The host was gracious and kind and extremely welcoming. There was no doubt that I had a seat among the women gathered. Being welcomed, however, didn’t mean that I felt comfortable. I was very uncomfortable.
My self-assigned duty as Artist In Residence there, is to be comfortable getting uncomfortable.
In that gathering of 7-figure women, I was the one 3-figure woman. They seemed white-ish, but I can’t tell. Through their comments I understood that each were brave, breaking barriers in their own industries. Most of them worked in male dominated fields of finance and tech. I was in awe of their accomplishments.
They spoke of their upbringing and internalizing the standards of girliness they had to keep up to. We chatted while soaking in a large hot tub in a members only social club.
One woman spoke with deep seriousness about how as women we all had such a hard time being naked together, and how fraught it was for all women to be exposed with other women.
I replied ‘Some women.’
She was genuinely puzzled. I know from my experience growing up in Japan, and then travels through Europe, that many women are naked with other women, and it’s been so for a long long time. It’s just part of life. The beaches, the baths, the living rooms. The venues will very from culture to culture, but in much of the world naked toddlers, saggy butted grannies, and perky boob mammas hang out bared to skin in one way or another.
So I replied, “I think it’s mostly a middle class white American discomfort.” She chewed on that for a while. It felt good to see her listen through her obvious discomfort. Or maybe it’s that I felt good to be heard.
When I was a child in Tokyo, every evening my family and I would gather our toiletries and go down the street to the public bathhouse. There, in the women’s bath, all bodies slipped happily into the hot waters and gossiped and cackled. As a little girl I saw all the shapes and all the imperfections and all the stages of bodily change of wrinkles and sags and decay of time that framed the glorious granny grins of life well lived.
I told the women of this and their eyes lit up. (I need to get these women to an osento, or jimjillbang bath! Or saunas, or hammams or banyas…)
There were other threads of ‘all women’ assumptions.
I sat in my discomfort and listened. I needed to get some better sense of the issues that women-not-like-me wrestled with. Yes, I want women to connect and be seen and see other women. Yes, let’s reach out and find understanding. No, please don’t assume we have so much in common. Don’t paint all women with the same brush strokes and paint. Engage in our differences. When we understand the different issues, strengths, and resources that women from different walks of life bring, we are stronger.
Afterwards the women chatted in small clusters of two or three. I walked by them on the way to the shower, towel over my shoulder. As I left some of the women said pleasant things to me. “I appreciate your perspective.” one said. Did she mean that? Or was that corporate buzzword meaning exactly the opposite? Did I bring her a flicker of discomfort? I think the jargon is ‘disruptive model towards change and progress.’ Was I that?
Well, if I’m going to make myself uncomfortable, it might as well be in a hot tub, with kind people. It’s cold out in the world, in too many ways.
