In the public baths in Budapest, some of us Irish women couldn't handle the way the locals let it all hang out. We'd be sitting in the thermal spa, with its ancient mosaic tiles and marble pillars, when Frau Hungary would come plodding in not caring what we thought of her generous stomachs, her puckered skin, her losing battle with gravity or her habit of stretching her legs against the wall in the freezing post sauna plunge pool.
Some of us sat like modest lemons in our one-piece swimsuits, and alternated between staring, and trying desperately hard not to. Such less-than-perfect flesh should be kept under wraps, we reasoned, not flaunted as though the exposed human body was something acceptable. Natural even. No way.
I sat there letting the healing water wash over me, thinking how sad this was. I should explain that I am a bit of a prude when it comes to the naked body. How I envied the headmaster's daughter in Irish college because she owned a towel with an elasticated neck feature that allowed her to change out of her swimming togs in her own little towelling tent. As a rule, I never shopped in places with those communal changing rooms because I had no desire to catch an accidental glimpse of other women's bits and I certainly didn't want them accidentally glimpsing mine.
Putting on those disgusting gym skirts with legs - skorts I hear they are calling them now, as if giving them a snappy name makes them any more appealing - in the sweaty school changing room was an ordeal, so I opted for expertly forging a lot of sick notes instead. In a gym I was a member of for about five minutes, I would perform contortions in the lone toilet cubicle rather than stand among the other women who thought nothing of walking around topless as they blow-dried their shiny hair. A lot of this aversion to nudity had to do with feelings of inadequacy that came from not being as skinny as I would have liked. But I always thought that if I ever did become skinny, I wouldn't strip publicly, even for a bet.
I'd love to blame my Catholic upbringing, but I can't because apart from going through the obligatory Communion and Confirmation rituals and quickly deciding not to have anything to do with the religion, I never took all that sexual guilt we were supposed to have seriously. I wasn't given a complex at home either and as I sit here, fully clothed (sometimes I find it hard even to be naked in front of myself), I can't quite figure out where I got the idea that bodies need a constant shroud, at least when others are around.
If I had enough money I could probably pay someone to analyse why my philosophy has always been that the entire world should have a nudity clause in their contracts, except for those times when having a bath or sex. I was well into my 20s before I deigned to remove clothing for the latter activity, incidentally, and I once fell asleep fully dressed in the bath.
I hoped I would relax as I got older, but watching the women in the baths, I realised my position hadn't changed at all. It brought to mind my good friend who has just taken up swimming again after a few years away from the pool. She gave up an exercise she loved because it had all become too much like hard work. Her strict pre-pool self grooming regime had taken the joy out of what was an innocent and healthy hobby. In the changing room she would do a Houdini act under a giant towel, hopping on one leg where required, just in case anyone might catch a glimpse of forbidden skin.
She has started swimming again and her regime has gone out the window. It's not that she has suddenly acquired a perfect body, it's just that she likes it a little better now. She lets it all hang out, and doesn't mind when the lifeguard says hello as she walks towards the pool, an event that would have mortified her in the old days. She tells me changing out of her togs like a normal person is liberating. She says I should try it. Maybe one day I will.
It's not, after all, as though those women in the Budapest baths are walking down to the Central Market to buy their aubergines and melons and caviar in the nude. They are there to get clean and to relax, so the nudity is in context. For most of central Europe, happily sitting naked in their spas and their thermal baths, getting naked with members of their own gender is an utterly unremarkable event. Still we sit and we whisper in wonder, amazed that they have the nerve to walk proudly without their clothes, displaying misshapen bodies that act as guides to where they have been all their lives. Where we have all been. And how far some of us still have to go.