Getting Naked with Strangers

On Losing My Mind and My Clothes at Olympic Spa

There are few things that make you feel more vulnerable than lying on your side completely naked while a woman named Jin stands beside you in a black bra and panties, scrubbing a loofah between your butt cheeks.

Having been fat my entire life, and having spent over half that time attempting to make my body desirable to both men and other women, I know that lying on my side is not my best angle. From there my lower stomach flops over and down like a slide of fat hanging from one hip to the other. The preferred angle has always been on my back, where my stomach looks not flat, but flatter, and where a simple arch can simultaneously smooth things out and counteract the way my breasts tuck and roll their way under my armpits.

At this point, I had already spent four hours naked in a room full of strangers. I had already missed the second and third steps into the cold pool and cringed as my giant breasts flopped into the water below me while an older woman looked on sympathetically. I had already made the decision to forgo my robe as I walked through the three rooms to get to the Himalayan salt sauna, smiling back at the woman I had locked eyes with while casually holding a towel too small for my body in front of me. I’d already had a conversation about the temperature of the mugwort bath while sitting naked just a few inches from a woman who likely looked a lot like me when she was on her side. At this point, I realized, the time to be insecure about my body had come and gone. As I slid around on that vinyl table, eyes closed, somewhere between bewildered and defeated, it was clear that this was the actual moment of reckoning I had come here for.

Pinpointing exactly when I lost my mind depends on whom you ask. If you ask me, it’s been a years-long process that peaked three months ago when I took a month-long vacation and spent ten days in Southern California. Upon my return, I spent three weeks in my office with the door closed, listening to podcasts, biting my nails, and Googling “how to move across the country.” Then I abruptly told my landlord over the phone that I wouldn’t be renewing my lease. Then I quit the job I’d had for eight years. It was only a surprise to anyone who hadn’t been paying attention. Everyone knew I had been in a rut, as it was easily detected on my face. I knew that I wasn’t going to escape it unless I physically left.

When life brought me to Los Angeles, my obsession with my skin, self-care, and beauty products felt nurtured — everyone here is obsessed with those things — and I was quickly told that I needed to try a Korean day spa, or jjimjilbang. I was into the idea; I wanted to believe in the healing powers of sitting naked in a steaming bath with a handful of women I had never met. It fit into the plan I had sketched out for myself, which included a lot of positive affirmations and the improv mantra of “Yes, and.” It was what got me to Los Angeles in the first place.

There is a science to planning your first voyage into the unfamiliar. I planned my Korean spa experience more meticulously than I planned my road trip from Boston. I spent hours researching spa etiquette and scrolling through the Instagram tag of spas I’d bookmarked. When the tag wasn’t enough I would click on the profiles of the taggers. What were they like? Were they thin? Do they look like they work out? Where did they hang out? What filters do they use? What do they do for work? For fun? I read every Yelp review twice and spent even more time clicking through the photographs. My friends all urged me to try the modern and popular co-ed spa, where the bathhouse area is gender-segregated, but both men and women can peruse the snack and lounging areas together. I was turned off at the idea of my first jjimjilbang experience being tainted by the presence of men, but felt embarrassed articulating my concerns to my friends. Quite simply, I didn’t want to be anywhere near men during this experience. I didn’t want to worry about looking cute in the common areas. I didn’t want to worry about whether I should put a bra on or whether men were staring at the jiggle of my breasts under my t-shirt. I knew how vulnerable and literally exposed I would feel and even if no men would be seeing my naked body up close, knowing we would see one another in the common areas and, upon eye contact, know that the other just came from flapping their genitals around in a steam room mortified me. I didn’t want to think about men at all. I wanted this to be about me. The co-ed spa was out.

After accepting my insistence that I go to the women’s only spa, my friends were taken aback by my irrational fear that I would be ostracized for my big body. I had catastrophic thoughts of the other spa member seeing my fleshy lower stomach or the cellulite on my thighs and telling me to get the hell out of the sauna. I worried that the other women were going to scatter like roaches when I approached. Of course this was irrational, and yet I still worried that maybe it wasn’t. I was not comforted by my spa familiar friends’ assurance that I would see all different sizes and shapes. Instead, I was convinced that they simply had no idea what a real fat naked body looked like.

Trying to hide my body with clothes has always been an arduous task in itself. When I was nine my mother bought me a pair of soft red denim pants from The Limited because I was too fat to fit into the pants at The Limited Too next door, but still thought they would make me cool. The girls who sat behind me had affixed the Limited Too labels to memory and knew where my pants had really come from, and they made sure I knew they knew as they spoke in a loud whisper meant for me. I looked fly as hell in those pants but was quickly reminded that feeling good about my body was not a privilege afforded to girls with bodies like mine.

There have been several attempts at controlling my fat over the years, including the dramatic hunger strikes in middle school that only lasted until dinner time. It peaked in college when I hopped on the ephedra bandwagon despite the nice blond-haired GNC salesman with the middle part attempting to talk me out of it. Twenty minutes on the treadmill and I was so sweaty it looked like I had showered in my clothes. Later, I swore off carbs and spent nearly every night moving my fat body at a pace somewhere between a fast walk and a slow jog around the athletic center track until I was 15 pounds lighter. A friend I hadn’t seen in a while stopped me on campus, scrunched her face up, and said, “You’re skinny.” I knew what she meant. I was still fat, but less fat.

The weight came back, as it tends to do, and I was sad, which only made me eat more, and I tried to hide the fat under t-shirts two sizes too big and the empire waists that magazines told me would be best for my body type — I could never quite figure out if I was an apple or a pear.

The weight gain and the general feeling of loss of control over my life led to the dark years between twenty-three and twenty-seven in which I spent my Friday nights eating frozen pizza and ice cream and then hovering over a plastic bag in the corner of my bedroom with a toothbrush shoved down my throat. This one was perhaps the most embarrassing. Not just because it was gross and the bags of vomit I hid in my room had begun to attract fruit flies, but because I chose to ignore the years before that had taught me that fitting into those pants would not bring me happiness. I was stuck in some sad cyclical nightmare.

As I’ve reached my thirties I’ve had neither the willpower nor the desire to enact a regular exercise regimen and I’ve tried to focus more on self-care and acceptance than what I need to change about myself. I’ve put a lot of effort into not talking shit about my body and there is a certain sense of freedom that comes with loving yourself. I thought I had reached the point where I could say I loved my body without it sounding more like a question than a declaration, but it’s hard to know exactly how far you’ve come until you push yourself to the absolute edge of your comfort level.

And there I was, parading my big naked body in front of other fat, thin, short, square, round, tall, soft, sharp naked bodies and it was liberating. It was a celebration of us and our willingness to be so open with our bodies rather than something to be ashamed of.

I finally got over my fear of my body because I had to in order to enjoy my experience at the spa at all — and once I did, it was hard to remember what I was so afraid of in the first place. But I suppose you can’t truly know how comfortable you are with yourself and your body until you’re spread out naked on a table with a woman named Jin’s hands positioning your leg in a way that allows her more access to the crease between your vulva and your inner thigh.