Today, news from suburban South Africa, courtesy of one of my besties who is a regular at the gym.
Her bulletin came via WhatsApp, enraged: “At the gym this morning, a white lady approached me while I was doing my hair and said to me that she is sick of dealing with this and nodded over her shoulder, so I looked and it was a large black lady and a skinny black lady busy dressing.”
For context, my friend (white, in her 50s) was in the open-plan women’s changing room, just out the shower and dressed herself.
What was the trouble, she wondered, a few options going through her head: had the lady had an altercation with these women? Or… what? Was it nudity? Obesity? Skinniness? Blackness? Turns out it was all the above.
“I asked her what happened and she seemed to have a problem that she and her 13-year-old daughter are exposed to naked ladies dressing in the changing room… she said they don’t need to see this every time they come to the gym and her daughter is so embarrassed.”
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My friend told her she didn’t see the issue, but madam was not finished. “She then told me last week she told a black lady to go get dressed in the toilet, and the black lady reported her for harassment – rightfully so.”
Madam found no support from my friend and stormed away, presumably to poison the earth elsewhere. Hopefully, someone told her to get dressed at home.
We can laugh it off – just another ignorant, entitled Karen, sowing interracial strife – but what stuck in my head was the daughter.
Of course a developing girl will blush at womanly nudity and, yet, what a teachable environment this could be for her; what a great lesson in body positivity!
How marvellous to be exposed at such a formative age to all the shapes, sizes and colours that a healthy female body can be – not just the Instagram-ready ones – and to see diverse women who are comfortable in their unfiltered, unadorned skin, with heavy bosoms, sagging bottoms, body hair, scars, spots and yet without a myriad hang-ups; women who don’t feel the need to hide away in a toilet cubicle.
Instead, a young girl learned from her mother that these naked, normal bodies are somehow shameful and disgusting. And that is where the real shame lies.
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