Bear life

Nudity good for you, story at 7?

Anyway, dumb article, but it gives me an excuse to bring up something I've been meaning to discuss: social nudity. Due to the onset of perilously icy street conditions, I've started running at the gym on a regular basis, and since I have to commute to use my free campus gym privileges, that means I've also started taking advantage of the gym shower. The last time I actually changed in a locker room was probably middle school, so I was fairly shocked when I first walked in to the ladies' changing area and found myself surrounded by a preponderance of casually naked flesh. The facility I frequent is not the main (read: undergrad) gym, and in the quiet interim between semesters it was home to mostly bookish, middle-aged types -- faculty, staff, extension school students. But these women seemed to have no problem stripping off their smart business casual streetwear and ambling around the locker room in what god gave them, while I huddled timidly in a corner and used the old 6th grade "T-shirt as tent" trick to put on my sports bra and shorts.

I mean, it's not like I'm some peevish stickler for decency. I recently watched a documentary on the Black Bear commune in the mountains of Northern California, and the whole thing made me pine for the 60s, radical utopian lifestyles, and the freedom to roam au naturale under the tender coastal sun. But nudity in the context of a tiled, fluorescent, antiseptic gymnasium is not the sun-kissed, romp-with-the-goats nudity of a California commune. In fact, it sort of gives me the heebies. Possibly, this has to do with aforementioned middle school connotations, but more probably, it's also a matter of historical/cinematic conditioning: any time you pack a lot of naked women into a small space with showers, I can only think of one thing (as, by the by, does Milan Kundera in this part of The Unbearable Lightness of Being).

But aside from all that, I find myself confronted with an uncomfortable voyeur guilt-spiral dilemma. It goes something like this: in our society, despite the prevalence of porn and porn-like advertising, we don't get to see a lot of real women naked. Hence: real women naked is an inherently fascinating sight. But! In polite bourgeois society, we're supposed to rigorously deny our urge to ogle and plant our roving eyes squarely on the cold tiled floor. Or, as Al Pacino so eloquently puts in the best law-cum-Devil movie of all time: "Look, but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow." Of course, if we were all traipsing around Black Bear Ranch, the metaphorical (or actual) trip would probably dictate the opposite: look till you get sick. It's the weird contradiction of "it's all out there!" coupled with "... but don't make eye contact" that sticks in my craw.

Interestingly, as classes have started up again, more and more ponytailed gazelles have flooded the locker room -- snapping gum, chatting about parties, and taking time out from a gazillion extracurriculars to whittle invisible millimeters of flesh from their already immaculate 20-year-old frames. Yet, in spite of their clearly superior muscle-to-cellulite ratios, it's the younger generation that remains fastidiously clothed, while the older women proudly parade around their various levels of saggage (although for the most part, they're still impressively fit -- this is the health-conscious upper crust of the Northeast, after all). I can't help feeling like there's some deeper story about the trajectory of feminism here, with all its false starts and unexpected retrogrades. I also can't help feeling kind of like my stupid, deathly self-conscious 6th-grade self when I bring my clothes into the shower stall to change. What am I afraid of? Some snot-nosed undergrad scoffing at my off-brand panties?

I wish I were as good at making radical statements as I am wasting time ruminating about them. Stupid Kundera and his stupid moral exhibitionism problem has ruined me for life.