I am a part of several sub-communities. Every day as I move through my life, I encounter the different communities that make-up part of my identity. I go to class and encounter other Spanish undergraduate and graduate students. I go to the library and encounter others striving to obtain a college degree. I go to the gym and encounter others hoping to improve their health and bodies.
The community of the ladies’ locker room is particularly intriguing. As my friend and I change into our gym clothes as modestly as possible, I quietly observe the other ladies. One is standing with her back to us, talking to her friend, topless in a pair of navy blue shorts. Her lack of concern over her nakedness is unusual in an environment where most other women attempt to minimize how long their nakedness is revealed. I wander off to pee and weigh myself and when I return to see if my friend is ready, the girl is still topless. I wonder if the friend she is talking to is at all uncomfortable with her girl’s exposed breasts in her face.
Don’t get me wrong, I have had my own naked moments but they tend to occur when I am drunk. I will flash people, strip and run up and down the block on a dare, or even possibly forget to get dressed after screwing my boyfriend and heading downstairs to refill my rum and coke. But my nakedness tends to take place within a sub-community that embraces it.
The gym is already an uncomfortable place. It is full of people who want their bodies to look good, people who are inevitably in better shape than me. I doubt I am the only one at the gym who feels this way. I suspect this is why most women spend as little time naked in the locker room as they can. When my friend and I return to the locker room after our workout, I notice another girl changing. She is wearing a thong. She wraps a towel around her lower half before slipping off the thong, avoiding eye contact with others while doing so.
My behavior would be more similar to hers’ than that of the topless girl. I would worry about things such as fat on my thighs and ass or legs that need to be shaved or how I shave my bikini area would be perceived. Too little or too much hair? Could it be interpreted as me being too slutty or too prude? Such personal details I would rather keep to myself and maybe a few sex partners, not something I want to flash around the locker room for other women to judge. Maybe this means I care too much about what others think. Maybe it means I am ashamed of my body to one degree or another. Maybe I am more of a conformist than I like to believe. But then again, is the ladies’ locker room really the place to rebel?

I live in a quad, which means I share a bathroom and kitchen with three other people. Unfortunately, one of the other people is out-loud crazy. At first, I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt but she bullied her way into the crazy label.
This morning, I awoke to her banging on the bathroom door and shouting “I’ve got to take a shit now! You have to get out of there now!”
The person in the bathroom was the boyfriend of one of the other quadmates. He let her do her business but as soon as she came out, she started screaming at him all over again. “Sometimes I want to take a fucking shower in the morning! I haven’t showered in five days and I stink! Why don’t you use your own fucking shower? Why are you always stealing mine?”
When he ignored her and went in to take his shower, she turned off the bathroom lights (the switch is outside the door), called the landlord and stood right outside the bathroom door demanding the landlord come over right away to get him out of the shower. Judging from her side of the conversation, the landlord refused.
Once she hung up the phone, the other quadmate came out to defend her boyfriend and explain the situation. I couldn’t hear her side of the conversation because she chose not to shout, but all of a sudden Crazy Girl turns sweet and friendly, “Oh, you’re really moving? Oh, no, that’s too bad.”
I am sure that the other girl really wants to be friends with Crazy Girl after she just finished attacking her boyfriend. But Crazy Girl did the same thing to me. She verbally attacked me over my squeaky door and then told me how sweet and cute I was once I told her I would ask the landlord to deal with the problem.
I have to admit I am a bit miffed that she had the audacity to stand there screaming in the hall and wake everybody up after she yelled at me for my squeaky door waking her up. And seriously, why would you go five days without showering?