Gym saunas are a gamble – you hope for the best, but you never know exactly who, or what, you’re going to find in there. That’s because a subset of gym-goers are clueless about sauna etiquette and, unlike at your typical spa, there are no attendants to enforce the rules. Stepping into the sauna at my fitness club back in Belgium, I have encountered gym-goers who’d kept their slippers on, people happily combing their hair and, once, someone scrolling on their phone.
Nothing, however, prepared me for the experience of going to a gym sauna in the US. When I stepped in for the first time, I discovered a fully clothed woman sitting on the middle bench. Her legs were wide apart and her sneakers were firmly planted on the bench below her. She was scrolling on her phone. Needless to say, there was no towel in sight. I stood stock still by the door for a few seconds. I wanted to say something, but being new to the gym and to US sauna culture, I felt paralysed by uncertainty, and so said nothing.
I opted to sit as far away from her as possible, which, on account of it being a sauna, wasn’t very far. Closing my eyes, I tried to ignore the murderous energy beginning to wash over me. Although I was wearing a bathing suit, I felt exposed.
When my sauna mate started playing a clip on her phone, I couldn’t hold it in any more, and asked her to put the thing away. Aiming for a firm but polite tone, I proceeded to explain how unhygienic what she was doing was, and how smartphones, with their built-in cameras, had no place in a sauna.
When that failed to impress her, I fell back on a crutch argument (I’m a foreigner, and sauna culture in Europe is different!), resenting myself for doing so. She, for her part, schooled me about the culture of my new gym (people go into the sauna fully clothed) and offered some patronising advice (to come early or late in the day to avoid offensive sauna-goers like her).
As she stood up and strode towards the door, a second woman stepped inside, again in full gym attire. My adversary looked at me as if to say “See?”, with an annoying smile. My tail between my sweaty legs, I left the sauna shortly afterwards, my head spinning, but not from the heat. Was this a prank? Did I miss a memo?
But when I looked around me in the changing room, everything clicked. Save for me, the showers had been empty. I was the only person actually changing in the changing room. Everyone else was merely dumping their stuff in the lockers. This had to be the reason behind this sauna foolishness – old-fashioned puritanical American prudery.
After showering, I mentioned this to the front desk staff and, a few days later, the gym manager when he called to “check in” on my first visit. The front desk staff were somewhat sympathetic, but insisted they couldn’t prohibit phone use in the sauna because “that’s how some people listen to music”. The gym manager entirely missed the point. “So you want us to force people to go into the sauna naked?” he asked, making me feel like a pervy little weirdo.
In the following days, I imagined single-handedly and heroically changing American sauna culture, but the prospect of turning into an unofficial sauna cop didn’t strike me as being all that enticing. I’ll still go to the gym every week. But I’m not going back in the sauna. I refuse to tacitly endorse this US perversion of a European tradition. I’ve peeked inside though. Each time, the sight of yet another person in sportswear makes me feel that little bit more European.
Linda A Thompson is a Belgian journalist and editor living in Chicago
