Starkers

2.12.19

Under what incredibly rare circumstances is an overweight woman actually happy when stark naked?

I know what you’re thinking. You went right for sex, didn’t you? But you’re wrong. Your typical overweight woman has seen rom-coms. She’s even seen porn, even if she’s not going to admit it. She knows what sex is SUPPOSED to look like, and generally speaking, she’s pretty sure she doesn’t look like that when in the throes.

So lots of bedcovers are favored. Darkness is an ally. Careful poses and great suckings-in of the stomach, plus a wish that one could suck in the hips or the thighs or the baby’s-got-back.

Other times an overweight woman is naked: At the doctor’s office, and even then, they give you ridiculous paper vests and large drapes, also made of paper, with which to hopefully cover some of what the doctor is forced by his or her profession to look at with (at best mild) contempt.

No overweight woman is happy in the doctor’s office. I saw a study a few decades ago that said that women should never be weighed BEFORE having their blood pressure taken; it’s so stressful that the BP is never accurate.

You’re naked when you take a shower or bath, but we all arrange things so we don’t have to examine the light gleaming off ample rolls of wet flesh. Once again, that’s not how (we think) a pretty woman is supposed to look… so bathing becomes about utility.

So IS there a time when an overweight woman is truly happy while naked?

YES.

I went to see Gwynn yesterday – the therapeutic masseuse. We first discussed the various physical readings from my body, and then because Gwynn is all about the total person, we discussed stress and mood and sleep and all the non-exercise-based things that were influencing the way my body moved.

She developed a plan. (This time? “Let’s focus mostly on your shoulders,” she said. Yes – lets! That’s where stress lives in me!) (Gwynn says shoulders; what she means is that she’s going to work on muscles that I NEVER would have thought would influence the shoulders… but she’s always right.) And then she stepped out so I could strip down.

Which I did. Eagerly. And then I slipped under the sheet and blanket on her heated massage table. It was near freezing and raining outside – a grey, unfriendly day – so lying flat and quiet on Gwynn’s heated table was sweeter than candy. My feet were warm; I was warm. It was quiet. No phone calls, no emails. No chores or To Dos. My job was to lie still and feel my body relax into the padded table.

And I knew that when Gwynn came back in, she would NOT see the excess of adipose tissue on my body; she wouldn’t raise an unseen eyebrow at the bulges under the sheet. She saw me as a wonderful tangle of muscles and capability and it was her project to straighten me out.

Which she did. She cradled my skull in one strong hand and turned and lifted my head so she could knead the neck muscles. She got to my lats. She worked on the quads, and did a quick tour of my feet. I was a lump of happy clay and she was Rodin. She shaped me into something better and more graceful. The image of being sculpted was so vivid that I asked if she ever tried working in clay.

“I don’t have an artistic bone in my body,” she demurred.

That can’t be true. She was shaping me with such skill. What could she do if you gave her some Play-Dough??

But my point: I was absolutely naked, and just blissfully happy about it. Yay!

Some people don’t like massages. “I don’t like to be touched,” they say. And I feel SO SORRY for them. It’s such a blessing, really. And when Gwynn was finished with my hour, I was so stoned I felt it was probably unwise of me to drive right away.

I did drive. All my stressors and troubles were waiting just outside, and I woke up pretty quickly once I left…

…but for an hour, I was floating and supported and approved of. What a gift.

That’s a trio of Reubens nudes. At the time, those women were famed for their voluptuous beauty. Of course, they were also expected to survive the occasional famine, which is what made them so voluptuous. Good breeders. Alas, we live in a time when the snaky-hipped are praised… They’d be the first to go if we had a famine now. Remember that, my generously-sized friends; we are genetically superior in all ages but this one!