What do you say to a naked lady?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

To be accurate, I should have called this “What do you say to a mostly naked lady?” But you may not have opened the thread… who am I kidding - naked gets attention. But I digress.

As has become my habit, I dragged my tired self to the Y for my 20 minutes of recumbent biking - start your day with a cardio workout, and it can only get better. (Not unlike my other favorite saying “Start your day by eating a live toad, and nothing worse will happen all day.”) It was a struggle, but I did my workout and headed to the locker room.

The first bay in the women’s locker room is a curtained-off changing area for the three shower stalls. Next bay has three toilet stalls, and the third has two sinks, a bank of lockers, and a curtained “dressing room.” At first I thought having all the curtained areas was a bit extreme, until one day when a woman came in with her son in tow - suddenly the logic was clear.

So anyway, I finished my workout and went to take a shower and get dressed for work. I was nice and clean and mostly dry - my hair was still drippy. I has just stepped into my clean white granny-panties when I noticed the curtain moving. A woman opened it, stopped, closed it, then came into the changing area, apologizing to me. I kinda blew it off with “It’s OK” and continued to get dressed.

Another digression, if I may. Is it that unthinkable that someone would be in some stage of undress in a locker room? Is it that unnerving to encounter a partially clad stranger? Or am I just that scary in my underpants?? Should I have leapt into the shower stall as I struggled to cover my semi-nekkidness? Um, these are all rhetorical questions - not a poll.

So, I put on my bra and started combing my hair while the woman was fumbling through her gym bag. I guess she felt obligated to say something, so she ventured “How about this weather?”

And there’s the answer to my initial question. When you encounter a naked stranger, you say “How about this weather?”

To be fair, it was a logical thing to say, considering we’re having temperatures quite a bit below normal. I commented on the much-needed rain we’d had over the weekend. Then she said something about giving me my privacy, and she headed out to the fitness center. And I finished dressing and left.

To those who entered this thread expecting something racier, I apologize. On the other hand, if you’ve ever read anything else I’ve posted, you know I’m all nice and wholesome and all that crap, so how risque could any of my offerings be? I admit it - this is a feeble bid for attention.

So, how about this weather??

2

  1. “Hello, naked lady.”

  2. “Yes, please”.

  3. What do you say to a naked lady
    What do you say to a naked lady
    What do you say to a naked lady
    Ear-ly in the morning…
    Right. Now that we’ve got that out of the way…

3

“Your epi-der-mis is showing. Heh, heh.”

4

I suppose this leads to another question:

In locker rooms is it not normal for a woman to parade around in her altogether? Lady Chance once remarked (after we left the gym) that there was a completely naked woman walking around the locker room.

After I got done with my sophomoric comments I told her I didn’t see anything wrong with it and that guys walk around locker rooms in the buff all the time. She seemed to think that wrapping a towel around oneself is more appropriate for the occasion.

So is it truly that rare?

5

Bah. Try being a guy sometimes.

Men’s locker rooms are an evil social psychology experiment in action. Most don’t have curtains, and everything is usually lumped together in one room. It would be interesting to do a paper on the various types you encounter and the way they handle nudity. You get the whole range from “wrap a towel around your waist and then take off your skivies” to “Hey, look at this thing!”

And heaven forbid you should be caught staring.

6

My first locker room experience was in junior high - where no one wanted to let anyone see her underwear, yet they made us all shower in a big community stall. Ah, the trauma of them early puberty years.

More recently, I’ve used the facilities in marinas where some have separate bathrooms, but others have the multiple stalls opening to a common dressing area - and some people are more modest than others. My own Perfect Child[sup]TM[/sup] is still inclined to cover up. I’m not an exhibitionist by any means, but I’m not going to die of embarrassment if someone sees me disrobed.

