And here I thought it was to counter a Porky’s situation.
I wonder if it has something to do with the prevalence of cameras and how easily concealed they can be, and how their images can be readily and instantly distributed through the internet where they will live on forever.
Taking that into consideration, it doesn’t seem so crazy to seek out as much privacy as possible.
I didn’t get the impression that the OP is intent on scrutinizing everyone’s locker room behavior. For those of us who don’t float through life blissfully unaware of our surroundings, it’s completely normal to notice things that deviate from the norm. If I’m in the locker room and people are lined up at the stalls with their gym bags, it doesn’t take very strong powers of deduction to determine that they are using the stalls to change.
My daughter went to a week long camp this summer. At camp, the bathroom is in a bathroom house - there are three toilet stalls and a shower stall. There are four cabins that share the bathroom house. There are eight girls in a cabin, for a total of 32 girls, plus two counselors per cabin, 40 people.
Some of the girls insisted on doing all their changing in the stalls in the bathroom.
Now a morning at camp involves a wake up call at 7 and then they are all heading to their first (pre-breakfast) activity at 7:30 (they then go to breakfast at 8). There is not time for 32 girls to take ten minutes to get out of their sleeping bags (like you do), then use the toilets while 32 girls change in the toilets and some of them shower. What my daughter reported was that about half girls would hog the bathroom house, while she and the rest got dressed in the cabins and then used the bathroom half a mile up the road at the dining hall.
I think the first night of camp they need a “cabin dressing 101” course - including the “how to have a friend hold a sleeping bag so you have a changing room” and “how to change in your sleeping bag” along with “how to take off your bra without taking off your shirt” and ending with “healthy body image - if you have a positive body image, the people who tear you down are jerks.”
I haven’t noticed any change in women’s behaviour in changing rooms since the internet.
Ugh, I used to hate this at my old gym. At peak times, there would be a huge line to use the bathroom because people insisted on changing in there.
I would want to scream, “Nobody’s watching you change! Nobody cares! Everyone’s only thinking about themselves in the changing room…”
That being said though, there was one woman (with an admittedly slamming body) who would blow dry her hair while completely naked in front of the huge mirror everyday. But in the 5+ years there, she was the only person I ever noticed.
Since my gym is a family recreation center, I get the pleasure of changing in front of little kids all the time. There is a “family changing room” so usually it’s not little boys, but every so often it is. Little girls stare like crazy too, tho. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable in a sense that I feel like I may be sexually exploiting these kids, I just…don’t like to be stared at!
I don’t change my routine, though. The moms know what they’re getting in to when they take their kids into the changing room.
Yesterday I saw a dad change his 4-year-old daughter right there on the pool deck. Brave dude - she was just standing there with her butt hanging out while he fished around for her pants. I assume he wasn’t aware of the family change room and wasn’t about to take her in to the guy’s changing room. Modesty and comfort is definitely a sliding scale 
I did not mean to imply that the OP was overly watchful. I’m just saying I feel no need to hide from watchers in general.
Really though, what others do in the toilet stalls is their personal business. While I might notice, the act of noticing is my problem, not theirs. I see nothing rude about using them for privacy if no other private area is provided.
This. Years ago when I was a teenager I had a bully snap a photo of me changing in gym. I got detention for busting her camera, but the photo was confiscated by the school and destroyed. Now days it’s a lot more difficult to protect yourself from that sort of thing.
I was thinking more about gym locker room behavior. Like the guy in the Captain Morgan pose blow drying his balls with the communal hair dryer.
Well, it’s hard not to notice when there is a huge line waiting for the three stalls because the gym is packed and people are changing in there. I admit though, I get testy when I have to pee…
I think if you need a “private area” to change, then the onus is on you to join a gym with private changing rooms.
Or do what a lot of people do - show up in your workout clothes, leave in your workout clothes, and use the privacy of your own home to shower and change. Admittedly, much harder when you are doing the gym thing to and from work - but at work I used to see women use the plentiful stalls to change into workout clothes before leaving for the day - I assume they were the “don’t want to change in front of people, heading for the gym” type.
I’m slightly uncomfortable with public nudity because I’ve always been, and because I’m fat. I don’t spend a lot of time at the gym anymore, but I always used the changing stalls for my Planet Fitness workouts (they’re separate from the bathrooms and showers, and intended for this purpose). It’s hard enough for me to get myself to go to the gym without adding the perception of embarrassment and unprivacy to it, too.
I will run around naked (or nearly so) on a daily basis at home and with my boyfriend. But I don’t feel like doing it in public, so there.
Oh, and just because you think a woman has a rockin’ bod doesn’t mean she feels comfortable with other people seeing it.
I just change. That’s what the locker room is for. I don’t tend to look around a whole lot.
I am a little more paranoid since a friend of mine and I caught a guy in the shower area jacking off while watching us change (he was around the corner, watching the mirrors).
But I figure that wasn’t likely to happen again.
It would be nice if some of the men at my gym shared some of the modesty expressed here. The sign on the door of the sauna specifically says a towel or trunks are required. It’s always the old guys, too… free swingin all over the sauna.
Sometimes it not just about being shy. It’s not just about being skinny or fat or young or old. Some people have a lot of scars and wouldn’t feel comfortable changing in front of anyone.
I have a Ton of scars, and a urostomy as well. I used to swim at the local YMCA and I always used the changing rooms. Sometimes I had to wait because there were only three of them. But if there were no changing rooms and only bathroom stalls? You can bet I’d be hogging the bathroom stall to change in and wouldn’t feel sorry about doing it. I’d be mortified if I had to change in front of anyone.
I’m a dude, so I’m really surprised to hear this. At my gym I’ve never once, not a single time seen anyone change in the stalls. Now, it is true that the 90 year olds will casually walk around with their balls dragging on the floor, so maybe there still is a generational thing here. Frankly, I always found the brazenly naked thing to be a bit rude. Be naked if you need to be sure, but don’t brush your damned teeth before putting some underwear on. But a stall? What the heck?
Also, as a side note, don’t give me the it’s-the-oppressive-media-hurting-the-fragile-self-esteem-of-young-girls thing. There’s no way in hell that looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger is a more realistic standard of masculinity than being on the low side of a healthy BMI is for women. It’s easier to be waifishly thin than to be waifishly thin and still do four hours of hardcore strength training a day at the same time.
Not to mention guys lie George Costanza-who PE in the shower!
When you play sports in college, you get used to it. Particularly if the coach won’t let you on the bus after games if you don’t shower… and the seniors will rip you to shreds for being too modest. But you still change quickly, and don’t linger around naked.
We did have one girl who played lacrosse who would walk around naked, chit chat naked, stretch naked. She once ran the mile around the track naked (but for shoes and socks) on a dare. Today - she is dancing at Champs in NYC, and making more money than God.
this, I think.
my Mom used to take me to the YMCA and nobody went somewhere private to change so everybody saw everybody. I think this is an excellent thing: look at the variety, look at how people come in all kinds of shapes and colors and amount of hair.
as an adult I joined a gym where almost all the women hid in private stalls to change. it struck me as a shame. because young girls are then left with the airbrushed and otherwise unnatural look of women in media.