Gyms I’ve frequented seem to take an unholy glee in stocking towels that are just slightly bigger than a bathroom hand towel, not so useful when trying to dry off after showering (I can guess they do it not only for economy, but because the same towels serve dual duty as workout sweat rags and shower-room dry-off towels).
So, they’re a lot smaller than what we’d think of as a “bath towel” at home (both in length and width). The length thing is a problem because IME they’re often just a few inches too short to kind of tuck around the waist of even a reasonably skinny guy without having your parts sticking out or having it come undone. But the width issue means they’re certainly far too narrow for women to do what they sometimes do with full-size bath towels at home, viz., wrap them so they cover from armpit to thigh.
So – what do women do when they want to cover up in the locker room, steam room, sauna, at the gym? I’m assuming they don’t (though I wouldn’t mind if they did) just wrap one around the waist and stalk around topless. Do they use two of the small towels, one above, one below? I guess that could work though seems annoying. I’m asking here because still at work and didn’t seem an awesome Q. for that context . . . .
We bring our own towel from home. Even if gym towels were the right size, regardless of how “cleanly” a gym or pool may be, your own towel, cleaned with your own fabric softener and soap is far better.
I use two towels. Now that I’ve lost a few pounds, I can JUST manage to put one towel around my waist and tuck in the ends. Then I drape the other one over my shoulders. Most women seem to make some effort to cover up in front of others. I don’t know why, but we do. Perhaps it’s because most of us feel self conscious about being so far from the ideal.
With guys the modesty is, I suspect, partly because of the association of bathhouses/saunas with guys hooking up, and if that’s not something you’re interested in doing (presumably most guys in a gym outside of that sort of neighborhood aren’t), covering your junk is a good starting point to not sending any misleading or ambiguous signals . . . . From GFs, I’ve drawn the impression that men and women in gym locker rooms share a fairly common eyes-straight-ahead, don’t show/don’t look more than you have to, approach, out of politeness, disinclination to send weird signals (and a desire for reciprocity). The only difference these conversations suggested was that I got the impression women would throw on undergarments as soon as possible, then maybe dawdle with hair and makeup before getting the rest of their clothes on – guys IME would be okay shaving, drying hair, etc. with a towel around the waist, then getting all the clothes on at once.
Your first step should be to complain to whomever is running the place. If they provide towels, that means they have to buy and clean the towels or use a service. Either way, the cost is kept down by using the smallest and thinest towels they can get away with. You have to let them know when they go over the limit.
It’s really nice when a gym provides towels becasue lugging around wet towels is one good reason to avoid the whole gym thing.
Guys have this problem too. We may not have as many places we want to cover up but we tend to have more surface area to dry. And no, a “Spa wrap” in no solution - first you lose your man card, then your friends and you still have to lug around a wet towel like thing. I doubt you could even snap anyone with one of those things. If we were meant to use that sort of thing the NFL or the NBA would have issued them to players by now.
