Every Wednesday from 9am-2pm the Russian and Turkish Bath house in NYC is women only. One of the perks of not working a 9-5 job is that I can go to Women's Day at the baths. Most evenings, it's crowded and the men dominate in size and number. But on Wednesday mornings, the atmosphere changes completely. Women go naked without feeling peering eyes upon them. Old women come with natural remedies--a raw egg to mix with mud for the hair, salt scrubs for the skin, and kombucha to quench the thirst. Young women come, revealing their secret tattoos. It's quiet, the baritone voices are gone, and it's relaxing.
It's a place to be free in your body. Some women have tummies stretched out from childbirth. There is a delightful variety of body shapes. There are a couple of older women with skin stretched tightly over their aging bones. Some breast sag low, others are small and perky.
Yet for all of the delights of enjoying the sauna in this laid back environment, I think one of the best parts is knowing that men are not allowed. That for five hours, there is a space where women can be together and be completely at ease knowing that men aren't invited.
Sitting there last Wednesday reminded me of a class that I took my freshman year of college.
It was a history of Ancient Greece class, and one day in particular, we were looking at the lives of women in Ancient Greece. It was a small class - only 6-7 students. It was an upper division class, and there weren't many history majors at Westmont College. It was taught by a new professor that year (1995-6), Dr. Robins. We students came to the room with the predetermine idea that women in Ancient Greece were repressed and isolated. What else could one conclude from a society that kept its women so separate from its men? We saw them as so far removed from our own enlightened age of feminism. Dr. Robins went through the historical evidence, breaking it down and asked us to think about this in a new way. Women washed clothes -- did we think this was something that could easily be done alone? Had we ever washed sheets or robes by hand? What about women's festivals. And she went on, with examples that I no longer remember. But at the end of her lecture, we were all wondering if those Greek women didn't have something special that our society doesn't really offer -- a women's world. Specifically because the sexes were kept so separate, women's lives had an opportunity to take on a distinct identity.
When I have an opportunity to be in women only environments, such as women's day, I think about that idea. Feminine support, strength, and understanding that doesn't have to prove itself in a man's world. Women's Day.
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A space for reflection, insight, and musing on life.
4 comments:
Hello Kirsten!
I enjoy the woman stuff. I love being a stay-at-home mom. A homemaker. I don't think that in any way it has less value than my husband trudging off to work. In fact, some days I worry that HE might not feel valued in HIS efforts. Funny, it is usually portrayed the other way around.
I think there is a lot of honor in being in the family business. I think where it gets tricky is when its assumed that everyone would feel that way. Or that everyone wouldn't.
Bake on, friend of bread.
I just realized I out-ed you.
I meant, Hello Wild Woman!
Ladies' Night at the Turkish and Russian Baths
by Julia Kasdorf
Outside, it's any tenement on East Tenth Street;
at the head of the stairs I drop my watch,
keys, wallet into a slender metal box
and take a robe of thin cotton sheeting.
Past the case of smoked fish, I pull off
my clothes among napping strangers and descend
marble steps stained with a century's grit.
In the steam room, an old woman looks up;
slender gourds hang off the cage of her ribs,
and when she wrings the pink cloth on her crotch,
I see a bun, bald as a girl's, and think "crone,"
ashamed. She runs weary eyes down my form,
then closes them.
Along the plunge pool, supple women stroke
green mud on their cheekbones and stretch
their legs between plastic palms. Above them,
a compote of brilliant tile fruit and the name
of an Italian mason. I love to think of him
telling his son about this place, or how it was
in the thirties, filled with immigrants
from cold-water flats, one of them
with eyes like Franz Kafka could not afford
to come here, but did, breathing steam for hours,
not needing to remember the names of things,
only sweating out the soot of New York, safe
as I feel in the hot cave where women drape
between steaming spigots. Some murmur,
most are silent, except when one
grabs a bucket and dumps it onto her chest
with a groan. Our eyes meet and we grin,
grateful to show and view the real shapes
of ourselves: so many different breasts
and hips that get smoothed over by clothes,
none of us looking like we're supposed to!
And after, our hair wrapped up in towels,
we climb to a roof that faces the back
of Ninth Street where strangers pass by lit
windows, cooking dinner, opening letters.
We stretch there on cots, and beside me
tears slide like sweat into the turban
of a stunning young woman. Whatever
the reason, I feel bound to her weeping,
eyes locked on our city's sky
aglow with all that lies beneath it.
Can you be in hot water when you're pregnant?
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