Here is a rather strange story about changing room etiquette (from Australia’s Daily Telegraph). I’m not entirely sure if the author is deadly serious or has her tongue in her cheek. I’m leaning towards the former.

I’m not a gym person. I prefer to get my exercise in a pool, or on a bike. But I have, on occasion, used a gym in the past, most recently as a base (in the dead of winter) in which to train for a charity fun run I undertook.

One local gym close to where I live sits next to one of the UK’s  national cycle routes. As I cycle by in summer, the air on my face and ‘a view’ unfolding before me, I sometimes see the doors of gym thrown open, and people, male & female, on exercise bicycles. This astounds me. Why would you choose to be indoors, on an exercise bike, in summer, when you have beautiful nature around you, waiting to be discovered?

But it’s not my place to tell others how to get their exercise, is it?

Equally, were I to join those biking indoors and working up a sweat during my cardio-vascular work out, I imagine that the post-workout shower would, logically, involve a bit of nude showering. You’d agree?

How, exactly, are these Australian women conducting their shower? Is the assumption that these indoor cyclists, runners and pilates disciples should change out of their gym clothes and into a swimsuit after their workout? How silly, illogical and plain crazy is that?

I know that when I used a gym or when I regularly use a swimming pool, the post-workout shower naturally involves me bare in the shower with my shampoo. How else should I properly shower? In a swimming costume? Madness.

If I were to go for a bike ride or a run from home and get back to a shower in my own house, am I putting on a swimming costume to take it? No. And neither are these Australian women.

So it becomes an issue of what’s on display. Well, there’s nothing wrong with what’s on display. 50% of the human population have the same basic bits and bobs, and 100% of the changing room users in that Australian gym will have the same basic bits and bobs. Not be able to accept that says so much more about the article’s author (and her friends, vox-popped on Facebook) than it does about those who will apply lotion nude, post workout. Those lotion appliers seem to have it right. Workout. Warm-down. Shower. And unencumbered by clothes in the shower area!

Ella