BARE BREASTS AND Crudités

Naked Lunches, Nudie Polaroids and Boudoir Photographs

Should we take pictures of our boobs when we are young?

I was recently at a luncheon where we were discussing the usual — politics, Harry and Megan’s Documentary, children, weight gain, and food.

I’m not sure how it came up, but one of the women started passing around a nude photograph of herself taken by a French photographer. She had dated him when she was living in Paris when she was nineteen years old — in a quest to find myself, she said wistfully

In one of your quests to find yourself, said her friend, who had been a friend for half a century. Time allows a certain candor.

We passed around the picture. It was gorgeous, black and white, her lustrous dark hair spreading and blurred, her young high breasts without a hint of shyness.

It wasn’t an actual photograph, but a photo of a photo taken on her iPhone. She wasn’t just carrying the original around.

Why did I take this out again? She asked laughing as we all zoomed in on her breasts, legs, hair, and navel.

We were talking about being young, I said.

Right, she said, nodding, wondering if that was it — or if was it dementia?

Another naked phone started making its way around the room.

In this one, there were two naked women — college roommates. It was side-by-side photos. On one side, the college coeds were dressed and on the other side, they were in the same pose, but naked.

The woman who was passing around the second picture is always elegant. Today, she was wearing shiny, patent leather, platformed, shoe-tied loafers from Paris and her grandmother’s many-strand pearls. She wasn’t someone I ever expected to see naked, yet seeing her naked seemed perfectly unshocking.

I was feeling naked, having no naked pictures handy.

I only have one series of naked pictures of myself. They were polaroids taken when I was doing figure drawing. I had once used one as a bookmark and my husband, then my boyfriend, had inadvertently grabbed that book with a bunch of other old books and brought them to sell at the local used bookstore.

The buyer opened the book and handed my boyfriend the polaroid back.

What did he say, when he gave it back to you? I asked my boyfriend.

He said you looked good.

I don’t know what I expected to hear. I wasn’t looking to get discovered by Playboy in a used bookstore. It was just weird that some naked part of me was being handed from one man to another in an antiquated bookstore in Seattle.

Another woman was already passing around her photo, but she was the host so she had an actual copy. My daughter took this in the woods when I was young, she said. I can’t believe I made her walk out into the woods and take my picture naked.

It was a beautiful picture. The kid was a natural photographer. You could see appreciation in the photographer's eye for her subject. Little girls love their mothers.

I asked another woman at the table if she felt weird not having a nudie in hand.

She answered I have a large one hanging over my bed.

Bring it next time, I suggested.

There was only one woman — besides me and the woman who had a life-sized one above her bed — who hadn’t revealed a naked picture. The non-nude woman turned to me and asked poltitely, Was this planned? Was this something we were supposed to bring?

I shook my head.

You could take one for next time, I said and she laughed.

I should have taken one when I was young, she said. It’s too late now.

Driving home in the snow, I wondered if I still liked my body enough to photograph it nude. Maybe, I thought.

There is a boudoir photographer I know who has a booming business in my neighborhood. She has photographed many of the women I know in lacy sexy poses. I am utterly untempted, but I get it.

She is gifted at bringing out the most beautiful parts of every woman’s body. She accentuates what women think is their flaw and celebrates it. Why not let yourself see yourself in that way? Why not adore your own nudity?

I don’t even know where that young polaroid of me is right now. I never learn. It’s probably in another book, marking a sentence I enjoyed, but it would be anywhere. I’ll be checking my son’s textbooks from this point on before he goes to school in the morning, just in case.