Sometimes I just want to yell “Fercryinoutloud, it’s just skin!!” I can probably get away with it when I’m a bit older. Old ladies get away with a lot of stuff… :smiley:

7

I’m with you, FairyChatMom. I would rather noone including God saw my cellulite and horrible behind, but I am not going to bother contorting myself into one of those “change under a towel” ladies or shudder change in the toilet cubicle ladies. All girls together is fine with me. It’s probaby good for our self-esteem to see each other’s “normal” bodies, as all we otherwise would see is ourself in the mirror, and the load of silicone bronzed emaciated bodies the media bombards us with.

8

I suppose part of that is what I’m talking about.

I’ve gone to three gyms in my adult years and NONE of them made any provisions for allowing the men privacy for changing at all. No seperate rooms, no cubicals, no nothing.

Lady Chance used to tell me that the communal showers at her dorms ALWAYS had a few showerheads that had a curtain arrangement to provide privacy. There was no such animal in the men’s dorms, I can attest.

Curious.

9

You’re late.

10

Why A Duck has already given the basics about men’s locker rooms. In my limited experience of men’s locker rooms since college, you don’t unnecessarily interact with strangers; if you’re not there with people you know, you just do what you’ve got to do as efficiently as possible, staying in your own world as much as circumstances permit.

11

(donning Irish accent)
Put 'er in bed with the Captain’s daughter,
put 'er in bed with the Captain’s daughter,
Put her in bed with the Captain’s daughter-
EARLY IN THE MORNING!

12

The locker rooms here in the UK used to be segregated male/female (say, ten years ago) and I can only speak from the male perspective - people walking around naked was quite normal, but everything seems to have gone unisex now - my local sports centre has a ‘changing village’:confused: it’s a unisex area (although the mens and women’s showers are in separate rooms) there are a wide range of cubicle sizes ranging from single to ‘family’ to 'parent and baby '(complete with changing shelf and nappy disposal). Nobody ever gets naked outside the cubicles now.

13

Brynda and I have had this very same conversation about what is weird and what is not. In the gyms I have been a member of, non of the guys changing rooms had seperate cubicles. At my last gym, a works provided gym, I used to think nothing of standing around in the altogether talking to someone I knew. If someone happened to come in just before I got in the shower, I would spend a few minutes talking to them.

I don’t parade around in the nude, but I don’t go to excessive lengths to hide either.

Rick

14

You mean you don’t know what “How about this weather” is code for…

At least she didn’t mention “the current high cost of gasoline”!

15

At the gym we used to be a member of, the kabbess used to despair at the fact that not only did all the women parade around in the buff in their changing room, but would merrily bend over to fetch something out of their bag, thus treating the room to sights intended ordinarily only for their gynacologist.

One such sight she could avoid. But twenty middle aged women all giving her the evil eye (so to speak) at once? Cue one nervous wreck of a kabbess.

pan

16

At the local swimming baths the women (apparently) get separate cubicals, with curtains, while the men get cubicals separated by low walls. We didn’t realise they were different for a long time, and then…

Mum: so you don’t have separate cubicals?
Dad: No, just low walls.
Mum: …just enough to hide your penis*?
Dad: Well, yes, if you’re trying to hide from a dwarf kneeling down 50 yards away.

*Can’t remember what euphimism she actually used.

17

On that note, the wife recently reported seeing another locker-room denizen perfuming said “evil eye” in the main communal locker room area. Creeped her out for a variety of reasons, including the awareness of the alcohol content of most perfumes (ouch!).

As for the men’s rooms – many gyms/health clubs these days have separate shower stalls, but not even close to all of them. Why A Duck covers the main issues of men’s locker room etiquette quite well.

18

IMO–one of the nice things about being a guy is that it would never occur to me to be embarrassed about being naked in a locker room. What do I say to another man I encounter naked in the locker room? The same kinds of things I say when I see someone in the elevator on the way to work, or passing in the street, or at the deli counter.

I think Istara is onto something when she suggests that it would do women good to have totally open locker rooms, so that body image issues and concerns aren’t allowed to fester and grow.

19

At least as a teen-aged girl, you didn’t have the added fear of inadvertantly sporting wood. Ah yes, the junior high locker room, the bane of every young gay man trying to avoid getting bashed.

20

“How YOU doin’?”