I got used to showering around people in school. I also shared a bedroom with two brothers when I was little. It’s really not a big deal. I’m pretty sure you can get used to it. Of course, as Hello Again said, it would depend on how much you needed the bath.
I don’t recall claiming I made sense! But I do have a reason…the relative anonymity of many people is more comforting. If there’s only three, the focus is on all three of us.
But, again, as I have said, I’ve been raised extremely conservatively and was an only child to boot. For example: we didn’t wear bathrobes in our house - you came out of the bathroom fully dressed after your shower.
Ditto. The anonymity factor makes a difference. I’ll even take it a step further: I would be more comfortable being naked in a crowd of people I don’t know and would probably never see again than in front of any relatives or friends, including my brothers. Can’t quite explain that, but there it is.
Pardon the on-topic hijack, but I was watching an HBO documentary last night on Spencer Tunick’s large-scale nude photography, so your comment begs for questioning: do tell.
I was on the high school swim team, so we’d hit the showers at about the same time, but we kept our suits on. This was more to rinse the chlorine off our skin and get it out of our hair with shampoo. Saved the blondes turning green, but didn’t help a lot with our skin. I know I had perpetually dry skin those years despite lots of lotion. :eek:
That said, while intellectually I wouldn’t have much of a problem, in practice I’d be a little skeeved. I know I’ve been a little hesitant about the initial dunk at the communal spas at the local health club. (swanky, so they have nice showers to entice everyone to scrub the filth off before dunking)
Sure, why not? It’s not like anyone could see anything, either, once you sit down.
Besides, I only take tub baths when I’m either really cold or really sore. So if I were freezing and tired and filthy after walking all the way from Hobbiton, I wouldn’t blink.
Is it really preferable to go through the rest of the day sweaty and sticky from gym than to shower with a bunch of your classmates?
I’m asking seriously. It never occurred to me to think about it. You have gym, you shower. I can’t imagine having a workout and then getting dressed again without showering…
Ya take a Ho bath. I’m not a big sweater/stinker-upper anyway. And I usually scheduled gym toward the end of the day. No worries.
Ok, I can’t imagine it, either, but I think you’re misjudging the meanness or high school girls. Sometimes…it’s preferable to stay sweaty.
If you are even slightly off the “norm”. For example, I started shaving my legs much later then others, and the girls made fun of me for it. They made fun of me because I was much more brown in places than them. Nothing really personal, it was enough that my skin was darker.
It’s hard and those girls can be horribly cruel and when your ego is about as big as this comma anyway, it makes it worse.
Must…resist…spelling…comment… 
Isn’t it obvious? He’s been to Abu Ghraib.
Personally, I’ve never really had problems with this kind of thing, even as an American.
When I took swimming lessons growing up, I was expected to shower in a communal shower before and after swimming.
In junior high and high school, gym classes had communal showers that we were expected to take at the end of class.
I went to France while I was in college and a couple of times afterwards, and had no problems with topless beaches.
During one of the years in France, I lived close to the Black Forest, so we went to Baden Baden several times. The locker rooms of the spa had communal showers, but there were also nude spas.
In short, I really don’t have problems getting nude in front of strangers. Especially in situations where they are getting nude in front of me.
Maybe I’m just not egocentric enough to assume that everyone is going to judge me by the bounciness of my breasts, or the length of my pubic hair, or the stretch marks on my tummy. I certainly don’t judge other people by those criteria.
In the case in point, though, I suspect that all of the (male) hobbits were much more concerned about getting clean in a bath than they were about what the others thought about how well hung they were. :rolleyes:
I don’t have a problem with that at all.
Before my wedding a few girlfriends and I spent a weekend in Calistoga for mud baths, massages, shopping, girlie drinks, etc.
For the mud bath and massages were were ‘coupled off’ so to speak, so two ladies went to one room, while I and another friend had our baths in one next door. Our mud ‘pits’ were side by side, and after the mud we had to rinse off together, and then we swam in the hot spring tub in the room for 20 minutes or so.
It really wasn’t a big deal at all.
I wouldn’t have a problem with a couple of girlfriends and a jacuzzi tub or the like. I don’t think a bath would be much different.
And of course I’ve showered with other women in high school and at the gym, at a beach/pool. Again, no big deal.
You think assuming that is egocentric? Boy, do you have the wrong end of the stick.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t “ho” (as opposed to “whore”) the correct slang spelling?
I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean here, but maybe you misunderstood my intentions.
The term “egocentric” means that the person assumes that they are the center of the universe, and that all thoughts/judgements are centered on that particular person.
My own feelings about this kind of situation are that everyone else is probably more worried about how they will be judged by the others than I am personally. In other words, I really don’t care how much longer my pubic hair is than other women in the room. I really don’t care if my stretch marks are visible. And even if other people happen to notice such things, I really don’t care if they judge me by those criteria. In essence, I don’t think that the universe revolves around me and my foibles (look up “egocentric”), so what other people think about me is completely unimportant.
BTW, did you notice the word “not” in front of the word “egocentric” in my post?
This is the definition of egocentric from dictionary.com:
- Holding the view that the ego is the center, object, and norm of all experience.
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- Confined in attitude or interest to one’s own needs or affairs.
- Caring only about oneself; selfish.
- Philosophy.
- Viewed or perceived from one’s own mind as a center.
- Taking one’s own self as the starting point in a philosophical system.
Not the right word, I don’t think. Self-conscious is perhaps a better word.
When I go to the spa, I sit around in a big jacuzzi, naked, with any number of other women. Same thing in the steam room and the sauna.
I like my bod just fine, but I can tell you that I have been in there with women who were perfectly happy with not-perfect bodies!
No problem at all, for me. Or them.
I was the skinny little girl in high school. Five-foot-nothin’ and 90 lbs. Everyone else had womanly figures. You may think it’s no big deal, but when you’re 13 or 14, it is. I guess I’ve never gotten over it completely.
I’m not saying I never took showers…sometimes you couldn’t worm your way out of it. But I really, really hated it and I avoided it whenever possible.
When I was in high school (1972-75) the boys took showers, but the girls never did. In fact, the shower room was where the cheerleaders and the Pep Squad painted their banners. But we’re talking gym class here…we rarely worked up a sweat. When you have 40 girls all waiting to take turns in a 45-minute class, nobody is doing much that is strenuous. Perhaps the girls who were involved in team sports used the showers, but in three years of high school, and three years of junior high, I never saw anyone in anything less than their underwear, and even that was done discreetly. Okay, there was that one time when they dragged us to the Y for swimming, and I saw a naked boobie for a second.