This is a late submission to the December 2023 Gender Exploration Carnival. Participants were invited to write on any prior theme. I have chosen to write on the theme for August/September 2023, which was “Sports”.
This month, the Gender Exploration Carnival is accepting submissions on any past theme. I’ve chosen to write on the theme for the August/September Carnival: Sports. Back in August and September, I didn’t submit an entry because I couldn’t think of anything to say on the subject. But then I heard a story about how Hockey Canada is now requiring all players under eighteen to either wear a base layer to the arena or change in a private stall rather than in front of their peers.
I thought it sounded like a great idea.
I’ve never played competitive sports, but I did take gym in Grade 9, and I remember how alienating and uncomfortable the changeroom experience was. Grade 9 was a time when my body had changed a lot, and I felt very insecure about it. And, just as I was worrying about how my body compared to others, I was presented with all these other bodies to compare myself to. I worried about other girls judging my body, and it did nothing to increase my self-confidence. Having been bullied for most of elementary school, I didn’t need anyone using my body as one more reason to bully me.
Added to my personal insecurity was also a lot of discomfort around nudity. A big theme in primary school sex ed had been that you shouldn’t expose your private parts to other people and other people shouldn’t expose themselves to you. But in the changeroom those rules seemed to go out the window. You were expected to strip down to your underwear, or even further, in front of dozens of people. Even if you tried to be modest, you’d sometimes catch a glimpse of another girl’s naked body. Having been drilled with a “nudity is bad” message, it was impossible to be in that kind of situation and not feel uncomfortable about it.
Looking back, it’s easy to see the changeroom as a lesson in both heteronormativity and gender normativity. The excuse for changeroom nudity seemed to be that girls and boys were segregated, and so we were only with people with the “same” kinds of bodies. The message was two-fold. On the one hand, it encouraged girls to see each other as “like me” and each other’s bodies as “like mine”, while presenting boys and their bodies as “other”. I’m sure boys learned a corresponding lesson. This reinforced a sense of gender identification and gender solidarity. On the other hand, there was an implication that girls and boys needed to be protected from seeing each other’s bodies because of the sexual feelings this might arouse. This implication was clearly based in a world view that said girls could only be attracted to boys (never to other girls) and vice versa.
Of course, it’s stupid to say that all girls’ bodies are the same or that all boys’ bodies are the same. People have different body types. They’re fat and skinny, tall and short, curvy and angular, toned and flabby, dark and fair, clear and speckled, hairy and hairless. Breasts don’t all look the same; if you’re in a room with a bunch of topless girls, you’re likely to be struck by how different they all are. The same goes for penises. So it makes little sense to me to say it’s okay to get naked around one sex but not the other. Would I have been mortified to be in a room with naked boys? Sure. But I was hardly less mortified to be in a room with naked girls.
Some, of course, would argue that the real problem isn’t nudity in changerooms; it’s prudishness and body-shaming. If only we treated nudity as natural and unremarkable, we wouldn’t feel embarrassed about it. Those people are probably right. But, unfortunately, North American society is prudish about nudity, and there is a lot of body shame. And young people, who have to figure out their changing bodies while navigating toxic social situations, are the most vulnerable to shame. So I’m glad one organisation is making it easier for kids not to get naked around each other. And I hope similar policies catch on elsewhere. I know they would have made my gym classes a bit less painful.
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When I found out about changing rooms – the fact that it is normal for people to be completely naked in them – was SHOCKING to me. Where I grew up (Bangladesh, but I suspect this would extend all over South Asia) this was unheard of. There aren’t a lot of good facilities for changing rooms in the first place, so I suppose this is a downside of it — providing a lot of individual space for people to change can be a limiting factor. Regardless, the idea that one can be completely naked in front of their own gender, but not their opposite is baffling to me., for exactly the reasons you stated.
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One thing I would like to add about school changing rooms is the lack of *agency* regarding modesty. Basically as I recall my own middle school experiences we weren’t give a choice about how modest we wanted to be in PE changing spaces since the only private space was the toilet stalls which weren’t large enough to change in. Feelings about body also fluctuate even as adults; some days we feel more comfortable in out bodies than others. There also weren’t healthy ways to discuss bodies and I remember talking about bodies and body diversity was see as inherently negative and gossipy.
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