Naked and Unashamed? Nope.
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I don’t like to be naked, and it’s getting worse as I get older, not better.
Every day as I stand naked in the bathroom and closet, I feel so vulnerable. I don’t do it anymore when my husband of almost 30 years is around. After all, when I’m uncomfortable being naked around myself, how am I naked around anyone else? Maybe if he was better about flirting with me and telling me how much he still loves my body, it could be different, but he holds his feelings close, even to me. If there’s one thing I’ve had to learn in middle age, it’s that no one, not even him, can meet my emotional needs like I can meet my emotional needs. I’ve come a long way in doing just that. But this one…my human vulnerability…is one I have yet to be at peace with.
I know the reason for this.
I’ve learned that astrologers believe our purpose on earth is to learn how to be an infinite spirit inside the boundaries of our bodies. We chose our chart (when and where we were born) because we knew what lessons we needed to learn in this life. An astrologer once told me I was a man in a former life who believed being a woman was easy. That many of my lessons on this earth revolve around this not at all being the case. Who knows if what she said is true, but I think about my life and see how it could be. At 52, I still, in many instances, hate…yes, hate…the vulnerabilities of my body. Fleshy. And I know the reason for this.
American Christianity and Puritanism coupled with our obsession with sex as a culture is a toxic drink I have imbibed on my whole life. But I’m not sure how to put the bottle down. I think about my age and that my body is declining every year every time I get dressed. I was uneasy in my skin when I weighed 130 pounds, and I am even more so forty extra pounds later. Where is the hope?
But this is not an entry about weight gain, though it continues to terrify me. After all, I gained 15 pounds in just the last year. This is about another way I feel betrayed by biblical truth. If my conscience is clear, I will feel “naked and unashamed.” Well, my conscience has never been clear when I’m naked. Nothing reads my faults to me like my skin. Look. I can make a list in about a minute.
If I could just lose the belly fat! But I still eat what adds to it! My belly fat reminds me every day, clothed or not that I make the wrong choices.
I was naked with someone else before marriage when my body was the most darling. But I was displeasing the Holy of Holies, right? He watched me! Or maybe he had to turn away! Shame.
So I was supposed to feel unashamed on my wedding night? Standing naked in front of my new husband for the first time? Um, no.
But how about after six months? Years? Nope! Why. Why? For this, I blame our oversexualized culture that affects his thinking and mine. Thank you, Playboy….our generation’s version of the unrealistic female body. But for me, it’s the inability to accept that my body is so vulnerable. Weak. Gross. It farts, poops, oozes out of my bathing suit, falls, and gets sick.
My first horror when I was a new bride was when I stopped up the toilet. Growing up, I never saw a toilet plunger in my house, and surprise, no one gave us one for a wedding gift. I sheepishly told him, and he was just waking up at the time. He just rolled over and, in his pragmatic way, said, “Well, go buy one.” What?! Stand in line at the hardware store with a plunger in my hand? Leave the toilet unflushed while I did? Are you kidding me?? No. My human frailty could not be shown.
In Puritan culture, cleanliness is next to godliness, and the body is always unclean. The Old Testament told me as much. Yes, the OT was BC, but so much about our bodies cast us from the camp. God forbid, literally, that we bleed, masturbate, or share our skin with the wrong person. I don’t even like changing the toilet paper roll or a tampon. It reminds me. Reminds me of what? That humanity is gross. Unclean.
My college roommates would tell you that one of our biggest jokes was that Jenny would not say the word fart, much less admit I farted at all! That didn’t go away when I had children, and we tried to teach them “Toot.” 🙄 Well, when I read aloud to them when they were young, I used the word “tutor,” and the boys lost it. That’s when I threw up my hands. One time we had an only child who was a girl playing with my son and daughter in the field behind our house, and my son whipped it out to take a leak. It was the little girl’s first exposure to a penis. The scandal! The mother had to have a talk with me. I was mortified. But now? Why didn’t she use the opportunity to teach her daughter that boys peed differently than girls? And why didn’t I celebrate that my son felt comfortable and unashamed with his body? Oh, how I wish we were at ease back then.
So how do I come to peace with my body that will only get weaker, needier, and old? I don’t know. My brain has rivets of Puritanism and an oversexualized culture carved into it.
But I am experimenting. One of the ways is to proclaim here what Puritans would consider horrible. Because guess what? I love sex. It’s when my body can feel treasured and relaxed. I want to lie naked in the sunshine and feel its warmth in every crevice. I want to wear clothes that flatter me and pay money for an hour and a half massage every month. Once I proclaimed on FB during one of those memes we did back in the day, that I hope to have a passionate love affair before I die. What the heck?? Aren’t you married?? I was confronted by close friends about this. Well, yes! And he’s not threatened by that. No, we don’t have an open marriage. I would get way too jealous 😂. But when the church introduced, “Till death do us part,” we lived much shorter lives! It’s not a secret that the passion for our spouse’s skin can wane over time. I miss the newness, the infatuation, the “I can’t keep my hands off you” days. The possibility of it happening is a longshot, but what’s wrong with saying I still want it? Nothing. Take that Puritanism.
In the meantime, I try to remind myself that walks, planks, and saying no to the second piece of bread (every night) is a way to love my body so I can have a love affair with it. I can afford now to spend a little money on lovely fabric (ThredUP is great for this, friends) that makes my skin feel caressed. I can have celebrity crushes and fall in love with sexy stories without shame. Right? Right. Maybe it will help me get dressed every morning in peace and that’s what I deserve.