Yesterday, I spent the afternoon alone at a nude beach, and I may never be the same. I’ve gotten pretty damn free in the last couple of years, but this was next-level. I’ll can get naked in front of most women fairly easily (thanks, Westridge School for Girls?), but this little bit of beach was populated almost entirely by men, which is a whole different psychological ballgame for me—pun semi-intended.
Anyone who has ever loved me knows that I adore sea-swimming. There are few activities that offer me the kind of simultaneous freedom and connection that being a tiny, splashing speck in ocean does. It’s the best. Just the best. And I almost didn’t swim today. Because…naked. Because…trotting to the shoreline naked!
Then, as barftastically cheesy it sounds, I remembered the woman who I want to be. I want to be a woman whose life reminds other women of their worth. I want to be a woman who doesn’t script vicious monologues about her own body in her head when she catches a stranger looking at her. I want to be a woman who knows that any man who gets this house of cellulite and stretch marks and softness (um, hi, you don’t lose 100 lbs. in a year and come out of it firm or perky…like, in any way whatsoever) is really lucky.
Not lucky because I have a “great personality” in spite of my body. And also not lucky because I think I’m better than any of my potential partners or better than any of the women whom they could have chosen to love instead. Just lucky because life is fragile, and connecting is beautiful. It’s everything.
Hate is obviously alive + breeding in our world (see: Orlando Nightclub Massacre, Donald Trump, the Stanford rape case, the countless police killings of unarmed black men nationwide, et al), so you might as well join me in throwing some love out into the universe.
Even if it’s love for your own, imperfect ass.
I Still Read Your Horoscope 