Years ago, I signed up for a Naked Yoga class so I could write about it. Because yoga classes in New York City are packed, I figured I’d escape notice, but when I arrived at the address I’d copied down, I found myself in the naked instructor’s one-bedroom apartment. I followed her grand, spectacular breasts through a beaded curtain. On the other side, the rest of the class—exactly two men—sat on their mats in Lotus.
If I ever got a tattoo, it would be the final sentence of this passage from How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti:
Most people lead their private lives. They have been given a natural modesty that feels to them like morality, but it's not—it's luck. They shake their heads at the people with their clothes off rather than learning about human life from their example, but they are wrong to act so superior. Some of us have to be naked, so the rest can be exempted by fate.
Not that I’d get a tattoo. In Charleston back in November, Julie and I got permanent bracelets and even that gave me cold feet. Plus, it seems kind of self-aggrandizing to stamp Some of us have to be naked, so the rest can be exempted by fate on my forearm. I think often of that passage, though, of fate’s failure to exempt me, or of my choice to evade exemption: I’m intoxicated by writing and publishing personal nonfiction—exposing my innermost thoughts and then, inevitably, grappling with the shame of being exposed. A few times in my life, I’ve seen strangers pull their dicks out in public, and I wonder how they felt once the thrill wore off, once the quiet of night crept in. Exhibitionism is equal parts self-indulgence and self-harm.
Naked Yoga wasn’t my first sensational story. Working on a feature for GQ, I watched a “sex coach” help his clients reach their dream orgasms. I penned profiles of self-proclaimed pickup artists. I ghost-wrote a book for a zealot about why women shouldn’t have premarital sex. (I know, I know; I needed the cash.) I’d just never gotten naked on the job before. And in retrospect, that’s too bad.
“We come into the world naked,” the teacher said as my classmates and I lay supine, knees tucked up, butt cracks agape. “We go out naked. But while we’re here, we tend to hide inside our clothes.”
I was barely 30. I didn’t need to hide inside my clothes, to use clothes the way we do—as protection not just from the elements, not just from prying eyes, but from our critical selves. For me, it’s always been like this: Naked before a mirror, or a lover, or a yoga class, my energy converts to a single wish—I want to be other than what I am. Perhaps that’s why I relish revision—the nipping and tucking, the filtering, the rearranging, the cleaving of fat.
A few months ago, Alison and I were having one of those conversations that women in their 40s have about the authoritarian regime that is our hormones. As we discussed symptoms—insomnia, anxiety, PMS on steroids—I mentioned shame: It’s a myth that shame lessens as we age. How could it be true, when we’re taught that aging is shameful, that all evidence of it is shameful—the wrinkles, the reading glasses, the memory glitches? I’m even ashamed of being ashamed.
“That doesn’t sound like hormones,” Alison said. “That sounds philosophical.”
It’s philosophical. It’s hormonal. It’s societal. It’s hereditary. Shame and nudity are a double helix, twisted up in our cells. We’re the naked emperor, learning the awful truth. We’re Adam and Eve, the inventors of loin cloths. In my 40s, as though I’ve sinned, I feel increasingly dirty, increasingly determined to scrub something away. I can no longer get into bed at night without showering. I can no longer stand those motels off the highway, or any other business with questionable hygienic standards. I’m offended when a dog sheds on me, when a handshake is clammy, when dishes are washed with an old sponge.
Evolutionary psychology posits that shame arises from fear that we’ve become less appealing, that our place in the pack has been compromised. Then we have three options: We can go into hiding, leaving us not just ashamed but isolated. Or we can give the illusion that we’re still appealing. That’s why there are credit cards. That’s why there’s Botox. That’s why there are lies, empty apologies, bravado. But feigning change is just another form of hiding. The third option is to own shame and shove it into the light.
I once heard that the antidote to shame is confession. But in writing, the gulf between confession and eloquent honesty is as wide as the gulf between a diary entry and an essay structured in diary form. I’m reminded of this while reading the diaries of Annie Ernaux that led to the best of her memoirs. Her diaries are baggy, tortured, and repetitive; the memoir is pared-down, funny, and sharp. A diary is a litany of secrets, while a finished piece is the rendering of an emotional truth.
