I’m pretty casual. But I don’t do any “hanging out” naked. But, I go to the gym to swim so I go to the showers in my suit. If i’m not there to swim, I go home to shower. After my shower I wrap up from bust to bottom in my beach towel, open my locker, put my t-shirt on over my towel and then drop the towel and put my jeans on. (no socks or undies. I’m just on my way home!)
i’m 26
I don’t go to a “gym” but a community rec center with full gym facilities and a pool. Half of the women changing are there from working out and half are there from recreation. There are women in the changing room of all shapes and ages and I haven’t seen an age pattern but there are three “groups”:
Women who shower and change like me - wear a towel, discreetly change at their locker.
Women who do their entire changing in the shower stall wether they’re showering or not.
Women who change in the bathroom stall.
One of my friends - who is a good looking 20-some young lady - changed in the bathroom stall. :-/ Me, I’m a puffy, lumpy spotty young lady and I let it all hang out. Go fig.
I am not too fond of those who change in the shower, if they’re not showering. We’ve only got 2 showers ladies!
My experiences may be different than most because I only go to the gym on weekends or in the evening (not during work hours), and we’re just a little suburban midwestern community rec center.
Yeah, I’ve noticed this. I’ve been going to a gym for the past couple months, and there’s definitely a lot of nudity in the locker room – in the sense that there are no changing stalls, and just a communal shower, so there’s not really much choice. Like a lot of people my generation (I’m 25) I was not cool with this at first – I think showering in gym class went out in the '80s, and even in college we had individual stalls, so we’re just not used to it. At first I’d drive home to shower and change, but that didn’t work so well (how are you supposed to do that in winter? put your clean winter clothes on over your sweaty clothes?), so I just decided to shower at the gym, and I’m pretty used to it now.
But I still don’t understand the hanging out naked thing. Like others said, it seems more like a generational thing than a weight thing, though – it’s always the older guys who take their time in the nude – ambling around, having conversations,* sitting around. Like the OP said, nudity is fine, but it should be a transitional state. How hard is it to put a towel around your waist when you’re shaving?? That’s not being ashamed of your body, it’s just…polite, somehow.
*Maybe this is a remnant of my former prudishness, but this I especially don’t understand – hanging out naked with people you know. I don’t mind changing at my gym because I don’t know a single person there. It would be a lot more awkward if I went with people I knew, and if I did, I’m sure the changing would be an especially quick affair, without a lot of hanging out. Am I wrong to think it’s easier being naked in front of complete strangers than friends and aquaintances?
Most of the people in my neighborhood grew up using public baths, and I’ve gotten used to the general casualness about nudity. The gym is set up so that the sauna and jacuzzi are intended for naked use, and you’d get a lot of weird, if not hostile, looks if you went in wearing a bathing suit.
[ol][li]I am more or less indifferent. The locker room is a place set aside for people to shower and change their clothes. Nudity is part of that deal. There are no separate shower stalls, and often children of both sexes present, changing for their swimming lessons. [/li]
The bottom (ha!) line is that everyone present is either male, or too young to matter.
[li]I’ll be 50 on Saturday.[*]I haven’t noticed any difference, at least at the YMCA to which I belong. I have belonged to other gyms, but I guess I wasn’t paying attention there very much either. I occasionally got a ping on the gaydar at one gym I used, but it was not enough to bother anyone - just the feeling that someone was checking me out. Nobody was ever ogling anyone that I noticed. But again, I might not have noticed.[/ol][/li]
Regards,
Shodan
It’s a matter of cosmic balance. In the gym locker rooms, you have older, less fit people sitting around naked while fit young people keep themselves covered at all times. This is to achieve balance with the strip clubs, where naked young people strut around constantly, and older, less fit people are dressed at all times.
I actually am an xm subscriber (gotta love that baseball package) and was an o&a fan from the WNEW days. I kind of tried the show last year and wasn’t really into it anymore. I have recently re-discovered the wonders of Ron & Fez on the same channel. That’s good stuff.
You probably don’t believe it, but I didn’t hear any o&a bit on naked locker room etiquette.
[/hijack]
I was figuring something like this, and the trend in this thread seems to bear that out a little.
This hadn’t occurred to me. I live nearby, so I just go home & shower…I’m not sure what the shower situation is in the locker. I think I’ll check it out tonight & see if that is a factor.
You present an interesting theory. I do tend to go with the flow at any rate. No sense in getting upset over the way the universe works.
I think it’s more likely that you’ve been naked around friends (borrowing clothes, changing at the beach, overnight visits, etc.) than strangers, therefore it would be easier to shuck it all off around familiar faces.
Besides, your friends know and love you, and will laugh at your Felix the Cat underwear to your face, while a stranger will wait til you’re gone.
Except that Johanna seems to be unaware of the tubetop. We should now take a moment to remember the tubetop. Mmm.
Anyway, I would point out that, with a few exceptions in the building trades, no guys walked around with their asses actually showing. I do think I’m the youngest person with an “old-fashioned” attitude towards nudity, though. Part of being a man was getting comfortable being naked in front of other naked men.
Do kids still swim without clothes, other than as a prelude to having sex?
Lest you think I’m a towel hog, my gym NEVER runs out of towels, probably because they’re associated with a hospital, and can handle the massive laundering necessary. I’ve seen pallets of towels stacked in the hallway entrance to the locker room, so grabbing two never seemed like that big a deal. I can understand, however, if there’s only two left, not grabbing both of them.
I’ve noticed that it’s a generational thing and less of a fat guy thing.
The older guys in the gym will walts around in their birthday suits much more than the young guys. I don’t know if it’s a question of comfort with their bodies for the older guys or that they’ve resigned themselves to the ravages of age and don’t care about anything but personal comfort. Though I don’t see how a towel wrapped around your waste is uncomfortable.
I did notice this morning that really fat guys just can’t get the towel around their waist. So they simply are physically incapable of covering up effectively.
There was this one dude… Must have been 350lb if he was an ounce. He lay down on his side on a bench just outside the men’s steam room. Now the bench is about 16"wide or so and his gut was hanging well over the bench. Dude! Sit up. Or something. Please. It’s 7:30am. It’s too early for that much reality. Just throw a towel over that!
But yeah, I think the immodest nakedness is mostly an age thing followed closely by a size issue.
I belong to the Y and have access to many different Ys in the network. Generally speaking, I’ve only witnessed purposeful nudity (on the way to being dressed) rather than gratuitous nudity. The exception to this is the Y I went to last night, which is near a couple of colleges, and the younger girls seemed to be a little freer with their nudity. Honestly, though, if I still looked the way I did when I was in college, I’d probably spend a few extra minutes naked, too—although I never thought I looked that great then either.
In general, I don’t mind a quick locker room change into my gym clothes (I, too, just go home after working out because I live close by). The individual changing rooms in the locker rooms are about the size of my kitchen cabinets, so I’d rather be a little more public and have more room. However, just the other day, I saw my former boss at one of the Y branches. Making small talk with her would be awkward enough. You can be damned sure I do not want nudity (hers OR mine) to enter into the equation.
I expect you’re right. Mandatory phys ed when I was in junior high & high school involved showering every day after gym class. The showers were all in one big, open room. In junior high, the PE teacher was a former marine drill sergeant. We didn’t have time to be squeamish about nekkidness. Get clean, get groomed, and go go go!
That, and I grew up going to the YMCA with my dad every Saturday. There were a lot of guys who strolled around the locker room nekkid, chatting, watching TV, stretching, what have you. So it just doesn’t seem abnormal or uncomfortable to me.
