Just got back from the spa. My back has been giving me trouble lately so I thought I’d get a deep tissue massage.
So anyway, I go to the spa, order my session, then the lady points me to the men’s locker room. So I go in and take off all my clothes. As soon as I do, I hear a knock on the front door of the LR, literally two second later, in comes a lady (A staff member), with a giant stack of towels. She walks right past me to a corner of the LR where I can’t see her. About ten seconds later, here she comes again with a sack of dirty towels heading out the door.
LOL. Is that normal? I don’t know, as this is only the third time I’ve ever been to a spa. I guess I can see why it would be necessary if they had no male staff (which I didn’t see).
The lady was professional about as she could be. She never acknowledged my existence and kept her head down towards the floor the whole time.
Still though, she about gave me a heart attack when she came in. I initially thought I was in the wrong locker room.
No. To be clear, I’m not upset about it in the least. (I thought I made that clear with the LOL in my OP.) I was just taken off guard is all. Plus I’m curious if that’s a standard practice in the industry.
I think the practical reason for having segregated locker rooms is to provide women with a male-free zone, maybe because of male sexual aggression and maybe just because we tend to leave droplets of urine around the outsides of toilets.
I don’t use spas much, but even so I’ve seen women in the men’s locker rooms. At first I was inclined to feel a little huffy about it, but eventually decided, no, they have a legitimate need to avoid us, whereas the opposite pretty much isn’t true.
I’ve never seen a woman in the men’s locker room, and my only objection would be that feeling for a second that I was in the wrong room. But, I’m middle aged and don’t care much who sees me naked.
I have never seen a woman in a gym locker room, but I can’t imagine getting upset about it. I am a short, rather chunky sixty two year old man. If someone really needs to see this, who am I to stop them…
Is the spa based on any sort of ethnic group? For example: “Men and women are separated in [Finnish] public saunas, but there is a rotund female attendant in the men’s showers [in this particular sauna] happy to scrub guys down with soap and sponge.”
