Today I ordered a chicken wrap from a server while sitting poolside at a Las Vegas hotel. She was so polite, so professional. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention — her butt cheeks were on full display.
To be clear, the butt cheeks weren’t bare because a swimsuit had ridden up too far. This suit never tried to contain butt cheeks, nor could it, because it was a thong. Once I glanced around, I realized that about half the servers were also wearing thongs.
As far as I know, none of the women were forced to wear a thong as their work uniform. Some of them wore color-coordinated sashes tied around their hips that provided a thin veil of privacy. And one server wore a slinky, high-cut one-piece swimsuit instead of a thong bikini. So that tells me there are likely different versions of the poolside uniform.
All the swimsuits were in the hotel’s signature color, which I believe is called “bazillion dollar blue.” Tom had to mortgage his liver just to get us a two-night stay at this swanky high-rise palace.
But I’m glad he did, because while he was stuck at a business conference, I was out by the pool doing important writerly research — research that shows how the world has changed since the last time we visited Vegas a decade ago. We’re seeing a whole new acceptance level of the human butt in public spaces. Lucky for you, I observed and took notes.
I won’t judge the rightness or wrongness of free-range butt cheeks. But I am curious how we’ve arrived at this new normal. Because based on what I saw today, no one looked surprised by all the bare booties. I kept expecting to notice the occasional raised eyebrow or lingering stare, but it was just another Tuesday. Have we reached the point when butt cheeks don’t even register on the public nudity radar? Are they now merely private-part adjacent?
When I first saw the thong-clad waitresses, I felt a flash of embarrassment followed by some knee-jerk disapproval. When I was growing up in the 80s, Madonna pushed boundaries like a shopping cart at Safeway, but I never once saw her bare butt on MTV. Then my internal mama bear woke up and wondered if these young women are being exploited by male bosses who believe bare butts boost business profits.
But judging by the body language of the wait staff as they went about their work, maybe it’s just no big deal for them.
As you might have guessed, most of those butt cheeks were tanned and toned, but they didn’t all look like they were straight off a magazine cover. Even with some extra jiggle or — gasp — a smidge of cellulite, these women were completely comfortable in their own skin. While women of my generation were taught to over-analyze and criticize every square inch of our bodies, perhaps this generation considers only how they feel about exposure instead of how that exposure might be perceived by people around them. In many ways, I admire the confidence.
But as for me and my butt, we limit viewership to a highly exclusive group. If you’re not the person I married, you’ll need a medical degree and specialized skills to get a peek at these cheeks — like the obstetrician who delivered my goo-covered newborns. Or the board-certified gastroenterologist who gave me a lovely drug-induced nap so he could take a back-door tour of my small and large intestines.
But there’s one big “if” that keeps swimming around in my mind. If body baring is the natural evolution of fashion, why doesn’t it come for all of us? Why is it only women who get nudged toward sharing more skin, while the male servers and bartenders are wearing the same types of shirts and shorts that men wore poolside 70 years ago?
Amid all the if’s, and’s, and Vegas butts, that sure does feel like a big ol’ glaring why.
Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her new novel is available on Amazon.