In my favorite shame poem, for example, the speaker declines to list his sources of shame (If I wrote that story now . . . people, I swear, your eyes would fall out), instead offering safe, vague examples, like boring the tall blonde to death. He evokes shame while skirting confession—or from a craft perspective, without leaning on confession.
I’m remembering another yoga class.
I was in my late 20s and dating an American finance guy I’d met in New York, who was working in Tokyo and flying me back and forth. It’s surreal that a man was importing me to Asia like petroleum, but that’s another story.
While he was at work one day, I found a Bikram yoga studio. This was back before we knew that Bikram Choudhury was a predator, and I was spending all of my money on his trademarked hot yoga. The instructor taught in Japanese, of course, but it didn’t matter; I knew the postures and their nuances by heart. Watching myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, I was horrified: There I stood in spandex shorts and a sports bra, the only non-Japanese student, a hulking presence.
I just Googled to see if my memory and body dysmorphia have exaggerated the discrepancy. It’s possible, but the average American woman is indeed two inches taller and 40 pounds heavier than the average Japanese woman.
It would be years before I started travel writing. I hadn’t spent much time outside the United States. The experience of not blending, and the resulting shame, was novel. So was the experience of being enormous. The expression stuck out like a sore thumb makes no sense (if your thumb was sore, how would anyone know?), but here I was in Tokyo, an inflamed American thumb. At least in the Naked Yoga class, we were all naked, but in this class, I was conspicuous, imposing, colossal. I had to force myself to stay to the end.
The finance guy and I had had a two-week whirlwind romance in New York, but in Tokyo, it became clear that we were wrong for each other. The first night of my first trip, jet-lagged and disoriented, I got too drunk on sake, and the next day, I felt his judgment. Once, our conversation tank ran so low, he asked, “When you get out of the shower, do you air-dry or towel-dry?” There was no flow, no depth, nothing to latch onto. He was making heaps of money and he seemed unhappy. I was counting out the last dollars of my rent in laundry quarters and I felt unhappy, too. Our unhappinesses didn’t match. We didn’t find the same things funny. We weren’t the same kind of weird. I felt weird to the core. He didn’t think he was weird at all.
Eventually, from the other side of the world, I broke up with him, half-hoping he’d fight for us, though fighting for us was a fantasy that didn’t correspond to our reality. I like the part in the rom-com after the guy loses the girl, when he speeds to the airport so fast, he causes honking and yelling and the overturning of an apple cart. But this was not that.
I wrote an essay about that relationship. I don’t write to help readers feel less ashamed, but when I think about shame, and about its insidiousness, and about the possibility of using words to take the edge off of it, I write more confidently and candidly. There’s defiance in the pushing-through, a challenge to an imaginary critic: Who are you to censor me? Who are you to deem me shameful?
So on the page, I didn’t guard myself. I didn’t do PR for myself. I considered my baser motivations (a fantasy of the writing life funded by a Wall Street salary) and my patterns (romanticizing things that aren’t particularly romantic). I had traveled by train down the Izu Peninsula, seen a Japanese Beatles cover band that was strangely convincing, and eaten the world’s freshest sushi cut by the world’s sharpest knives. But the most satisfying part of the experience happened once I was alone with my laptop in my little apartment, when I could strip away the layers and arrive at the naked truth.
Love,
Diana
P.S. If you like this post, or any of my posts, it would mean so much to me if you’d share it wherever you share things. And/or: Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. I love sending you these essays! And I rely on reader support.
P.P.S. What’s your relationship to nudity? Let me know in the comments.
P.P.P.S. I’ll be teaching a new batch of classes soon, both virtually and in Mexico. I’d love to see you!
P.P.P.P.S. A prompt: Write your own shame poem.
So many memorable lines here! " the authoritarian regime that is our hormones" for instance. Love how you always strive for and often nail the naked truth of things. Great analogy of the difference between unfiltered diaries and distilled memoirs.
Have to watched Naked Attraction?