Shower etiquette at the swimming pool

seven-day-weekend

I just don't think it is appropriate for a female child to be in a dressing room full of naked men (nor vice versa). I think they should use the family room.

LilElvis

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

I just don't think it is appropriate for a female child to be in a dressing room full of naked men (nor vice versa). I think they should use the family room.

What family room?

I've never seen a third changing room for families, and even so that would still mean that members of the opposite sex would be together.

Jagraf

My issue in general is the lack of choice. There are some who do not want to see, or to be seen, in a state of undress, and there are those who don't mind. Sharing communal changing rooms is down to lack of space, or the cheapest option for the company / facility.

Personally, I don't like the thought of urinals either (I'm female so don't need to use them lol) but people do like privacy when going to the toilet, dressing etc.

Being naked is natural, of course,but we don't walk the streets naked, so maybe that's where the line gets blurred with changing rooms.

seven-day-weekend

LilElvis wrote: »

What family room?

I've never seen a third changing room for families, and even so that would still mean that members of the opposite sex would be together.

But maybe they would not strip off naked in front of someone else's child. None of my family would.

megaginge

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

:eek:My husband was quite upset the other day when he was in his (all male) communal changing room, with everyone naked, when a man brought a little girl in :eek::eek:

Why? She's not interested and why would the blokes care? If the girl is under 6 say and the parent doesn't care, why should your husband?

Pyxis

Taking this discussion a little further, I am also not keen on the trend towards 'communal' toilets either, such as they tend to have in some European countries.

Instead of separate male and female toilets, you enter a door to find a room with a bank of say, three or four cubicles, for use by either sex, and a bank of washbasins. I'm already sensitive about 'noises' produced when one goes to the loo, without having to worry about men being in the adjacent cubicles. Then, I may want to adjust my dress after washing my hands, or adjust makeup or check my teeth for bits of food etc., and really don't want to do this in front of strange men.

Call me repressed if you like, but it makes me feel very uncomfortable indeed.

megaginge

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

:eek:My husband was quite upset the other day when he was in his (all male) communal changing room, with everyone naked, when a man brought a little girl in :eek::eek:

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

But maybe they would not strip off naked in front of someone else's child. None of my family would.

If someone else brought their child into a space I was getting changed in, I'm not going to cover up all of a sudden. That is their choice. Why on earth would you care? It's not like you're flashing their child for crying out loud you're in a space doing exactly what the space is designed for you to do.

I really don't understand this reaction.. What do you perceive the problem to be?

The question posed about whether genders were reversed is interesting also. What if a woman took a 7 year old boy into an all womans changing rooms?


Both of these scenario's are by the way in any gym or swimming pool I've ever been to, very common occurrences.

Torry_Quine

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

I just don't think it is appropriate for a female child to be in a dressing room full of naked men (nor vice versa). I think they should use the family room.

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

But maybe they would not strip off naked in front of someone else's child. None of my family would.

I agree with you. They may well be comfortable but it just doesnt sit right with me to have children in a room with naked adults that they are not known to

thriftylass

The british are rather prude I think. It's not like sth you haven't seen before or that anyone is really looking esp in a gender specific changing room. If I'd take my under 8 year old son swimming of course he's coming to the female changing with me, no choice.

Before I was a teenager our family regularly would go to nude beaches in the summer (very common in eastern germany) and no-one bat an eyelid. What it actually did is make you feel like you're normal and bodies come in all shapes and sizes. There is nothing sexual about it.

TBagpuss

Frogletina wrote: »

I remember in Turkey going to a Turkish bath and there were quite a few people in there at the same time, both male and female which is very unusual. Normally you are just in there with who you have gone with, and even then it can be two at a time, but this was a very large room.

You never know if there is going to be a male or female attending to you but on this occasion it was a man.

Eventually it was just members of my family left in the Turkish bath and a woman probably in her late fifties who had gone on her own and we were all sitting on the wet slab waiting for our massages. My daughter and I wore bikinis and the backs of these are usually undone so the back can be massaged and then done up again.

The woman with us was wearing a swimsuit and the attendant just pulled this to her waist.

I can imagine lots of women would be most unhappy if this happened even with a female attendant however the woman seemed more surprised than shocked. We spoke to her afterwards and she was ok with it - it was just so unexpected.

The worst thing for me is always the cold water that is thrown over you at the end - once it was with a hose! I could do without that.

In my experience, this depends mostly on whether the Bath is one which caters primarily to Turks or primarily to tourists. When I have been to ones where the clientele was mainly Turkish, they were always either segregated or would sometimes be just the group you arrived with, but on those ocassions they always asked whether we were happy to go in together.

In the ones which catered mainly to non-Turkish visitors then they tended to assume you were OK with mixed bathing.

I never had anyone undo a bikini or move a swim suit withiout checking first. I wonder whether the oman you saw was a regular so they already knew that she was comfortable with this?

I'm craving a proper Turkish bath, now...