For the most part any gender inequalities that exist do not affect the western tourist.\u00a0 Every once in a while I put on a head scarf to better fit in, but that\u00a0always\u00a0seems more of a novelty than a burden.\u00a0 My experience on the female side of the Turkish bath, however, was quite a disappointment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Steve returned from\u00a0his\u00a0bath (we took turns so that someone always had the stuff) aglow with stories of saunas, steam rooms, thorough scrubs, and a massage unlike any he’d ever\u00a0imagined. My back\u00a0is famously achy and I practically ran to the bath anticipating chiropractic relief.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The women didn’t seem\u00a0very happy to see me, but reticently sent me into the bath.\u00a0 I admit it was wonderfully steamy and beautiful-like a marble tub the size of a small\u00a0cathedral.\u00a0\u00a0 There was no sauna but that\u00a0I didn’t mind.\u00a0\u00a0A lady finally came\u00a0in and started scrubbing me all over.\u00a0 This part was on par with Steve’s description.\u00a0 She\u00a0removed dirt I never knew I\u00a0had.\u00a0\u00a0Seriously,\u00a0rolls of dirty skin cells were visably falling off.\u00a0 It was a bit painful–l\u0131ke being scrubbed with steal wool–but satisfy\u0131ng.\u00a0 Then she rubbed soap over me\u00a0ever-so-lightly,\u00a0scrubbed my hair with hand soap (which later left it feeling like straw and my imagining a bald bride), dumped\u00a0bucket after bucket\u00a0of water over my head\u00a0(some of which I guess I accidently swallowed in my desperate gasps for air because I later had\u00a0my first real bout of Ataturk’s Revenge), and then proclaimed\u00a0“Finish!”.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0No back cracks, no kneading hands, no revelations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At least I was clean!\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the most part any gender inequalities that exist do not affect the western tourist.\u00a0 Every once in a while I put on a head scarf to better fit in, but that\u00a0always\u00a0seems more of a novelty than a burden.\u00a0 My experience on the female side of the Turkish bath, however, was quite a disappointment.\u00a0 Steve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}