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As it seems to work for Japan, it might be worth a try or at least some time investment to see if the system is sustainable
also:
In the US? IMO only possible in exclusive environments similar to saunas at spas or membership-based clubs/gyms
I think not.
We’ve been bathing in private for the past 200 or so years hereabouts. It is difficult, if not improbable, to reverse such a trend in society and culture so quickly.
While I may actually feel this is a thing that society might benefit from; I don’t see this happening outside of nations with a lower societal taboo, and more robust cultural norms and practices on the subject of nudity. It works in Japan simply because that’s how their entire society has been structured from the start, and their society largely agreed that communal bathhouses made much more sense logistically and economically; largely due to the fact that it is an island nation, and land space is more precious there.
Furthermore; I personally also prefer privacy. As a trans individual; that privacy is strongly necessary to me for many valid reasons concerning my own safety and health; and for ensuring others do not feel unsafe; regardless of their reasons for feeling that way.
Society is not ready for this kind of thing anymore and has mostly chosen to abandon the practice to antiquity.
But it may be something to work towards to, isn’t it? Or at least get rid of these societal taboos?
Where I live and grew up (Germany), there isn’t that much of a taboo on nudity. I liked showering in my gym for example where there is only a shared (gendered) shower. Since starting my transition I wouldn’t feel welcome in any gendered shared public shower however. I would really like to stop hiding my body but instead feel more included among cis people. One day I hope…
I still prefer going swimming naked (if there are not too many people around) because it avoids gendered swim wear. At most lakes in Germany you can find people going swimming naked or with swim wear. Just coexisting :)
Germany took ~150 years of Lebensreform movements (which itself had Freikörperkultur as one line of thought and action among many) to get there. As the articles mention, things that contributed a lot included the fact that they still had living traditions of public bathing in sparsely populated areas (add Scandinavia and rural areas to the mix), and that Germany was a very industrial and educated country, that had the infrastructure to generate what were essentially academics in academical circles theorizing and practicing all of these ideas first, and there was still a strong memory of pre-industrial life in general (that these movements saw as better in those lines of way of life, to react to the then novelties of industrial and urban living). How would we translate that german social environment to places and societies a lot different ? example, much poorer with less intelligentsia, no prestige or memory of premodern living, multicultural multiethnic societies with low cohesion, with outright hostility to all these nature-weirdos that want veganism, nakedness, primitivism, etc while the current media landscape is dominated by hollywood idolizing private wealth, luxury and puritanism (like the amount of sex in Marvel films, after Iron Man 1).
i would have liked it if this had offered a COVID perspective on communal baths. i’m inclined to think that a hot moist environment is a likely place for it to flourish, and it seems odd to neglect to mention that three years of a pandemic probably had an outsize impact on the number of bathhouses still open in 2022
obviously we probably don’t have a ton of data on how to circulate air and filter COVID out of bathhouses, but i also bet there’s a way to do it in a relatively energy efficient way
anyways, it feels like a major spot that’s lacking in an otherwise informative and well thought out read
there is a comment on the article to this effect, for what that’s worth:
Angel
Hello Kris,
A lovely idea, but I won’t be visiting any public bathhouse any time soon. For many of us, the pandemic isn’t over. It’s contagious, airborne, and still killing and disabling people (including healthy people who have previously been infected and been ok) every day. Some ways to address the transmission of covid in bath houses can include rigorous HEPA filtration; required testing (using LAMP tests, for example, which are €10/test once you have the machine to read the results (another few hundred euro), and you can pool several people in one test); and maybe masks (I’ve read that they don’t work if they get wet, but I also read an article where someone tested several and went swimming with them. From memory, a regular Aura (~€1) worked nearly as long as an intentionally waterproof model). None of these are cheap by my standards. Not sure what you do about warts, foot fungus, and many other common bath house diseases.
Thanks, Angel
Iceland runs plenty of these and has a nice culture of frequenting the public bathhouse. It’s one of the few things you can do that is actually affordable there.
They do have the advantage of having essentially infinite clean energy in the form of geothermal heat. As do Japan in many cases, for that matter. I’m sure that has something to do with these institutions having staying power there.
Anyway, I think this idea has merits, but not as an energy saving measure. The reason for this is that in order to maintain good water quality, you have to shower thoroughly before getting into the bath, negating the potential energy benefits of the initiative. We can bring it back for it being nice, though!
Same in Hungary. Tourists are charged out the wazoo for it, especially the two or three most well known and picturesque ones, but locals can get a prescription for discounted entry from their doctors by just saying “oh, my rheuma is acting up”.
