Sandra tells me she comes “to get away from her husband”, and I can tell she is only half-joking
I was sceptical there would be any difference between women-only swims at London Fields Lido and any other lido experience – but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Swimming with women is really about swimming without men.
My outdoor swimming experience has been that women are often in the majority. Yet, more often than not, my serenity is still disturbed by a man, burly or otherwise, jumping in and splashing his way past me in an attempted show of dominance. At my mixed swim on Saturday, the background music to my chat with Clare was two men chuntering about “why anyone would ever want to do this”.
London Fields Lido runs women-only sessions from 8 to 9pm every Tuesday, solving the problem of grumbling men disturbing your peace. Meninists, if you’ve made it this far, don’t worry – a male-only session runs on Monday nights.
Women choose these sessions over mixed swimming for different reasons. Sandra tells me she comes “to get away from her husband”, and I can tell she is only half-joking. Other attendees say they feel less self-conscious in swimwear with no men around. I can understand this. I’m not a small woman, and while I’d consider myself pretty thick-skinned, I have had my endorphin rush crushed by men commenting about my body. One summer day river-swim was marred by a group of men loudly discussing whether they would be able to “handle” my “massive tits”. Removing men from the equation doesn’t make this an entirely body- positive space though – I still overheard conversations about calories, and, at least once, the phrase “summer body”.
Rebecca chooses a women-only session when she can, and says that “the London Fields one feels particularly friendly”. She continues: “I also feel calmer at the women’s sessions… part of the reason I go to women’s swim sessions more generally is because there is more of a perceived safety there – it’s nice to know that you’re probably not being watched by a man, and everyone is minding their own business.”
Other women who opt for the women-only swim are religiously motivated: London Fields’ Haredi Jewish community is out in full force most Tuesdays. An important note of caution for those who have spiritual reasons not to exercise around other genders is that male staff are present poolside throughout the session.
What’s more – and despite prominent signage – during my swim there were also some male stragglers on the side of the pool changing from the previous mixed session. London Fields has some outdoor changing, so for the first ten minutes of my swim a man showered in full view of the pool of women who had expected a single-gender swim. Thank God he had trunks on.
To give credit to the lifeguard, she made a beeline for him when she noticed. The man retreated into a cubicle when he saw her heading his way, but was caught on his way out and given a dressing down. “Every week,” she muttered, as she came back to her perch, “and I tell the women the same on Mondays”. London Fields clearly takes its single-gender policy seriously, but it’s certainly not airtight.
In the end, the biggest difference between London Fields’ women-only swim and a mixed-gender session was volume. Conversations still flowed, and “heads-up-chatty-breaststroke”’ remains my favourite way to enjoy a swim without ruining any attempt I’ve made to tame my hair. Yet this was a truly relaxing session – chiefly because there were no men storming past doing front crawl in the slow lane.
Bethan Moss is Hackney Post's beat reporter for Homerton and a freelance journalist. She is studying for an MA in Newspaper Journalism at City, University of London and was formerly Editor-in-Chief of Varsity, the University of Cambridge's only independent newspaper.