Banyas and body image

Last week, I went to a banya with my group. A Banya is a public bathhouse/sauna, in which you sit in an exceedingly hot steam room for a while, exit and dump a bucket of cold water on your head, sit for a few minutes, and repeat. During further repetitions you get to use birch twigs to whip yourself and your friends--it's supposed to be good for circulation and muscle soreness. It's fabulous, and I freely admit that there's a certain masochistic flavor to it that I thoroughly enjoy.

Inside the banya, large groups of naked women sit talking, drinking water (or beer or kvass) between sauna sessions, sometimes eating snacks. It can be an all day event for some people, and given how cold it's been outside I don't blame them for hanging out in the only truly warm place in town. The interesting thing is that no one seems to notice or care about what anyone else looks like. It's possible that because the average age was fortysomething and they'd clearly all had multiple children they were beyond caring about such things. But it was nice to be in an environment where what people look like doesn't make a difference. It's at odds with what I've observed on the street, the high level of fashion and makeup that scream "look at me!" to everyone who passes by. Perhaps it's a generational difference, or perhaps it's because the banya was in a smaller city (not Moscow or St. Petersburg). For whatever reason, the banya seemed to be the one place so far where people are free to let it all hang out. Which is not a bad thing at all.