I have two things I want to discuss tonight: getting naked and, well, getting naked.
I hadn’t really realized this seemingly blatantly obvious link between the two, until just now…
***Note: These are not standard nothings tonight, but actual open thoughts and descriptions of two separate scenarios involving human nudity… so, be forewarned that it isn’t exactly PG13 material tonight… ***
Anyway, so the first getting naked…
I had my final appointment today at the laser hair removal place.
It was for laser hair removal on my bikini line.
—— Side note: The appointment was actually for tomorrow, but I somehow got it wrong in my calendar… the girl who showed up while we were sorting it at the counter turned out to be the same girl who had been behind me and had helped me after my fall on the road the other week(!)… we had a fun time of evaluating the crazy odds of our meeting like this, mere blocks from where we had first met, though under entirely different circumstances – actually for both of us, as she worded it, to ‘have our pubes lasered off’… ——-
So, anyway… laser hair removal…. bikini line…. final treatment…. As usual, the technician asked during my lasering session whether I had considered doing a full Brazilian.
First off, Ouch!(!!!).
Second off, mmm, I want to keep a semblance of natural to my body, thank you…. plus, no offense intended here, but it kind of freaks me out to see no pelvic hair on adult bodies…. it reminds me too much of children’s lack of pubic hair, and is in no way attractive to me… and makes me not even want to consider for too long, because it starts freaking me out having sexual attraction and children be in the same line of thinking, despite their being technically separated in the thoughts…. anyway…
However, I didn’t say all of this – it was just my regular thoughts that arose at the idea of having a Brazilian lasering session done to remove all of that hair.
I did tell her, though, that I had considered it, that I wouldn’t mind having the hair in the back be gone – I mean, who likes butt crack hair?… eww… – but that I wanted to keep the hair in the front.
‘We can do that,’ she tells me, ‘just the back strip.’
‘Really?’ I ask, surprised that it is an option, since I have never seen it listed among the many area options these laser hair removal places all offer.
She gives me some details, and I follow up with the girl at the counter, after we finish with the session.
It is extremely affordable to do the ‘add-on’, as they call it, and so I sign myself up for it.
(Then, they get me in on the other part of the last day of their Black Friday sale, and I go ahead and sign myself up for the final area I had been considering to have lasered for quite some time now… and the price is so good, I know it won’t happen again before I’m ready to seek out doing it later on, so I accept, and gladly so…, but that is beside the point here… moving on…)
Rather than wait for my next appointment – turns it I had one more I could do for bikini line, so we scheduled me for that, and just included the others in that future appointment – in January to start the two new areas, they gave me a razor, I went and shaved myself freshly, and the same technician and I went back into the room together, and quickly did the other two areas.
Now, I was mentally prepared for this back strip of Brazilian, because a friend and I had just been discussing her Brazilian waxing seasons of the past and laser hair removal of the present last night.
She was comfortable with someone touching her buttocks in that context, because she had been doing it for so long, and, well, that’s why she’s there – it involves being handled in private areas.
We got into talking about how context allows for lots of things in one situation that would be absurd in another.
For example, I shared about how I was on a topless beach in Barcelona with or mutual acquaintance Bryan.
“You did not go topless on a beach with Bryan,” she says, almost panicked, eyes wide, turning to face me directly.
“No, I didn’t,” I laugh, “but, once he left, I was totally fine going topless.”
Because the context of topless beaches in Barcelona had it be totally normal for the Spaniards around me.
e.g. The family of Mom, Dad, and two boys, aged about 12 and 8, in which even Mom was topless as they sat together on their blanket.
But it is not normal in our home culture, so there was basically no chance I was going to be topless around Bryan.
Fast-forward to my second session within my laser hair removal appointment today.
In the first session, I was lying on the table in my t-shirt and underwear, when the technician, clicking at buttons on the machine, says to hang on, it’s not working.
She then tells me that I can relax, because it’ll be a minute.
And then, quite casually, ‘We’ll have to go to another room – this one’s not working.’
She asks while standing at the door, almost as an afterthought, but not quite, if I want to put my own clothes back on, or if I want her to grab me a robe.
I quickly remove the sheet covering me, as I tell her that I can just put on my shorts, and then do so.
I leave my belongings there, and go with her to a different room next door.
Without giving her a chance to leave – they always leave, even though I am keeping on my underwear, per their recommendation, but the way, and they are going to see me without the sheet anyway as soon as they start doing the treatment… – I drop my shorts on the floor, and plop on the bed.
She seems unconcerned in every way.
As she talks to me, she is so casual and blasée, and says everything like an almost afterthought, as though she had just caught herself daydreaming, and realized that she was supposed to be talking pleasantly to the client.
