The Kingdom of the Locker Room

The locker room in my gym is a place of utilitarian necessity to me. I go there to change, to store my purse and other accessories, and sometimes catch a startled glance at myself in the vast array of mirrors placed at every possible vantage point. I have learned some things about the citizens of the locker room. Allow me to introduce them to you.

Queen Selfie: Her royal courts are the locker room. She is found, wearing impossibly cute workout gear, hair perfectly pulled back under a thick, multi-colored headbands, in full makeup, ready to workout. Her warm-ups begin in the locker room and include raising and lowering her arms, smart phone in hand and clicking away, for the first round of the pre-workout selfies she will publish to social media before stepping out of the locker room. 

She continues her warm ups by moving from mirror to mirror and taking more pictures, mooshing her mouth into duck lips in one, smiling brilliantly in another, then finishes with a sad faced little girl pout in the last.  Once in the gym, she sits on the recumbent bike, motionless except for the zealous movement of those fingers, tagging herself in her pictures and captioning them that she is a "gym beast". Her workout is over once she’s received the tribute of responses from her followers and she heads back to the locker room, wearied but with a sense of accomplishment, to add a few more post exercise selfies to her albums.

Houdini: She is so modest she prefers to change in one of the few restroom stalls or showers. If those are occupied, though, she accomplishes a feat of agility so extreme it is praiseworthy. It unfolds like this. She sits on a bench in her professional attire that includes skirt, blouse, and jacket. Then she swathes several towels around herself so that only her head and her legs below the knees are visible. After a few mysteriously furious movements under her towels, she throws them off and emerges completely clad in her gym wear, without having exposed one additional centimeter of skin.

 Eve: The polar opposite of Houdini, she dries herself in the shower and steps out, sans towel, sans everything, to style her hair and put on her makeup in the buff. She takes her time, so comfortable in her middle aged skin that surely everyone else must be comfortable with it, too. She eschews personal space boundaries and gregariously approaches people seated on the bench to share a joke or professional observation, her pendulous private bits in close proximity to the faces of those ensnared in her conversations.

Oversharer: She is always accompanied by a twin oversharer. They loudly recount their escapades of the night or weekend before with each other. The twins amplify their voices to such a level that no one has to resort to eavesdropping.  Their vivid descriptions are replete with names, details, and bodily embarrassments. Once outside the locker room, though, they mumble their names so unintelligibly to the workers at the desk they have to be asked to repeat themselves.

Regular, Everyday Sweaters: This would include myself and most of the other citizens of the gym. We're a motley crew, indeed, but anyone who is willing to inflict pain and discomfort upon themselves and drip sweat in the process has to have some good things going on.