We all know that there are unspoken social rules, many of them, and it also depends on what gender you are, there are slightly different rules for men and women. The experiences I've had in the last few years, and the focus of this week's awkward moments, is the gym.
Leicester Uni has a gym, in fact I think it has two on campus and one off, but regardless the membership is a bomb, a whopping £200-ish for a year's membership. I say it's a bomb because I was paying £60 a year for Glasgow uni. What they do have instead for alternatively busy students like myself is pay as you go. On Tuesday of my coursework week I got up, put my dust covered gym stuff on and walked out in the icy cold air to the gym. I actually had to look up whereabouts on campus the gym was; I came to Leicester Uni as a postgraduate, and my department is the
only one that isn't on campus. Despite being a Masters student if I was ever made to go around campus I'm pretty sure I would look like a fresher.
After gingerly walking through the front door to the gym and getting blasted by the heating I shuffled my way over to the reception and asked for pay as you go. Forking over £4 was easy in my ignorance because I don't have an idea how much pay as you go is supposed to be (and to be honest I don't want to be enlightened). I'll tell you, folks, it was well worth it.
What is really strange is the layout of the gym. In order to get to the changing rooms you have to walk around the gym equipment. It feels a little like the people working out are on display for not just those coming inside, but outside on the path and the entrance-way into the building thanks to the floor to ceiling windows. The changing room was so posh; the lockers had shelves and even a proper hangar for your coat, I was impressed. But this is the first point of awkwardness.
At Glasgow Uni gym there was a communal area, by communal I mean benches around the side under the lockers, and also private cubicles where you could get changed. In Leicester there was corner booths that reminded me more of retail changing rooms, and there was only about two or three in the entire changing room, as opposed to the five on one floor of Glasgow, and five on every other changing room floor. The benches were situated in the middle of locker areas. My first thought was "no privacy!".
In glasgow uni gym it was an awkward moment when someone strutted around naked in the changing rooms because there was no real cause for it. I think it's definitely a British thing, or perhaps a my generation thing, that it's just really awkward when you have a towel, or clothing, on to protect your modesty and then there's someone just walking around, chilling in their birthday suit (for those who don't know this phrase it means naked, charming British colloquialism). Thankfully on my first day I was kept from this reality, but that ended by day three. This worried me. For those ladies, or gentlemen, who have attempted to put clothes on whilst maintaining a towel as cover, it's a difficult thing and requires flexibility that I don't possess. To solve this I thought about taking my underwear into the shower cubicles with me, but they were all the way at the bottom of my bag and taking them into a water infested area posed problems for their dryness.
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| Actually, I watch How I Met Your Mother |
Regardless, I went into the gym and left the problem of maintaining my modesty until after I'd worked out. But as with all problems in life (and don't let anyone fool you otherwise) the problem was still there after I had finished. Walking over to my locker felt very unusual as the changing room had suddenly doubled its numbers. Everyone was dressing after their gym session and I needed to shed mine in order to shower. Whenever I went at Glasgow it was during the summer when all of the students were at home, it was early enough in the morning that everyone was at work who had jobs, but too early for those like me, and so everything was quiet, I could take my clothes off in front of my locker, with the cubicles at my back, without the fear of being seen (and folks, I never was). But there was nowhere for me to hide at Leicester, the changing room was taken, and so I had to shed my top very quickly and slide on my towel which poses other problems of how I was going to undress whilst keeping my towel around me.
I failed and ended up walking into the showers with my underwear beneath my towel; I emerged with only a towel. By the time I had my shower the changing room was free, and boy did I sprint for it like an Olympic athlete.
Over the next few days I saw others who did not share my sense of modesty and who were just changing naked out in the open, thankfully leaving the changing rooms open for my use, but I did start taking my clean underwear into the shower cubicles. I wondered what sort of person does change in the public area of a changing room? Is it only Glasgow university that has changing rooms with many private cubicles? I know I couldn't, but perhaps it's a self-confidence matter rather than a cultural one. Your thoughts? Your awkward experiences? I mean when someone is walking towards you with nothing on where do you look?
Yet another really strange experience happened to me in the shower cubicles. At Glasgow uni the shower cubicles are not opaque, you can't see a thing though them; the walls between are a cloudy green-ish glass, and the doors are solid plastic type stuff, and although this is a good thing it does cause its fair share of problems with people opening your cubicle door not seeing the towel, your towel, draped over it (yes, that did happen to me). At Leicester they have seen fit to make the cubicles out of barely opaque glass, and rather than handles in the doors there is a massive big whole where it should be, one that is certainly transparent. I didn't think it was that bad until someone got in the one beside me, and then another person in the one opposite me, and I could see almost everything in hazy detail. After that I stayed as far away as I possibly could from the glass, which is impossible despite the spaciousness of the cubicles. It does seem partially unavoidable for everyone else in the changing room to see you either naked, or in your underwear. When I saw the girl in the one beside me I was shocked, but at least there was that glass between us or it would have been more awkward.
Over the next few days I worked out a system where I could emerge from the shower with my clean and dry underwear underneath my towel so if the changing room wasn't free I would just have to awkwardly manoevre into my clothes from beneath my towel, but is that more awkward than just dropping the cover and strutting my stuff in my underwear? there's not really any difference between that and a bikini, but I wouldn't wear one of those either. Am I of an old-fashioned mind? Are we walking along with the times in that there is no shame in strutting around a lady's changing room naked? I hear there's communal changing rooms in some areas of Britain, and they're even introducing communal toilets. Am I grasping onto modesty from the days gone by, or is it these new things that don't have a place in a British society? We are famed for being reserved and prudish, and although that's not true when it comes to some things, I think it still holds in other areas.
I definitely like privacy when changing, I'm not saying those that do change in the open are exhibitionists, and a part of me has respect for them, but at the same time I ain't gonna do that. Your thoughts? Is it normal where you come from to change in the open? Is it awkward when someone walks around naked or is it a shrug-shoulder moment? Is it the same for men and women (I unfortunately can't comment on this because I have no boyfriend and I'm not a man, although the changing rooms did get switched for one day when I was at the gym and there were even less cubicles in the men's!)?
