Why Are Old Men Always Naked In The Locker Room?

December 5, 2011

Why Are Old Men Always Naked In The Locker Room?

Sullivan follows up on his original thread (with follow-ups here, here, and here) with e-mails from women readers giving their perspective on the female analog of this vexing and important issue. One reader writes:

As a teenager, I remember locker rooms were fairly modest. No female classmate or teammate, myself included, would go completely nude in the locker room - not due to any fears about perceived homosexuality, in my opinion, but because we were afraid the other girls would judge our weight or our body hair. Adult women (in the community locker rooms of the local swimming pool, for example) did not seem to worry about stripping down. I took this as a signal that the older you became, the less you should care about locker room nudity - a lesson that carries me through to today. Now that I’m a grown woman, I no longer worry about whether a woman is looking at my naked body in a locker room, whether in a judgmental or sexual manner. If they are getting an eyeful, good for them, I say. I’m not ashamed of what they might see.

I’ve seen other women run the gamut between nonchalant nudity and painfully complicated modesty in the locker room, and age doesn’t seem to be a determining factor. And as a queer, I can say that I’m not getting any thrills if I happen to see these women naked. It’s a locker room. You’re in there for maybe ten or twenty minutes, tops. Just get over it, men, if you are all as sensitive about it as these posts make it seem.

There seems to be some consensus around the fact that, for young men, there is a subtle fear of unwelcome homosexual attention occurring during extended periods (read: longer than a few moments) of visible, casual nudity while among other men in an intimate setting. This is a fear that seems largely absent for women in women’s locker rooms. However, to the extent that young women tend to fear locker-room nudity, it seems to be more a function of their worry that other women will judge their physical appearance. Another reader writes:

The generational thing definitely exists for women too. One of my first memories of being a freshman in college (in 2002) is waiting in line for a shower stall with a group of girls my own age while the seniors aquatic fitness class showered happily in the open. Nine years of gym attendance later, I’ve either aged or just seen the advantages of not worrying about it. When I’m exhausted from working out, worrying about how well I’m holding up the towel while I search from my other sock is besides the point.

To the extent that I do worry about it though, I will say lesbians are the furthest thing from my mind. Mostly, I don’t want other (presumably straight) women to see, and potentially judge, what kind of underwear I’m wearing, what kind of shape I’m in, what sags or doesn’t sag without a bra, or whether I put a high priority on shaving my armpits when it’s winter I’m not going to be wearing anything sleeveless anyways.

Actually let me amend that; the fear isn’t really of being judged. The time my two female coworkers and I all decided to go to a dance class together, we split like a bunch of billiard balls the second we entered the lockerroom to avoid having to take our shirts off in front of each other. I really don’t think it was because any of us suspected the others of being catty bitches. Seeing each other topless was just more personal and intimate than we wanted to be - not in a homophobic way, but more in the way that you don’t tell everyone about your love life either.

Does it make me odd that I find this topic fascinating? Also, the Oatmeal is indispensable on this topic, in my view. Special emphasis on the guy all the way to the right, with the mustache.

5:26pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxCsGnOS

(Notes: 30)