepts full nudity in the showers and partial nudity everywhere in the locker room as part of the daily routine. Witness the scene in Bull Durham where the manager gives a post-game lecture to a shower room full of naked players.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Team sports are the most salient demonstrations of homosociality. Often, it drifts into the realm of homoeroticism.

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          1. John Hayden Avatar
            John Hayden

            True. In most team situations, I think blatant sexuality has been off-limits, just as in an office or workplace. However, over-the-line behavior sometimes happens, probably more often in workplaces where people are clothed than in locker rooms. acceptance of homosexuality has increased greatly in recent years, so norms of behavior may be changing as well. I haven’t been in many locker rooms where people know each other well in years, so I don’t know.

            In public locker rooms where people are mostly strangers who just happen to be working out at the same time, men generally ignore each other in an effort to avoid trouble. On very rare occasions, someone might be trying to attract attention, and they are usually ignored.

            There was a lot of controversy 20 or 30 years ago about female reporters being allowed in male locker rooms. I think this was largely due to misunderstanding. Most women didn’t realize how casual male teams are when dressing and showering.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              “acceptance of homosexuality has increased greatly in recent years, so norms of behavior may be changing as well”

              – I haven’t watched TV for a while but the other day I was at the gym and caught a glimpse of a daytime soap opera. There were two guys in bed, kissing. And it was just one scene among many, perfectly normal. I was very happy.

              “There was a lot of controversy 20 or 30 years ago about female reporters being allowed in male locker rooms. I think this was largely due to misunderstanding. Most women didn’t realize how casual male teams are when dressing and showering.”

              – Fascinating.

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  8. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    Youre in a locker change room. Not too big of a deal for me, but like you, I dont have body issues either. 😉

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  9. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    Team sports are the most salient demonstrations of homosociality. Often, it drifts into the realm of homoeroticism.(Clarissa)

    Sure I can just imagine after the superbowl these guys are thinking about jumping each other.

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    1. Evelina Anville Avatar
      Evelina Anville

      I’m not sure if you are being sarcastic or not but I think that is EXACTLY how many of the players feel.

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      1. Titfortat Avatar
        Titfortat

        @Evelina

        You honestly think MANY of the players are wanting to have sex with each other after the game?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          No, that’s the entire point: they get it out of their systems DURING the game. Which is the purpose of the game.

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      2. Titfortat Avatar
        Titfortat

        @Clarissa

        Have you ever played a team sport? Are you secretly homosexual or bisexual?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          “Have you ever played a team sport? Are you secretly homosexual or bisexual?”

          – No, do you really have to ask? The idea of me and team sports is risible. 🙂 But Freud believed that we are all bisexual by nature. We are simply repressed.

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            Oh no, I forgot! I did play soccer as a kid, but I played with boys and the biggest fun of the game was beating them up. 🙂 They totally loved it. 🙂 This was a big life lesson.

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      3. Titfortat Avatar
        Titfortat

        Just as I thought, youre Bi. 😉

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Who are we to argue with Freud? 🙂

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      If superbowl is american football, then I have to tell you, the first time I saw a game on TV, I wondered since when such explicitly gay shows were airing during the daytime.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        I take it you haven’t seen profesional wrestling…

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  10. Sarah S Avatar
    Sarah S

    You do realize that same gendered nudity in locker rooms in Russia is completely normal, and Russia is one of the most anti-gay countries in the world, don’t you?

    I am 100% comfortable with being nude in a women’s locker room, and with seeing other women nude. And I have zero sexual desire toward women.

    In my opinion it’s women who can’t separate nudity from sex that are the ones who hide in a dirty toilet stall to change clothes. And the women who realize that there’s no direct connection between nudity and sex that will freely change and shower in the presence of other females.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “You do realize that same gendered nudity in locker rooms in Russia is completely normal, and Russia is one of the most anti-gay countries in the world, don’t you?”

      – That’s exactly how this works. People can’t legitimately explore their attraction to people of the same gender, so they substitute with these socially approved homoerotic practices.

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  11. Sarah S Avatar
    Sarah S

    Well, as I said I see nothing wrong with women being nude in the presence of each other in a non-sexual situation like showering and changing in a locker room. And I have zero sexual attraction to females. I never go out of my way to look at nude women. But it’s certainly no skin off my nose if other women are nude while I’m in the locker room. And I am mature enough (And was mature enough at age 8) to know that there’s no reason for me to have to hide from other women while I shower and change.

    My own mother has never felt any need to hide her nudity from me, and there was never anything remotely sexual about it.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “My own mother has never felt any need to hide her nudity from me”

      – Are you serious? Meaning that in adolescence and adulthood she considered it normal to walk around naked in your presence? I’m so sorry, so very sorry. I have no words.

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  12. Sarah S Avatar
    Sarah S

    My mom did not walk around the house nude for no reason. However, there was absolutely no reason to worry if here own daughter happened to catch a glimpse of her nude as she walked from the bathroom to her bedroom after she showered. Her if she was drying off after she showered and I had to pee really bad, there was no need to hide from her own daughter. I really don’t want to seem argumentative. Especially on your own blog. But I feel sorry for girls that come from such repressed families that mothers and daughters or sisters are afraid for their own loved (female) relative to catch a glimpse of them nude. I’ve never heard anyone else ever say that there’s anything wrong with a daughter briefly seeing her own mother nude in a non-sexual way. If I came from a family that was that afraid of their own relatives, I’d have to go into counselling.

