Girls' Locker Room

I went to work out a couple of weeks ago, and I've been wanting to write about it ever since. I went to Bally Fitness (not very Chinese, I know), but the rest of the experience was! Since the gym was members only, I waited for the tour guide to come out to give me a tour of the gym. The membership fee is 5000 RMB / year, which is about 700 dollars, which is more than an average american would pay at a normal gym in the US. The gym is 3 floors: the first floor is the pool, the second floor is the locker room, offices, and juice bar, and the third floor is the workout area.

But what I really wanted to write about was the girls locker room. You have to go through the locker room to get to the rest of the gym, and my first walk through the locker room was a shock. I have never seen so many naked people in one place in my life. I guess the American culture is very conscious of nakedness, more so that other countries. Countries in Europe or Japan for example, are much more comfortable with the birthday suit, or at least that is my impression. But I never would have thought I would see so much nudity in a conservative culture like China. It makes sense though, there are public baths, and the genders are generally split up. The girls in the locker room were completely comfortable. I mean, drying their hair naked, putting on lotion naked, and simply just prancing around without any clothes. It didn't matter the body shape - tall, skinny, short, fata, everyone was just comfortable. I think in America, there are more self image issues - we are afraid of what others will think of our bodies, and no one ever thinks that their body is perfect, and it was strange yet nice to be in an atmosphere where everyone was comfortable whith who they were. I'm just not sure I can do the same as them...