Hey, it's a blog - that's where all the loose brain scrapings are supposed to end up. So I found myself this morning at the gym fairly chomping at the bit to whine about my latest pet peeve.
In the summer, my gym is shared by several youth programs - it's actually how I found the fantastic day camp that my sons attend (though that camp has now moved a few miles away). As a teacher, mother, aunt, etc., I naturally judge young people harshly. (*)
One particularly bothersome behavior is when tween girls hog the toilet or shower stalls to change their clothes. This is not only a problem because it occupies, say, toilets, when someone might have a need to, say, urinate - but it is also a problem because it betrays something really terrible about young women's self-image. Why should they feel awkward changing in a locker room? I personally walk around in the skin God gave me - it's not even a coed locker room for goodness' sake. To my disappointment, I'm matched mostly by women well over twice my age. The ones whom I hear talking:
"Oh my. Eighty-two is really old enough to live."
"Now Blanche, you know I just turned eighty-seven on Tuesday."
I think if someone doesn't want to see nudity or be naked - then they don't belong in a locker room. It is incredibly empowering for women of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages, to be able to see each other and learn what normal humans look like - particularly in an environment where everyone is improving her own personal fitness and health. No one has a "perfect" body, but everyone has a valuable body, the only one she will ever have. Teenagers would get a much more realistic and comforting assessment of their own appearance and future from spending their locker-room minutes in shared naked clothes-changing.
Oh, but everyone should wear flip-flops. I'm not completely out of my gourd!
(*) Ms. Gordon and the Ms. Gordon Corporation do not actually harshly judge young people. That was a joke (TM).
In the summer, my gym is shared by several youth programs - it's actually how I found the fantastic day camp that my sons attend (though that camp has now moved a few miles away). As a teacher, mother, aunt, etc., I naturally judge young people harshly. (*)
One particularly bothersome behavior is when tween girls hog the toilet or shower stalls to change their clothes. This is not only a problem because it occupies, say, toilets, when someone might have a need to, say, urinate - but it is also a problem because it betrays something really terrible about young women's self-image. Why should they feel awkward changing in a locker room? I personally walk around in the skin God gave me - it's not even a coed locker room for goodness' sake. To my disappointment, I'm matched mostly by women well over twice my age. The ones whom I hear talking:
"Oh my. Eighty-two is really old enough to live."
"Now Blanche, you know I just turned eighty-seven on Tuesday."
I think if someone doesn't want to see nudity or be naked - then they don't belong in a locker room. It is incredibly empowering for women of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages, to be able to see each other and learn what normal humans look like - particularly in an environment where everyone is improving her own personal fitness and health. No one has a "perfect" body, but everyone has a valuable body, the only one she will ever have. Teenagers would get a much more realistic and comforting assessment of their own appearance and future from spending their locker-room minutes in shared naked clothes-changing.
Oh, but everyone should wear flip-flops. I'm not completely out of my gourd!
(*) Ms. Gordon and the Ms. Gordon Corporation do not actually harshly judge young people. That was a joke (TM).
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