In the beginning, as I washed afterward in the showers, I stared at my bath products as if in deep concentration, trying not to look at the women around me, and trying to therefore be invisible to them. This strategy worked well for a while, but over time I began to notice something. In the showers, caps and goggles off, hair let down in the steaming spray, our bodies collectively share and reflect the experience that is being a woman. Necks stretching, soaping toes, breasts, backsides, sighing, tucking back a stray wisp of hair, we all inhabit our bodies sensuously even without knowing it. Our bodies are maps bearing the signs of our paths, some bear tattoos or stretch marks on the belly or breasts, there are moles, scars.
Some hands are slender, manicured and bejeweled, others square, strong and brown.
There are elderly women, puckered and worn, there are muscular and spare teens. To be sure a few, a very few are sleek and shapely in the conventional sense, but most are rounded, Rubenesque, beautiful and graceful. Somehow, gradually, the ancient and communal act of bathing together with women healed my wounds. I have shed the weight that hung so heavily around my neck, the senseless shame of my body. It is mine, it is me, and I am Venus rising from the blue sea, calm in my beauty at last.