My husband came back to our Hanoi hotel room a couple of weeks ago wearing a look I’ve only seen on him a handful of times. Profound bewilderment.
Chris had taken a few things for our flight home down to the guest ironing room. The room was tiny. Hot. Doubled as a storage space for luggage. He’d just set up the 500-year-old ironing board when a female staff member walked in before her shift.
She was in her 60s, swapped a good morning with Chris, squeezed past him to the corner of the room where a hand shower was rigged up. Then stripped off her pants and top and had a bird bath in her bra and undies.
An arm’s length away, Chris figured the best thing was to play it cool and keep ironing. She dried off, got dressed, gave a wave and left.
He came upstairs and told me the story.
We had a “what the?” laugh and I watched him closely a la Larry David to see if he was making shit up. After all, this was a two-week Vietnam holiday that had already delivered a hip and shoulder in a supermarket nut aisle, being dog whistled from the sea at sunset by security guards and a wrestle with a South Korean bloke over a starfish.
By the time we hit Hanoi, it felt like we were on the set of ’70s TV show Almost Anything Goes. So, thematically, a woman freshening up in front of a stranger in a confined space felt weirdly not surprising, even with cultural context.
Anyone who’s been to South-East Asia knows public modesty matters there. Locals don’t love it when your streetwear is bikini or just boardies, and you show up to temples in Lululemon booty shorts and crop top.
Certainly, I trotted around Hanoi doing conservative-tourist cosplay in a long skirt and strangulation high necks. Ironing room lady, no such issues with nods to modesty.
I’ve been thinking about her since. Not because the episode was scandalous – it wasn’t – but because of the quality of her ease. The absence of self-consciousness. She was a woman of a certain age and she had absolutely no problem with any of it.
We have a word for what she had, although I hesitate to use it. Authenticity. Almost needs its own exorcism these days, being the fodder of choice for people who post about the rawness of vulnerability workshops at bougie retreats.
Here, let me hold space for you while you take 30 million selfies documenting the deep work of, I don’t know, being who you are. Then let me say you’ve been outgunned by an authenticity master.
The only person I’ve experienced in real life who had similar unselfconscious ease was Socceroos hottie Lucas Neill. I bring up this story at the drop of a hat and I am getting thingy now thinking about it, even though it was 20 years ago.
When Australia made the round of 16 at the World Cup in 2006, I became obsessed with Lucas. To the point of badgering his agent for a magazine interview and finding myself at a Sydney park, marvelling at the man himself.
At the end of the shoot, Lucas got changed out of the stuff the stylist picked. In the front seat of a little car. He didn’t baulk, just ripped off his T-shirt and wiggled out of his dacks while maintaining decorum.
I did have a quick perv, just at his lats and traps, but the biggest impression he left was of a man at ease with himself in a way not even years of getting your kit off in clubrooms explains.
Still, I reckon Lucas is an outlier and that, like Hanoi ironing lady, being unselfconscious is usually an age thing.
Maybe finding that authentic self is hard without a few years behind you and/or the public private experience of childbirth under the belt.
Then again, anyone who’s ever been in a communal dressing room already knows the secret. Treat the situation as practical and natural, get in and out fast. Get on with your day.
Quick shower optional.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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