Her lumbering drawl, at such a slowed rate from the traditional, “Hi! I’m Kimberley!” waitress or general service industry young female, ready to serve You! way of high-energy speaking, is soothing, but also almost comical.
Compared to Kimberly!, she seems to be drugged with super-chill pills…
(But not actually drugged.)
I personally am very comfortable with silence, so I didn’t mind her lack of conversation, but I can imagine that their training tells them to talk to the clients, and so I accept her after-thought-ish comments with sense of wry humor.
– It’s funny having a conversation with someone when you both know that you definitely are okay not talking with one another, but that also the conversation is necessarily by royal decree, so to speak. –
So her comments always seem to be ever so slightly delayed, giving her a very laid-back and chill vibe, though differently so from typical laid-backedness and chillness…
Now, as mentioned, we go back in the room for our second session together, after I talk with and pay the girl at the front desk.
I am expecting, in the room, to be put on my belly or something, and to have her move my cheeks to the sides – since that was something specifically mentioned by my friend about her Brazilians, and she is the only ‘experience’ I have with them – but that, of course, does not happen.
She tells me, still in her passive and casual, slow meter, “Okay, so, for the butt, you’re just gonna pull both your knees up to your chest and hold them there with your arms.”
I have a moment to process the words and what they mean, and then another to verify with myself that I’m okay with fulfilling the suggested request, and then I do it.
And she, as with all the rest, casually, as though she’s barely even aware of what actually is in front of her, but is instead thinking about that blue and purple drink she saw in the store yesterday and what was it made of?…, lasers the back strip of a Brazilian, and I consider laughing at the whole thing, as I recall Sophie Kinsella’s I’ve Got Your Number comment of, “Mind your own Brazilian!!”*
But I was totally comfortable.
The context of the situation – a laser hair removal place where getting Brazilians is totally normal in the first place – combined with the oh-so-blasée way of the technician allowed me to be super comfortable, despite the fact that I was lying on my back on a table, wearing only a bra, hugging my knees, and showing all my lower parts to a woman I don’t even know…
I am still grateful for her.
And I am grateful for all that has transformed in me, which has allowed me to enjoy and participate in such a scenario, as opposed to long for it but be too terrified of it even to consider doing it.
…
Okay, nakey situation number two time!
I’ve begun reading the book To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, after falling little girl in love with the Netflix original film by the same name, which is based on the book.
So far, as usual, some is exactly the same and some it totally different, but I am enjoying the book, nonetheless.
Tonight, I read the following passage, which really had me start thinking:
I wonder, though: What would it be like? To be that close to a boy, and have him see all of you… no holding back. Would it be scary only for a second or two, or would it be scary the whole time?
There is more to the thought that the character is having, but this was the part that stuck out for me.
What would it be like to be naked with someone we love wholly and who wholly loves us?
Would there be embarrassment at all -even if we both are totally for, let’s say – or would we be shy, at least on the inside, concerned by the exposure and the prospect of… of what exactly?
Of being hurt?
Being naked doesn’t mean we’ll be hurt, but being exposed emotionally always seems to carry with it a fear of being hurt, and so does our physical nakedness and exposure somehow also carry that same fear and discomfort?
Is that why we struggle to be naked in front of people Period?
Are we so afraid of being hurt?
And I don’t mean physical hurt… purely emotional, psychological, stuff with the head.
Are we so afraid in our heads that we would be afraid to show everything openly and comfortably to the one we love most?
How often do couples just be naked together, without it being sex?
Do they take the time to explore the physical beauty of one another’s bodies without haste and without avoidance or hiding anything?
As Sophie Kinsella’s same book says, “including the dodgy bits.”
But, even then, she only mentions that her man has seen them, not that he has embraced them, nor that she has.
Does the comfort of being seen fully and embraced naked by another stem first from our being able to see ourselves naked and to embrace all parts of our naked selves?
I think so.
And I think it would be a wonderful and powerful experience for couples to take the time just to see fully on another’s bodies, and to learn to embrace them just as they are.
Like how we can take the time just to sit and to gaze into one another’s eyes and be with one another fully – what if we did that with our whole bodies?
I think it would be not only beautiful but beneficial – for the individuals, for the couple, and for the world as a whole.
Expanding our love in such a way could only be a good thing for the world around us…
So, yeah… those are my two things about getting naked tonight… I think I went a little off the trail here and there, and I might have used some poor wording – I definitely did – but I hope the points made it across, anyway. 🙂
Sweet dreams, World.
*Look it up… it’s a great book and an awesome scenario around the comment. ;D
hannah ananas 