One place I will NOT take my new camera....

...is the ladies locker room at my gym.

Shudder.

Maybe I'm just a prude, or royally insecure about my naked body, but seriously? Since when is it socially acceptable to strip down naked and gyrate your flesh in front of total strangers? Yes, I said gyrate. Bear with me.

Ever since I succumbed to the cold weather and joined the gym a few months ago, I chant a mantra in my mind: "Soon, it will be warm enough to run outside and I won't have to deal with this madhouse. Someday, when the ice melts, the road will be my friend and I can tell the stupid treadmill to suck it. I hate paying money to run indoors. And meat heads flexing their muscles in the mirror aren't even entertaining anymore." So I'm already not a huge fan of 'clubs' or 'gyms' or whatever the hell you want to call them but when people start exposing their nude hoo-has to me, I basically lose my mind.

Tonight, I was minding my own business, changing clothes the way I thought most people do it: discretely and quickly. As a former athlete I learned the very sneaky regular-bra-to-sports-bra maneuver to avoid any nipple exposure: you just put the sports bra on over the regular bra, then unhook the regular one and pull it out from under the sports bra. It's easy, and everyone should do it. But instead, this chick whipped out her ta-tas so quickly that I didn't have time to look away. A flash of light reflected from her saggy areolas...and....wait a minute.....was that.....it couldn't be.....freaking nipple rings! Ah, my eyes! My eyes!

And if that weren't enough, I spun around to face the other direction thereby avoiding nipple ring lady and instead I found myself face-to-face with a new gem: large, naked woman who is applying lotion vigorously. One foot up on the bench, bent over, with her offensive bum pointed directly at my face. I think it was smiling at me, you guys. Seriously.

It's just one of those things: do you blatantly look away, possibly staring at the ground to avoid all views of naked flesh? Or do you play it cool and if you accidentally find your eyes drifting towards an unknown flap of skin, act like you are totally unphased?

I completely respect this extreme act of self-confidence, really I do. I mean, obviously you have to feel pretty good about yourself to walk around butt naked in front of strangers. In fact, I think some of the naked ladies strut around, more so than walk, just to prove a point. Some of them dry their hair in the nude, talk on their cell phones nude, and apply makeup....in the nude. It's like they are trying to maximize their time sans clothing before they leave the confines of the locker room and enter the real world, where all the rules change. It's not okay to be naked in a public space...unless there is a little plaque on the door that says 'locker room', apparently.

There are little kids running around in this same locker room, probably staring as much as I do, and I think I saw a stray boob pop one of the little children in the face one day. It might have happened, I don't know----because I get so disoriented when I'm in the locker room. SO MUCH NAKEDNESS! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

Does anyone else find this horrible and stressful and down right awkward? Or maybe I'm just overly inhibited or something, I don't know. I'm just not used to such nudity or perhaps I haven't been in enough locker rooms in my life.

Ick, now I'm thinking about nipple rings and unidentifyied womanly pieces again.