Put on your damn clothes.

I am a runner. My boyfriend thinks I'm obsessed, but that's because he's crazy and doesn't 'get it.' Either way, unlike normal grad. students I am up at 7am. Like normal grad. students, I am not at work at 7am. Why? Because I'm at the gym, running like a crazy woman. Going to the gym is a fun way to kill 2 useless hours in the morning, I swear. A good chunk of my 2 hours in the morning is spent changing and showering and whatnot. Gym showers, by nature, are not scary things. In fact the gym showers here are the best showers around, if you can get past the whole lots-of-strange-women-shower-here-and-not-all-of-them-use-soap hangup. Unfortunately, however, there are a group of women who use my gym who make the shower room much scarier than necessary.

How do they do this, you ask? They prance around naked. Completely naked. Naked as the day they were born (but a wee bit heavier). The vast majority of these women are not real lookers, either. You'd expect young, good looking people with tone bodies to prance around naked to show off, but showing off is not what these women have in mind (unless they're trying to show the rest of us that big really is beautiful, in which case they should try a different approach). I find that the worst part of my morning involves going to my locker and being greeted by the 200lb naked woman who *might* be pushing 5'4", who always seems to be there no matter what time of morning I shower.

Now, I have no problem with nudity. I look great naked, trust me. And the people that are closest to me are welcome to find out how fantastic I look naked. And before I take a shower at the gym I do, in fact, get naked. And then I wrap my body in a towel like a normal person with an interest in retaining body heat who does not want to thrust her naked body on the rest of society.

Why do these women refuse to cover up? I'm not really sure. It's certainly not a lack of towel, because they all wrap their towels around their heads like turbans before strutting proudly to and from their lockers. In fact, the biggest one I've seen yet just threw her towel over her shoulder like it was a tail. Perhaps they like the feeling of stinky gym air wafting across their naked flesh. This might explain the one who not only walks around naked, but who also spends a good 5 minutes slathering herself with lotion before putting on her clothing. Maybe they have poor self esteem and think that men don't want to see their bodies, so they might as well force women to see them? Honey, even if I were into women I wouldn't be into women who prance around locker rooms naked. That's not seductive, it's called voyeurism. Perhaps the reason they don't wear their towels is because the towel is too short to encompass their bodies? The world may never know. And really, the world doesn't want to know. Put on your damn clothes.

Hugs and kisses,
The Bitter Libertarian