On Public Saunas and Women's Gardens

Yesterday I joined my mom for a morning swim at the lovely Comox Valley Aquatic Center. Not only did I really enjoy the sun-drenched, chlorine-free and uncrowded ambiance, but I learned something brand new. I discovered I don't like sharing a dry sauna with a man to whom I have not been formally introduced.

I had been sitting quietly by myself in the dry sauna, red-faced and dripping with cathartic toxin run-off, when a half-naked man yanked open the door, waddled in and plunked himself at the other end of the room with a grunt. It was a quiet room, and there were now two human beings sharing the small space. In the absence of any reading material or a big screen TV, I found myself feeling an increasing pressure to chat. This made me cranky. I found myself thinking, "I'm sweating here in clothing not much bigger than respectable Christian underwear and it seems a somewhat private enterprise to share. Why can'tcha find another sauna to grunt in? Isn't there a men's sauna somewhere?" Within a minute, I had left the sauna and headed back to the pool for a few more laps.

I didn't think about the sauna encounter until about an hour later. I was finished my swim before Mom's Aqua Motion class was done, so I showered and dressed and went to the lounge with my book to wait. Cruising through "A Thousand Splendid Suns," by Khaled Hosseini, I read this: "Herat [a city in Afghanistan] was visible from here, spread below her like a child's board game: the Women's Garden to the north of the city, Char-suq Bazaar and the ruins of Alexander the Great's old citadel to the south."

I hit "the Women's Garden" and stopped. As far as I can remember, I have always been just a little offended when I read about areas that were/are set aside for women only: the women's court in the Temple, the women's side in a synagogue, the women's this or that. All of this segregation of public places/spaces, intentional or otherwise, had only ever struck me as a way to keep women out of where the real action takes place. (Think burkhas, the British House of Lords (Spiritual), Hooters Restaurant, etc.) And I had thought this way until I hit the phrase "... the Women's Garden..." in my book and a new possibility occured to me.

Maybe women in various cultures and times in history have actually cherished having these "women only" sides of synagogues, gardens, and yes, even saunas to themselves as a gender. Women talk about different things when it's just other women present. We relax in ways not possible when high levels of testosterone are in the air. We are okay with sweating together in small rooms without knowing each other's names. We bond quickly, able to laugh with total strangers in changing rooms over ridiculously sized/priced/marketed clothing. We actually ask AND answer the question "Does this make me look fat?" of women we've never met before, and trust her to tell us the truth. Come to think of it, the amazing success of the women-only gym franchise, "Curves," should have been my first clue.

Maybe I have been remotely and mildly indignant over "women only" practices on behalf of a group of people who, had they known, might have reacted with puzzlement and even perhaps pity. I think I'll go check out my local Curves. If nothing else, they might have a sauna.