In the Locker Room

Recently my limited supply of work-out-at-home self-motivation became depleted and I was forced to go get a gym membership.  I love the gym because it provides a communal suffering experience that I find quite inspiring.  What I do NOT find inspiring is the communal visual experience of the locker room.

It is my understanding that certain unspoken codes apply to the men's restroom, especially where urinal usage is concerned.  I propose that we need a similar set of rules for the women's locker room, but in this case they should probably be SPOKEN, even written in big block letters on the locker room walls, the inside of the bathroom stalls, stitched into the shower curtains, and maybe even tattooed onto everyone's faces as part of membership. I also volunteer my services as a locker-room crier, marching back and forth with a bullhorn, announcing the following clearly and with great enthusiasm:

1. When it comes to public nudity, brevity is the name of the game.  Obviously you are going to have to get naked in order to change clothes or dry off, but at a certain point that time period must end.  For example, if you have recently dried yourself and have decided to spend a few minutes standing in front of your locker applying lip balm, tweezing your eyebrows, and Facebooking about how intense your workout was, why not take the towel from the bench next to you and wrap it around your body, thereby covering your nakedness?  Sometimes I see people where the towel is not even on the bench but in their other hand, just hanging there like they have nothing else to do with it. Because of people like this, I'm developing repetitive stress disorder from averting my eyes.  
2. The gym shower is to cleanse yourself, not to perform lengthy and complicated grooming rituals.  There is a reason the shelf in the gym shower stall provides only 4 square inches of surface space. Necessary toiletry items in this milieu include shampoo, conditioner, and body wash.  That's the end of the list.  Razors, shaving cream, loofahs of multiple shapes and sizes--these are for use at home.  I've been in the shower next to you. I do not like it when your teeny tiny leg hairs come over to my side in their sea foam of used shaving cream.

    3.  Get in and get out.  There is no Starbucks here, nor is there free wi-fi or big screen TVs.  The locker  room is the most hostile environment in the entire gym, but despite the discomfort there are always three or four women huddled around in the changing area chit-chatting like they are in line at Barry Manilow concert.  Having long-since showered and changed, their presence in this venue is both gratuitous and unwelcome.  It's not just the way their obtuse banter echoes off the acoustic tile that causes a problem.  The biggest issue is that you are not supposed to just BE in the changing area, just WATCHING other people change.  Even if my bra is off for a total of 3.5 seconds, and even if I am wearing brand new underwear, I still feel like they are judging me.  It's only a matter of time before they start bringing scones and copies of Tuesdays with Morrie along, at which point I am going to start changing in the alley behind the Sonic Burger.

 If only all locker rooms were like a sexy underwear party, a la the 1982 comedy Porky's. I can assure you that this is not the clientele of Lifestyle Family Fitness in Orange Park, Florida.

I may be expecting too much of people, but it discourages me to have to use up an entire day's worth of aplomb in the five minutes it takes me to change into my yoga pants and sports bra.