Ever since the movie Dodgeball came out, I feel like gymgoers have gotten a bad rap. There’s this image of Ben Stiller in a spandex one-piece that I can’t seem to get out of my mind every time I tell someone I’m going to work out. And so, at the risk of sounding like the girl who wears pink sweatbands and counts the calories on her PowerBars, I must confess I joined the gym. I like the stress release and feeling like I’ve actually done something good for my body that day. The real problem is that my recent membership has brought me to terms with something I was previously very unaware of: I am a prude.
Let me explain. It’s been a while since I’ve been an official gym member, and my first day in the locker room, I am instantly taken back to high school PE class—the muggy temperature from the showers, sports bras flying left and right, the smell of old shoes.
I find myself a corner locker and situate myself in the position, pants off quickly first, long shirt pulled down to cover the panties, then a quick pull-up with tush facing the wall. I glance up. Hopefully the girl next to me has not noticed the four days of stubble on my legs, or my toes’ dire need for the pedicure I’m certain they’re never going to get. There’s the ugly nude undies issue, too. Am I imagining it, or is the woman across from me flashing a judgment about the pair I threw on today by means of laundry’s unforgiving process of panty-elimination? In reality, no one seems to have noticed or cared, and I now I realize I am the only one who has even bothered to find the corner to camouflage myself into.
I relax. I unbutton my shirt and then pull over my sports bra on top of my wired one. Unhook, unarm, slide out, without a trace of evident nipple to be found. Isn’t it Flashdance where she pulls that sexy move with her bra for the boy? Mine’s a meager attempt, but it gets the job done in an effort not to flash the entire room my small B-cup. Feeling accomplished, I head out to the treadmills for a twenty-minute break before I have to worry about it all over again.
When I come back, I am cut off at the sink by a woman at the mirror blow drying her hair in only a lime-green thong. I turn to my locker. A woman walks across the room naked, her white towel trailing behind her like an unnecessary tail. At the risk of seeming completely pervy on my first day, I can’t help it—I find myself staring in amazement. Why can’t I be like these women who let it all hang out and grow out without the thought of apology? As I bend down to untie my shoe, a woman clear into her seventies slips off her panties right in front of my face. And I was worried about revealing my toenails.
I wonder how, at the ripe old age of twenty-four, I have ended up this way. I haven’t even hit my prime yet. I’m in pretty decent shape. So what if my chest isn’t falling out of the bra I’ve been using since ninth grade. Why shouldn’t I feel comfortable doing a few naked lunges in the locker room? We’re all beautiful women here, right? Hear us roar (and lunge)!
Unfortunately, this is not the case. I am incurably self-aware and modest, even in the safest and most welcoming of environments. I run the sink water when I pee; I can’t go number two when my boyfriend is within a 200-foot radius of my home. Is it growing up in a nudist colony versus a nunnery that conditions us this way? Or is it because I’m an introverted Pisces? Why can’t I be the one to blow dry in panties with pride? Can I change my stars?
