Public bathing

Public bathing has a long history. Although the ancient Greek men practiced nudity in the Gymnasium, it was not acceptable for the women to view the men naked nor for the women to participate in social nudity, even among themselves. Even the original, nude Olympic games were only attended by men.

During the Ottoman Empire, public baths, inherited from Byzantium, were widely used. The baths had both a religious and popular origin deriving from the Qur'an (ablution ritual) and the use of steamrooms by the Turks.

In The Book of the Bath, Françoise de Bonneville wrote, "The history of public baths begins in Greece in the sixth century B.C.," where men and women washed in basins near places of exercise, physical and intellectual. Later gymnasia had indoor basins set overhead, the open maws of marble lions offering showers, and circular pools with tiers of steps for lounging.

Bathing was ritualized, becoming an art -- of cleansing sands, hot water, hot air in dark vaulted "vapor baths," a cooling plunge, a rubdown with aromatic oils. Cities all over Ancient Greece honored sites where "young ephebes stood and splashed water over their bodies."

Romans adopted this Greek model of "warmth and conviviality," albeit with their usual excess. The first public thermae of 19 BC had a rotunda 25 meters across, circled by small rooms, set in a park with artificial river and pool. By 300 AD the Baths of Diocletian would cover 1.5 million square feet (140,000 m²), its soaring granite and porphry sheltering 3,000 bathers a day.

Roman baths became "something like a cross between an aquacentre and a theme park," with pools, game rooms, gardens, even libraries and theatres.

One of the most famous public bath sites is Aquae Sulis in Bath, England. It is no longer in use, but when it was, it's waters were believed to cure diseases. This is why it is one of the most or possibly the most famous public bath sites in the world.

The largest baths in Rome were the Baths of Caracalla built by the emperor Caracalla (211-217), where men and women had mixed freely. Laws were soon brought to suppress "licentiousness" (mixed and otherwise). Few worked. In 320 AD women were barred from the thermae. At the end of that century St John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople, banned baths altogether.

In medieval Europe, the Roman custom of public bathing was maintained in some form through bath houses. These became vital community centers, important for gossip and business. Bath houses were unisex. In the film "The Hour of the Pig" (a.k.a. "The Advocate") [1] with Colin Firth, about the life of a rural litigator in medieval France, women and men can be seen mixing freely. In the film women give the Advocate and his friend the priest massages, and it is tacitly understood that these women are prostitutes, able to offer more services than this. Bath houses were sometimes legitimate, and sometimes quasi-legitimate, conjoined with the offices of a brothel, hosting rooms for entertaining, banqueting, and purchasing and enjoying sexual services. This was not always limited to men cavorting with female attendants, one French court case charges a female brothel owner with seducing the premiere women of the town to while their days away banqueting with and enjoying the pleasures of lower class men, who may or may not have been paid for these services. Bath houses were known as 'stews', a word that then remained associated with all brothels, even those not in baths.

In Japan, nude communal bathing for men, women, and children at the local public bath, or sento, was a daily fact of life until the mid-1800s and an increase in Western influences. Even though almost all modern day Japanese have their own private baths, public baths are still popular in Japan. Previously, they were invariably unisex, with both sexes, adult and child, utilizing the same bath. This was common until the early 20th century. Nowadays, all public baths have separate facilities for males and females, and many administrative regions require this by law.

In modern Russia, much political and economic business is conducted in exclusive men’s-only steam baths. It is said that this represents an invisible barrier to women’s attainment of real power in Russia.

Public baths today

Public baths are still common in many countries in spite of Westernization. Japan seems like the most widely-known example, but also countries like Korea, et cetera are commonly using public bathing facilities. Bath houses are no longer primarily based on natural water sources, although such areas are popular for hotels or resorts and "retreats." Providing service to many people and generating money is the priority for baths catering to the economically minded, such as in a busy city, so services such as back scrubbing, steam rooms, quasi-gyms, and pools of various temperatures are common. Public bathing facilities can also be common areas to socialize and spend time with friends, and saving money on water and heating. Eating and relaxing are also common, with emphasis on health and since bath houses tend to be popular with women, weight loss and beauty.

In some countries single-sex public baths are encouraged: with separate baths for men and women, or, when there is only one bathhouse in the town, different days or times of day are allocated for men and women. In other countries, mixed bathing is more popular, and it is either sexual or non-sexual. Public baths today often incorporate saunas.

Once the user of the sauna has achieved a good sweat, the user then proceeds to another warm room, to be greeted by the Hamami. The Hamami then gives a vigorous massage, usually including moving the body through some extreme manipulations. For the massage, the individual lies down on a heated, raised stone slab or on the hot floor itself. This is followed by a scrubbing with a stiff brush that removes the outer layer of dead skin.

Traditionally, when baths were infrequent in hot climates, body hair contributed to body odor. After the scrubbing, the attendant uses an exfoliating soap and further scrubbing to remove all body hair. For those unused to naked genitals, the hair removal can be a shock. This is followed by further soaping and rinsing. Finally, one moves to a cooler room and sips tea, water, or juice and relaxes before stepping back into the real world.

Bodily perfection and self-consciousness

For Muslim women, not usually seen in public, the hammam is a social center where they feel no self-consciousness about their bodies and where they can catch up on each other's lives and socialize. Public baths do not exist per se in United States today, except in certain resorts and isolated locations. For example, Esalen on the Big Sur coast of California is famous for its cliff-side hot springs. At Esalen, the baths are only open to guests during the day, but in the early morning hours the baths are open to the public and coed for all. Tassajara Zen Center, inland from Esalen, has baths that are open to practitioners during the winter and to paying day and overnight guests during the summer. These are segregated during the day, and the men's bath is coed in the evening. Like the hammam, these resorts require you to shower first. There are numerous hot springs, developed and undeveloped, around the United States. At some developed resorts, like Harbin Hot Springs in Northern California, all of the guests in the coed baths are nude.

In Germany, public baths have been a developed institution for many years.

Directions for Public Bathing in Japan

(These directions come from the Hida Hotel in Takayama, Japan, which has four public baths available for guests, two on the roof - one for men and one for women - and two in the basement - again, separated by sex).

1. Take off your shoes at the entrance of the dressing room (the hotel provided some clothing and shoes for guests to wear to the bath).
2. Place your clothing on the provided shelves. If you have any valuables, place them in one of the lockers (lockers were provided).
3. Take one of the small washcloths with you. It can be used in the bath, but should not be used with soap or shampoo in the showers.
4. Wash your body completely in one of the showers outside the tub, using soap and shampoo. Soap and full-size towels are not permitted in the bath.
5. You can now enter the bath. Make sure you enjoy yourself.
6. Once you have finished bathing you can rinse yourself off in one of the showers or simply towel off and return to the dressing room.
7. You need to put your clothes back on (as public nudity isn't well-received in the rest of the hotel).
8. Make sure you get your valuables from the locker.

See also

• Bathing
• Gay bathhouse
• Steam Showers
• Steam baths:
  • Banya (Russian)
  • Sweat lodge (Native American)
  • Sauna (Finnish)
• Hammam
• Thermae (Roman)
• Onsen & Sento (Japanese)