BREAST STORIES

Breasts, Breasts, and More Breasts. I Finally Got Over Public Nudity and I’m Hooked on Naked

Off with the old, still off with the new

I walked into the naked sauna spa on New Year's Eve. It looked different than I’d imagined.

I expected something from a Godfather movie or a Turkish bath — endless marble walls and floors filled with hot tubs containing hairy men with gold chains tangled in their salt and pepper chest hair.

This spa was small and intimate, dimly lit, and entirely female. Not one hairy ball.

I don’t get naked in front of just anyone. I like my walls. It took me decades to build them. I put them up for a reason, but I’d been invited by people I liked and I was tired of being shy about my body.

The night before my coming out naked party, I awoke many times. I am a Midwestern girl. A lot of people are still wearing Speedo one-pieces on our beaches. The g-string bikini on our modest beaches still elicits whispers and judgment.

I wasn’t only worried about my nudity — though that was a biggie. I was feeling shy about the ambiguous Asian tattoo to the left of my belly button I’d gotten when I was 18.

It’s a Korean Spa and primarily Asian women go there. I thought about my stupid cultural appropriation tattoo and wondered if I should draw over it with a sharpie. What would I turn it into? A pineapple? A giant heart? I wondered how well a sharpie would fare after 6 hours of sauna and jacuzzi.

I wanted to wear a sign around my neck that read “I’m sorry. I got this when I was 18. I’m an asshole.”

That was only half the challenge. The equally challenging other half was the full walking around nude. I had always prided myself on being able to put on and take off my swimsuit without anyone seeing anything.

I laid in bed the night before and wondered if I’d chicken out. I was going with a group I loved and this was our New Year’s Celebration. This gave it added importance.

Would I enter the New Year a chicken shit or would I delve into the next era naked and unafraid? Or naked and afraid but not so afraid it paralyzed me?

Whenever I get nervous, I talk like I’m in a Woody Allen film — not one of his mellow waspy muses, but a self-depreciating highly neurotic Woody Allen. Someone so fucking nuts, he’d marry his own daughter.

When I walked into the spa to check in, I was alert like I woke up in a minefield. I checked in at the front desk and rattled on questions. I could see the guy behind the desk tracking my questions and trying to figure out which to answer first when I blurted out, “It’s my first time.”

That made me laugh. Now I really looked nuts. Belting questions and giggling hysterically.

My first time? I wasn’t a teenage boy going to lose my virginity at a brothel. I was a middle-aged woman getting naked with a bunch of other women. This wasn’t Brave Heart. This was anxiety pumping heart.

The guy gave me a bracelet key for my locker with a chip in case I bought a massage, a scrub, or a facial. He also gave me an XXL pair of toothpaste pink cotton shorts and a t-shirt with their logo. The clothing was for the co-ed section of the spa.

I undressed by my locker and took a deep breath. I caught my reflection in the mirror and was grateful I wasn’t horrified. I don’t know if it was the mirror, the lighting, or the five-six miles of swimming I get done every week, but I looked pretty good.

I don’t know what I was expecting. I think I thought I’d remove my clothes and all my fears would be validated. Body dysmorphia is a bitch and most women are on the spectrum.

Everyone around me was naked and I marveled at how different and beautiful their bodies were. When they looked back at mine, I wondered what they thought.

We looked at each other the same way you look at someone wearing beautiful clothing. With curiosity and admiration.

It was impossible not to notice the size and shape of breasts, bums, and stomachs, but it was without judgment. It was cathartic, like you thought you’d walk in and everybody else would be Giselle and Heidi Klum, and you found out it was so much better.

The only people who looked remotely shy were some of the people who had not undressed yet. They hadn’t taken the plunge. They stood out. Nudity seemed more natural. Clothes looked redundant.

I finally walked through the glass doors and into the room where I was meeting my friends. There were dozens of beautiful women with every version of body you can imagine. My friends gestured to me with large happy waves. Well, we’ve seen each other naked. I thought, taking them in.

Everyone looked at everyone else’s bodies. Nobody balked. Nobody pointed. Nobody looked like they were judging. There was a general sense of relief and peace. Acceptance.

I barely remember what any of my friends' boobs, butts, or stomachs looked like. It didn’t matter. Naked was naked.

That night I went to a New Years' Eve Party. After my recovery nap from being in heat for six hours, I joined my neighbors outside for a fire pit, music, dancing, food, and drink.

I told them about the naked spa. None had been. It was a popular place. I was surprised. When I suggested we all go, I saw their shyness that mirrored my own the day before.

I could see them judging their own bodies, their post-baby bodies, or aging bodies — even the woman who had won a beauty contest looked hesitant.

I laughed at myself for thinking I was the only one who felt afraid, the only one who shied away from nudity.

I could have lived without the 1-hour scrub where the woman in a lace bra and panties rubbed my body until I felt like my bones were showing, but it was a new year. Off with the old, in with the new. Or off with the old and keep it off. Naked is beautiful.