Releasing My Inner Exhibitionist

Location: Hungarian locker rooms
April 2010
Adventure #13

Using American sensibilities, I've never considered myself prudish. I graduated from CU-Boulder (where we interpret being a "buff" in many contexts), the home of the naked pumpkin run, the threadbare bicycle ride and where I cherished a group of friends who streaked with the same regularity with which they bought blue books. However, in Hungary, even my widely drawn comfort lines are being crossed nearly every day in my gym's locker room.

For a little context, when I played sports in high school all the ladies were all extremely modest (read: insecure teenagers) and jumped through many hoops to retain this coyness. We mastered the maneuver most athletic women are familiar with, where you put your sports bra on top of your regular bra, then remove the bottom layer and never expose your lady lumps. In college, these boundaries became a little bit more relaxed, but still only the older women who were beyond inconvenient shyness walked around au naturel.

Then I moved to Hungary. Here, leafless women roam the locker rooms more often than clothed ones. I've grown slightly accustomed to seeing naked ladies everywhere I look, but lately a line has been crossed. I've been able to stomach nude women liberally apply lotion, sitting in the saunas or walking to and from the showers. However, the extreme action that has sent me over the edge is topless hairdrying. Every time I've gone to the gym this week, there has been at least one woman at the mirror fixing her hair, wearing only a thong or a towel tied around her waist or worst yet, in her birthday suit. The worst perpetrator to date is highly endowed and has hair down to her hips. Not only was she braless, her spectacle worsened as she used two blow-dryers simultaneously. Thus, both her arms were lifted and the hair wasn't the only part of her flapping around.

Unfortunately, there is no way to remedy this situation except to either grow even more liberal or to skip out of the locker room as quickly as possible after showering. But then, I'll be the odd wet hair lady (Hungarians seem to believe people who leave the house with wet hair automatically contract a terminal illness) who I am sure will be fodder for a Magyar blog.