Love your thighs

observations while nude in a bathhouse

“Leg, the Self Portrait” by Seung Ah Paik

When I walk into the Kabuki bathhouse, the first thing which hits me is the steam. The next thing is the smell, like an herbaceous chlorinated pool. My flip-flops are loud on the wet tile, courtesy of the bathhouse. This place is well cared for. Visually, beautiful. The room opens up to a large chamber with two pools, rows of water taps and hinoki wood stools for bathing, lounge chairs, a steam room and a sauna. Nude women of all ages, shapes and sizes, skin tones and features wander around in a meditative state, dipping their bodies into the healing waters.

I submerge my arm in each pool to test out the temperatures. One is simmering hot and the other is bone-achingly cold. The smell of cedarwood from the sauna lingers in the air when an older woman opens the door and strides by me to the water station.

Every woman is beautiful in their natural humanness. Every curve, wrinkle, and roll is a magnificent design.

A sign hangs by the entrance which tells us that no sexual energy is allowed. It tells us to leave it all behind. And you can feel, as soon as you enter, the realization: nakedness itself isn’t sexual.

The respect for each other’s bodies is detectable in the humid air. People do not stare or investigate or examine. They make space for each other in the pools and the walk-ways and they move around the bathhouse with a dignity I’ve seldom felt in a room full of clothed strangers, let alone nude ones.

I walk-swim to a corner of the hot pool and sit down on a submerged ledge. With each exhale, my legs float up near the surface. I look down at my thighs, distorted by the water. I see how they’ve changed. They’re bigger, wider, stronger.

A memory surfaces of a time when I was in the wheelchair after the accident, and my thighs had wasted away. I think of the photos my friends took with me. Me smiling with a broken tooth and a beanie on my head throwing up peace signs while being pushed down a suburban sidewalk. My shoes looked too big compared to my stick-figure legs. Atrophy, is what it’s called. It turns out, when you stop using your muscles, they will melt away faster than ice.

Some time later when I was walking again—by the skin of one’s teeth—and living back in my apartment, I met a young woman who wished she could have what I had. Thighs like chicken legs.

It was a warm summer night in San Francisco. The young woman was a new roommate and I wanted to get to know her. We lay next to each other on the hammock in our backyard, strung between two trees. In my early twenties, adopting new friends into my life was compulsory, like drinking water. We played music from a phone and drank from a bottle of wine.

Our legs stuck out straight in the hammock like flower stems. She measured my thighs against hers. And she said: I wish I had your thighs.

For a moment, I was in a state of shock. But even in the dark night I saw her facial expression was quite serious. I wanted to hold her. Didn’t she knows these thighs were a kind of prison? But of course, we’d only just met. She wouldn’t know I’d been dreaming of a different pair of legs.

I wanted those Godzilla haunches! I wanted that Mrs. Incredible! I wanted thighs strong enough to crush a skull between them. So finally, I could push my body through gravity, though the streets of the city, through dance clubs and grocery stores, through office spaces and work events, through weddings and baby showers.

She wouldn’t know that my chicken legs were a result of pain: too many signals in the body to move, or run, or work. She wouldn’t know the thighs I used to have, which touched in the middle. She wouldn’t know the amount of times I’d written “I miss my ass!” in my journal.

What we visualized when we looked down at our thighs together were two different realities. When she pointed at her legs, I saw economic stability and financial freedom.

I explained this to her. I told her the story behind my thighs. I told her what becoming disabled was actually like. I told her I had a new appreciation for these essential things called fat and muscle and nerves and blood. And I told her, I understood where she was coming from.

Of course, I understood why she believed thighs should be bone-slim as though one had been suffering beautifully. Being born in the 90’s when “heroin chic” was the most desirable aesthetic had caused a distorted reality for many of us. And then, we had to live through the thigh gaps of Tumblr.

But I said: let me explain why you don’t want this. Your thighs have power, that can move you through this world with self-reliance. They can hold you upright for hours on end while you work. They can jump and leap and do cartwheels. They can run in an emergency.

I want your thighs.

Something shifted in her expression, a new awareness. She said: I didn’t think of it like that before.

Today, in the hot water of the pool my muscles are unraveling like a cat playing with yarn. My memory fades away, but I’ll never forget it.

I plunge myself into the ice-cold pool and the adrenaline rushes through me. I can’t help but laugh in delight as I breath heavy, pull myself out and shake my joints into submission.

I wander into the sauna, first holding the door open for a passerby and smiling deferentially. And that’s when I notice, I’ve forgotten to feel concerned about being exposed. I’m just…existing.

When I look around the bathhouse, I realize groups of women should be nude together more often. It reminds you that your body is not a sexual object. It’s a body which holds you, so you may enjoy life in all it’s wonder. So you may perceive the world: feel it, see it, hear it, taste it, smell it. Or any version of those. You have a body so you can live!

I’m thankful for my changing body and my grief, because it has shown me the truth about beauty. Beauty is in the body always, even when you’re bigger or smaller, walking or rolling, because your body is keeping you alive the best it can.