Who Puts the Soap on Your Back?

Imagine this: You are sitting around on a Sunday afternoon with your extended family when your Aunt and Uncle, or maybe your brother and his wife, stand up and say, "Well, we're going to take a shower." No one blinks. And when they return everyone says "May you always be clean!" and the next couple skips off to the bathroom. What is your reaction?

I never really thought about how taboo showering together is in the States until we were living with our host family here in Shamaxi and I realized that the couples we were living with were not showering alone. In fact, our host brother once gave us the scoop on how much hot water was currently left in the tank by giving us the calculations for if we showered separately and if we showered together. At our second place of residence I noticed the same trend.

There are more than a couple of stories about PCV's being surprised by host family members appearing mid-shower to help. Talking to one of our friends today, she said that after she declined help her host mom asked "But who will put the soap on your back?" Host mom then explained that she and her daughter always help each other get to that pesky middle of the back.

What's interesting about stumbling across something like this is realizing that what for you is shocking, for someone else isn't the least bit questionable. And after being here for a while I'm seeing it for what it is, a simple cultural difference. There are some things in life that really are not black or white. Shower etiquette is one of them.

I'm even starting to wonder if a little bit of loosening up wouldn't be good for us. After our vacation to Georgia where we went to the public baths (boys to the boys side, girls the the other) At first I thought it would be weird. It wasn't. I couldn't stop enthusiastically raving about the benefits of public bathing for self-esteem. How valuable to stand in a huge room of women of all shapes, sizes, ages (and stages of gravitational influence) walking around completely un-self-consciously. And there's something about public bathing that leaves no room for cattiness; no room for "can you believe she's wearing that?"

And I think about the modesty standards in our country that would prevent this. Women in almost non-existent bathing suits will be a magazine staple in month or two but a few years back when a parenting magazine featured a cover of a woman breastfeeding the outcry was enormous. PCV's find themselves buying longer skirts and concurrently watching their underwear flap in the breeze for all to see.

Where do our feelings about the appropriateness of the human body and relationship come from? How come in Orthodox Georgia and Muslim Azerbaijan nudity within one's own gender is considered completely normal while in the United States it is not? It can't completely come from religion. Is it related to ideas about homosexuality? Was it Queen Victoria? Backlash from Freud? Just something to think about. See you at the baths.