Hope you don't mean me, cause I'm not... but the groan suggests you might, so here goes:
As I said earlier, girls of my grandmother's generation were sent home from school for showing their ears. I habitually display mine; am I being immodest? Well, for that generation and culture, yes; for me and my culture, no.
Modesty - or privacy, or whatever else you want to call it - is a personal and a cultural choice. I can respect your choices as just that, choices , without thinking or trying to imply that you must have some kind of weird hangups if your choices are different from mine.
And that's all I've been saying: that that respect should go both ways.
Have you ever tried to get two kids dressed (and yourself) in a three foot by three foot changing room?
I'd much rather have the space of a communal area.
Our local pool has both private changing cubicles for the bashful and a communal room with lots of space for those who have much more important things in life to worry about.
What I look like naked is in the same category - for me - as how much I get paid, or the size of my partner's, erm, feet. I am not ashamed of it, nor embarrassed, nor do I flatter myself that you or anyone else really gives a sh!t. But it is still my business and if I want to keep it private, or be choosy who I share it with, there's nothing wrong with that. (And if other people wanna splash it around - or simply don't care who knows and who doesn't - there is nothing wrong with that either. Live and let live, I say.)
Exactly, and had the OP checked the facilities at the gym, she probably wouldn't have joined, and we wouldn't have this thread. However she chose to join the one she did, then chose to complain about it.
I don't get why some are now getting all moral about it, going to a gym is voluntary, as is parading in your birthday suit.
But surely in your case it was influenced by your (from the sounds of it) strict upbringing? While you (from your posts) seem to have escaped the bonds of the rather extreme puritan values that came with the territory, it must have however influenced your view on it regardless? I can understand your particular reservations with nudity as pertains to this thread, if that's the case, I imagine most people would be similarly affected with that kind of upbringing.
I think upbringing has everything to do with it for many people - I was brought up in a very normal household, not religious, strict or anything in fact my parents were VERY liberal with how i was brought up in many ways. But still the nudity thing just wasn't done and it's stuck in my mind i suppose - I have showered nude in changing room showers here without a curtain and i have got undressed in communal changing rooms but it makes me feel very self conscious and uncomfortable - I would LOVE to break out of those constraints in my mind
i suspect the OP feels a similar way - not judgmental about the locals doing it but how she feels finding herself in the same situation
The conversation as per normal then went onto more in depth discussions of morals and shame
Does that make my decisions any less valid, then - because there's a whole flock of other people making them more or less the same way?
What about people who take communal showers because that's how they were raised - are their body privacy preferences (I'll not say "modesty", as that seems to have confused some people earlier) any less valid because they were learned in the home?
C'mon Rich, this is basic stuff here. Different people, different families, different cultures do things differently. It does not follow that you are right and the rest of the world is varying degrees of screwed up.
Of course i'm not right and everyone else isn't 'screwed up'... that should be a given in any debate, i'm just giving my opinion and it could be as off the mark as the next mans. All I wondered was how much is your perspective on public nudity influenced by your cultural background, vs your own personal view on things now that you (from what you have said) have broken free of many off the restrictions of it. No offence intended, just curious.
i think it's important to remember, as has been said, we can say what is ok for one person or another in terms of "modesty" or their limits when it comes to nudity, etc. it may not be comfortable for you to go to the mixed sauna- but others enjoy it. personally i like to spend time with my man and being together in the sauna is really nice. if you feel uncomfy in the mixed one because of people staring or trying to chat you up, trust me it can be just as uncomfy in the women only at times! last time i went to a woman's only i had a female stalker following me. now if i go, i prefer to go with my hubby to the mixed
Who's making such a link? This thread isn't about those who do feel comfortable being naked in front of strangers - it is about those who don't.
This is a matter of personal choice, a bit like choosing to abstain from alcohol, for example. If somebody tells me that they don't drink alcohol because they don't want to get drunk and fall over in the street, I don't take that to mean that they object to me getting drunk and falling over in the street. Nor do I take it to mean that they must have some kind of weird, slightly dubious inhibition that makes them refuse to do something that everybody else seems to think is perfectly ok. I just buy that person a lemonade, buy myself a beer, and carry on as normal.
I'm finding it quite curious that those who aren't bothered about exposing their bodies to strangers are getting so irritated by those who are bothered. They don't want to change what you do - they probably don't even care what you do. They would just like the option of feeling less uncomfortable when changing in a public place.
There's nothing inherently wrong with taking a dump in a public lavatory with the door wide open, but I doubt many of us would do that. Why? Because for most Europeans, that's something you do in private.
Why is it so hard to accept that getting naked is, for quite a lot of people, something they would rather do in private?
"Hey Aisha! Why are you covering your hair in public? None of the other women have a problem with it. Are you sexually repressed or something? Are you ashamed of your hair? Are you implying, by wearing the hijab, that I should cover my hair too?"