    It’s not healthy for a girl to fear her own mother like that.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Note that the words “fear” and “afraid” are brought into this context by you. You used them 3 times in quite a short comment. And that, my friend, is very telling in and of itself.

      “If I came from a family that was that afraid of their own relatives, I’d have to go into counselling.”

      – Do you really think people abstain from being naked around their relatives because of fear? Is that the only reason they could have?

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        And, by the way, what’s wrong with being argumentative?

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  13. Sarah S Avatar
    Sarah S

    I’ll make this my last post, as I don’t feel that you’re very happy with my posting here. However, I have to ask. Did you not shower in gym class when you were in school? Even the most shy girls in my junior high gym classes grew comfortable with the group showers after a while. Some of us never had a problem with it at all, seeing as we were all girls with the same parts. No one had anything that the others didn’t have as well.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “Did you not shower in gym class when you were in school? ”

      – I grew up in the USSR. 🙂 🙂 Of course, we didn’t have showers.

      ” Some of us never had a problem with it at all, seeing as we were all girls with the same parts. No one had anything that the others didn’t have as well.”

      – According to this logic, there should be no problem with walking everywhere naked, weather permitting. It isn’t like you have any body parts that somebody hasn’t seen on other women, right? And I’m guessing that the ‘some of us” in your comment were kids whose boundaries were routinely violated by careless parents.

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  14. Sarah S Avatar
    Sarah S

    Sorry, I know I just said that that last post was my last post here. However.

    I see that you mentioned female reporters entering male locker rooms. My husband has a major problem with that, as he feels that THAT is a violation of the male athletes rights and privacy. If you’re so upset about “Having” to see nude women in a health club locker room? Are you upset enough to try to put a stop to women entering men’s locker rooms against their will? I have to agree with my husband on that issue. I have no respect for women who violate men’s privacy like that. Just as I would if men entered women’s locker rooms.

    Did schools not have gym classes in the USSR?

    And as for the not arguing thing. I’m just trying to show some respect to you on your blog.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Well, blogs exist for arguing and debating. Good blogs, at least. 🙂

      “Are you upset enough to try to put a stop to women entering men’s locker rooms against their will? I have to agree with my husband on that issue. I have no respect for women who violate men’s privacy like that.”

      – Of course. I think he is absolutely right.

      “Did schools not have gym classes in the USSR?”

      – Oh yes, we had gym. Just no showers. It’s the USSR, what can I say.

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  15. Sarah S Avatar
    Sarah S

    Sorry. One more post.

    I just came across this article, and I’d love to get your opinion on it.
    http://www.utne.com/community/bathing-beauties.aspx

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    1. Stille (@aperfectbalance) Avatar
      Stille (@aperfectbalance)

      No need to apologize, Sarah, nobody is asking you to stop.

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  16. titfortat Avatar
    titfortat

    Its pretty simple. For some, explicit nudity in certain enviroments is an invasion of their privacy and frowned upon(Clarissa). For others, not so much(Sarah).

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      What is interesting is not that a difference exists but what causes it to exist.

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  17. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    I think I can see why Sarah feels the way she does considering her upbringing. Would the same be true for you?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      We are all a product of our upbringing, and, aside from the gym showers, mine was very similar to hers.

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  18. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    Well, looks like we have an answer. 😉
    I was a little like you when I was younger. Now turning 50(july) I could care less what people wear or don’t wear in the locker room.

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  19. Sarah S Avatar
    Sarah S

    I went to my gym tonight, and I decided to spend a few extra minutes nude after I showered, in your honor. LOL
    In all seriousness, I did go out of my way tonight to pay attention to the clothed women in the locker room. I wanted to see their reactions to those of us who were nude at certain points. Just to see if they seemed upset by the nudity. At times I was dressed while other women were nude, and I watched to see the reaction of the clothed women to the nude women. I didn’t see any reaction at all. No-one was watching anyone else.
    Many of the women at the gym do their hair and makeup nude while standing in front of the mirror. And quite often there are women in robes standing there a few feet away doing their hair and makeup. I saw one of the women in robes carrying on a conversation with one of the nude women. They just did their hair and makeup the same as they would if both of them were fully dressed.

    I was hoping to get your opinion on that article that I gave a link to.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “Many of the women at the gym do their hair and makeup nude while standing in front of the mirror.”

      – Given that this defeats the whole idea of hair and makeup, it is obvious that their goals lies far outside personal grooming. Which is exactly what I was saying.

      “I was hoping to get your opinion on that article that I gave a link to.”

      – I’m sorry, I get many comments, so I forget which is which. Could you give me the link again?

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  20. Sarah S Avatar
    Sarah S

    I don’t personally do the naked hair and makeup routine. But I can understand why some women do. I’ve been tempted to do it myself at times. The reason to do it is that because the locker room is kept so warm for obvious reasons, and all of the steam from the showers makes it even hotter and stickier. And when you get dressed right after a shower, and then you stay in the locker room doing your hair and makeup, you start to sweat all over again. Which defeats the purpose of the shower. Also, many ladies will apply body lotion after they shower, and they are trying to have the lotion dry before getting dressed.

    Here’s the link again for that article.

    http://www.utne.com/community/bathing-beauties.aspx

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      The article glorifies pedophilia using the oldest line used by pedophiles across the world. “Why are you so uptight? You don’t want to come off as a prude, do you? You are special so it’s ok.” Any normal parent would sue.

      Absolutely disgusting

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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