Folkways

Folkways are commonly broken and kept in the locker room.

Today, I came out of the girl’s bathroom in the locker room to wash my hands only to discover there was no soap left in either dispenser. As a slight germaphobe, this greatly alarmed me, but I also realized that to not wash your hands is breaking a folkway. After standing there for a couple of seconds with just wet hands and puzzling over what to do, I walked back to my backpack to use my travel sized hand sanitizer (which no good germaphobe would be without) and wondered if any society thought that actually washing your hands was not to be done. I found that one third of Australian men don’t wash their hands, but I don’t know if that’s a cultural thing, or just a gross thing.

Another folkway in the locker room is to NEVER look at another person while that person is changing. Even when I’m changing by friends, we make an effort to not look at each other while switching into our gym clothes. It just kind of a common curtsey thing for privacy because no one actually really wants to change in front of a bunch of people, whether you know them or not.

I’m not sure if this would be considered a folkway or a more, but I trust the other people around me to not be taking pictures of me when they have their cell phones out. No one is supposed to have cell phones out in the locker rooms because of pictures and privacy (or so our gym teachers tell us), but everyone always does because there’s no teachers to be walking around and checking if we have them out. One day I was changing and noticed a girl standing like 8 feet away from me with her phone out, probably texting, and I realized with a jolt she could be taking a picture of me, but I disregard it a second later because it’s a social rule and I also trust members of society to not do that.