There’s nothing that makes you feel more ordinary than being surrounded by dozens of naked women.
If you are a guy and reading this, just know I’m a woman writing primarily to other women, so if anything makes you uncomfortable, I’m not offended if you stop reading. J
Now, you may be wondering what the heck I’m talking about. Well, a large part of Japanese culture are their onsens, or public bath houses. Japanese people are serious about their bath time. I had heard rumors before I got here that all members of the family bathe in the same water. While this is true, it’s not as gross as it sounds. You see, baths are not for getting clean, but for relaxing after you scrub yourself clean in the shower. A public bath house (onsen) is where a large number of people gather together to shower and bathe together (separated men/women, thank goodness). Why? It’s culture. And it’s freaking relaxing.
I had the pleasure of visiting one of these onsens this past weekend with my host family. The thought of being naked around all these women was a bit nerve-racking, but I wanted to partake in the cultural experience. I, like so many other women, have had my mind brainwashed by TV and magazines into thinking that I don’t live up to society’s definition of “beauty”. My hair is too short, too thin, too flat. My eyebrows are un-groomed, my nose is too flat, my lips are too chapped. My shoulders are too wide, my arms are too flabby, my fingers are too short. My stomach is too big, my hips aren’t wide enough, my thighs touch when I stand up. My knees are knobby, my calves are huge, and my ankles are too thick.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg of “issues” that I, and every woman, can easily choose from to make a list of everything that’s wrong with the way they look. Women have a knack for finding the small details that differ from the air-brushed women who define our beauty and self-worth. We tell ourselves that women are supposed to look like those touched-up versions, and we even believe the silly lie that everyone else is beautiful and we are the only ones with our specific “imperfections”. We isolate ourselves, thinking that the differences in our bodies are unique only to us, and that makes us insecure and self-conscious.
Soaking in one of the baths at the onsen, I try to avert my eyes from the sea of naked women around me. But then I realize something beautiful about these women. There’s no one type of woman here. There’s tall women, short women, skinny women, fat women. There’s long hair, short hair, straight hair, curly hair. There’s women with 4-pack abs, and women with multiple “extra tires”. Women whose hip bones stick out of their bodies and women whose bellies hang below their waist line. Large boobs, tiny boobs, perky boobs, old-women saggy boobs. Each and every woman walking around is beautiful in all her little differences. Each of them is lovingly hand-crafted by the creator of the universe!
When it comes to body image, I’ve never really been a proponent for comparison, but just take a minute to compare yourself to the description above, and you’ll find that you’re not isolated, you’re really very… average. And not just average, but beautifully and lovingly hand-crafted by the creator of the universe!
“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them…God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.”
– Genesis 1:27,31
