With their unique pen and their own sensitivity, four artists present to us, in turn, their vision of the world around us. This week, we are giving carte blanche to Mariana Mazza.
Posted on February 27
It’s a Tuesday, 1:10 p.m. I’m in the changing room of the Saint-Lambert municipal swimming pool. I always choose this time slot because there are fewer quotas, and afternoon swimmers may not recognize me: they are retired and mostly English-speaking. So I know that I can have peace of mind about my social status as a “tattooed girl who makes jokes with her big deep voice”. Anyway, I’ve never been a big fan of futile locker room conversations.
In fact, I’m just not comfortable in a locker room. Since very young, I have the reflex to hide my breasts and put my back when I take off my underwear. I’m not ashamed, I was just never educated to show off freely and be proud of my naked body.
I spot the first empty locker to my right, put my coat, my satchel and my gym bag there. I had previously put on my bathing suit to avoid stripping my clothes and being in a hurry to get dressed so that no one would see me. The way other people look in a locker room doesn’t matter to me, I tell myself, but I still take every precaution to be able to convince myself a little longer.
I look at the time: it’s 1:12 p.m. Our swim session starts in three minutes. I sit on a bench and scroll my Instagram feed, bites my nails to blood. I look around me, time does not want to advance. I forgot to shave my legs, hope it doesn’t look too much. Do I have a razor in my bag? I gained weight, this shirt was not so tight two years ago. Will people notice?
I close my phone, put it in my locker, I put on my flip flops and looking up, I come face to face with a visibly very old lady, 80-85 years old.
His folds of skin and his varicose veins bear witness to a long life and his slowness to a shaking calm. Her face is soft and luminous. Her long white hair is as beautiful as a city after the first snowfall.
She walks in the locker room from right to left with disarming ease, sex provided. I scrutinize her, telling myself that I have never seen a completely naked elderly body. I realize that mine will one day resemble him.
She washes her hands, goes back to her bag, still completely naked, rummages in it, takes some tissues, walks towards the trash can, with a fragile but sure step.
Me, who was in a hurry to shave my armpits before swimming so that I wouldn’t be judged… She hadn’t thought about that for a very long time. Maybe she had had this concern before. That in her thirties too, she was not enough. That at the swimming pool, she was in a hurry to change so that people wouldn’t see her naked.
She had probably already feared the gaze of others. The judgment of others. Over time, perhaps his ridiculous worries turned into a kind of letting go.
She is so beautiful and so good. She takes the time to put on her swimsuit to the rhythm of a long Japanese symphony in a scene from a dramatic film. I am obsessed with the splendor of his frail and muscular shoulders. As if she had been swimming for years in baths of hot milk.
This is the first time I’ve envied an old person. I wanted to ask her how she manages to be so free in her body, so light in her gestures. Time flies at 2 km per hour and I don’t feel rushed watching it. At that moment, I want to anchor his cadence in my head forever. I want to do like her: take my time. Her naked body has become a mass moving with grace, without complex, without questioning, inhabited by a disarming confidence. I would like to be like her. Don’t be ashamed anymore. No longer worrying about my hairiness, my image. Just to live like her.
People praise the youth and its ardor. I will henceforth promote the freedom of the age. Beauty at all ages.
1:15 p.m.: it’s our turn to swim. I open the door that leads to the swimming pool and let the elderly lady pass. She smiled at me slightly, in absolute control of her emotions. I don’t think about my hairy legs anymore.
As you read these lines, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was still in the locker room, naked, doing her little chores.