Nudity and Tattoos

Growing up in the Soviet Union, until I turned 17, the three of us – my mom, me and my younger sister – lived in what was called “institutional housing” provided by soviet institutions to their employees. It meant that you could live in it only for as long as you work for the institution. My father was a police officer who got our institutional one-bedroom apartment and when he walked out on my mother, she had to quit her beloved job of a dressmaker and work for the police, not to lose the housing. She had worked at their telecom center until she retired in 2002.

One of the peculiarities of that institutional housing was that we only had hot water in the cold months when the heating system was on, because the hot water could be run from the pipes heating the radiators. In the warmer months, we had no hot water at all. Which meant that we had to boil water for bathing on the weekdays. On the weekends, we made a trip to a public bathhouse because all three of us had very long hair and boiling enough water for washing it was tedious and time-consuming.

Washing long hair in a public bathhouse involved three steps with large tubs of water: hot for shampooing and thorough washing, warm for the first rinse and lukewarm for the second rinse. It took a lot of time for all three of us as each person was supposed to take only one tub, so it was a whole operation of lining them up, filling them with water and going through the three “stations.” Mom always washed our hair first, and when she was done with mine and was working on my sister’s I was just sitting there, waiting and gawking around. I would watch other women’s and girls’ bathing practices and look at their bodies. Needless to say, this collective bathing exercise provided me with an opportunity to see female bodies of all ages, shapes, forms, and proportions. One of the early lessons in empathy was when my mom noticed me gawking at a girl of about my age – 7 or 8 – who had a huge hump on her back.

“Don’t stare,” my mom said. “She also needs to wash in peace.”

This practice also contributed to the fact that I am completely comfortable with female nudity. Male, not so much, only with my intimate partners. But females I am totally fine with and would absolutely go to a nude beach if I knew it was strictly for women.

But you live and learn, right?

One of the later memorable experiences I had with female nudity was in 2000, when I ended up in the beautiful Szechenyi Turkish Baths in Budapest, Hungary. Budapest is famous for its Turkish baths with unforgettable experiences, and Szechenyi is one of the most affordable and popular options. It has a big outside pool and several smaller inside pools with hot, cold, thermal waters and healing mud. The inside section is absolutely gorgeous in its mosaic architecture, lighting and grotto feeling to it, and I could stay there for hours.

In one of the pools, I noticed a beautiful American woman. I could tell she was American even though she was naked by the way she oozed confidence and gregarious pleasure with the entire experience. She was a dark-haired blue-eyed nymph of about 32-35, and I just couldn’t peel my eyes off of her. One particular thing that drew my attention was her tattoo around the belly button in the form of what looked like a dashed dragonfly. She also had a much bigger tattoo on her right lower buttock running into her thigh. It was faded but you could still tell it had three intertwining roses.

We stayed in the same thermal pool for quite some time, and she noticed I was looking at her tattoos.

“Yeah, don’t do that!” she finally said to me.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare,” I said, embarrassed.

“You totally did, and that’s fine. I’d stare too, if I were you.”

“Then what did you mean?...”

“I meant don’t have any tattoos in places where you can gain weight or have pregnancy stretch marks.”

“Oh,” I said, finally getting it. “Is that what made them so…”

“Faded and out of shape? Yes,” she confirmed, “this one used to be a beautiful butterfly and now it looks more like a tortured, torn dragonfly.”

“I honestly thought that’s what it was,” I said.

“See? I know, my twins stretched it out when I was pregnant. And this,” she showed at her hip, “was a beautiful pattern of intertwined roses.”

“I can still see it,” I said.

“Yeah, but this one looks more like a toad face than a rose,” she pointed and laughed.

“I’m glad you can joke about it.”

“What else can I do? I wanted to have other tattoos covering or correcting for these, but it would have been too much work and money.”

“What does your husband think about them, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Oh, he is totally fine with them. He thinks it’s endearing and sometimes calls them ‘pregnancy battle scars.’ To tell you the truth, real men who love their wives don’t really care about our bodies. We care a lot more than they do. We still have great sex, and that’s more important than the stretch marks our babies gave me.”

“That’s very wise of you,” I said.

“It was actually my husband who told me that,” she said. “But still, for your own sake, don’t do it. If you ever decide to have a tattoo, have it on an ancle or another part of your body that does not easily stretch.”

With that, she went to a different pool and I was left with a great insight on tattoos for life. I’m still tattoo-free.

This story was inspired by Rachel’s drabble and discussion it its comments below: