We Hung Out With Naked People The Legal Way
It wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be.
G
Fabian
entle, soothing music. Relaxing body massages. Six different nourishing pools to soak your troubles away. One is filled with carbon-dioxide water warmed to a comfy 38.5 deg C, with benefits including detoxification and improved blood circulation.
This is Yunomori Onsen & Spa Singapore.
For many people, this might sound like a perfect escape from the hustle and bustle of life. But it’s my personal hell.
Male patrons of the onsen have to be naked — it’s compulsory.
I spent my time wondering what was the protocol when engaging with a room full of naked people. Do I make eye contact? Would not making eye contact be rude? What if someone talks to me? Do people even engage in conversations?
In theory, my fears were uncalled for. I survived the army. I should’ve been okay with this. But I wasn’t.
The idea of being naked in a room full of people just seemed off-putting. Call it self-esteem issues or being prudish — I’m sure I am not alone on this. There is just something about baring it all that makes me feel vulnerable.
To my surprise, slipping into my birthday suit was all it took for me to forget about my troubles. It was as if I removed all my worries along with my underwear.
In a room where everyone seemed to think nothing of going naked, I was the only one standing in the way of my enjoyment of the hot pools. Nudity has long been tainted with associations of sexuality.
While a visit to an all-nude establishment has certainly not turned me into a nudist, it showed me that social norms are the main reasons why we are uncomfortable.
Nudity is really just a body.
And it took getting naked in front of 20 people for me to figure that out.
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The onsen provides a relaxing space for people to hang out naked together.
PHOTOS: YUNOMORI ONSEN & SPA
I
Hwee Min
never thought I’d end up in a room of 30 naked women.
Granted, not all of the women at Yunomori Onsen & Spa were completely naked, and some wore the disposable underwear everyone is given.
I’d heard from one of our interviewees that customers usually follow the crowd in wearing the paper briefs or not.
Before this experience, I always thought being naked among other women didn’t bother me. In school, I changed uniforms behind a locker in class with gusto, and comfortably slipped into sports attire in the girls’ toilet with my classmates when there were not enough cubicles to go around.
And yet before entering the locker room, I could not decide which was worse, being naked among 30 other women who were also naked, or being the only naked person among 30 other women.
Knowing I would cave in to peer pressure, I had declined the disposable underwear before entering the changing room.
As it turns out, 13 February 2018, the day before Valentine’s Day, was a disposable underwear kind of day for the patrons of this spa.
I entered the room with the pools, and even though no one was staring at me, it felt like everyone was. I sat my disposable underwear-less body down between two friends (both naked) at the showers to get clean before entering the pools.
Five minutes later, I submerged myself in what the spa calls the ‘Silk Bath’, a chalky pool that claims to be “highly effective for relieving rheumatic and arthritic aches and pains, as well as relieving mental stresses”.
The murky water meant no one could see me from neck down, so after a few minutes, I got over my awkwardness and started to appreciate the comfort of a hot bath.
I tried to look around — furtively, because I did not want to be caught staring. Observation number one: Most customers came in pairs or groups. While this might have had something to do with a one-for-one promotion the spa was having, it was heartening to see women giving each other back rubs or dowsing each other in cold water after leaving a hot pool.
Second observation: There were a few children in the premises and they were all extremely comfortable with going nude. There was a girl of about 10 sitting naked on a stool in the locker room tapping away on an iPad (electronics aren’t allowed in the pool area), while her mother — wearing disposable underwear — dried her hair with a towel.
As I packed up my belongings next to them, I wondered why so many people, including myself, feel incredibly out of place when we strip it all away. Wasn’t this supposed to feel democratising?
Perhaps everything about nudity that we are uncomfortable with, we were socialised to believe after all.▝
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