My Friend Got Naked and Body Painted
And Helped Me Learn to Love My Body As It Is
A 9:13 minute video on getting naked and body painted changed my sex life.
It inspired me to change the way I think about myself and the way I exist in the world. It freed me to become the full sexually free being I was always meant to be.
A little backstory. I lost my virginity sometime during the 444 days the 60 Americans were held hostage in Iran. At 18, I was beautiful and stylish for the times. I had long hair and long legs. Boobs that were a handful. A waist that would make any hour glass proud. But I didn’t see it. My self image was held hostage by a captor that would never let me believe I was good enough.
Even though my first lover was amazing (a reality confirmed by those who came after him), I was never able to be fully present when we had sex. Despite his generosity in giving me pleasure, a little piece of me was always thinking, ‘how do I look, how do I smell, how do I taste.’ Needless to say, it is very hard to orgasm when you’re worrying about these things. I could cum like a freight train alone with my fingers, but it generally didn’t happen with my partner.
Like so many women, I have never been happy with my body. The story in my head ran like this: While I was “too skinny” as a very young child, when I got my tonsils out at age 5, for some reason, I put on weight and became “chubby.” My dad in particular would yell at my mother for giving me cookies and milk before bed. When I finally went to college and lost a few pounds from running around campus all day, I still felt “if I could only lose 5 pounds.”
In fact, throughout my life, I always felt I had to lose weight as my body wasn’t quite right. As I got older and I added a little weight, that voice in my head changed the number, “if I could only lose 10 . . . 20 . . . 30 pounds.”
It was my story. My weight was my nemesis and always dominated my self-worth, the thing I could always point to that I needed to work on. When I looked at my life, which has had many, many blessings, I always had that ‘yeah, but I need to lose x pounds.” This broken record in my brain impacted my sex life the most.
I didn’t feel attractive or sexy. I didn’t feel a partner would want me. I didn’t feel confident enough to fully engage with lovers, to express my playfulness, my desire for adventure, or my enthusiasm to try new things.
I’m sure this is why I endured the last 10 sexless years of my marriage. Once I finally left, during the healing process, I came to realize I didn’t want to give up on my sex life. In fact, I wanted to make up for lost time. But I had no idea how to make that happen.
The transition happened slowly. During this time, my elderly mother moved to an assisted-living facility. As I was cleaning out her house to ready it for sale, I came across our family’s photos. I was stunned to realize that, no matter what age I was in the photo, I didn’t look fat. Or even chubby. I looked cute. Beautiful even. Full of life.
This blew my away. As I looked at each photo of me at various ages and thought ‘what I wouldn’t give to be that weight again,’ I began to feel pieces of my old story chip away. I realized how critical I was of myself and how fucked up that was.
As a feminist, intellectually I’ve always been aware of the pressure put on women to meet a ridiculous standard of beauty. I always blamed Barbie dolls for imprinting their bizarre shape on me to emulate. As a prepubescent girl, I remember thinking I couldn’t wait to transform into that figure with those boobs. Once puberty hit, I was so disappointed I never met that ideal.
As I was licking my wounds and trying to heal after leaving my marriage, I continued to ponder on why I always had this distorted image of myself. I know this thinking is quite common among women and, at its worst, could manifest into body dysmorphic disorder, which can lead to anxiety, depression, unnecessary and excessive plastic surgeries, and even suicide.
With the help of my therapist, I began to work on how I saw my body. I wanted to see myself without judgement. I wanted to see myself and be comfortable with what I saw. I wanted to see myself and NOT compare what I saw to that fucked-up, crazy-ass ideal of beauty.
I wanted to love what I saw when I looked at my body, with all of its curves, sags, jiggles, and skin tags. Then I saw that 9:13 minute video.
Through social media, I became aware of a woman named Junie Moon who for years traveled in the same circles as I did. I checked her out and saw she was a shadow-work practitioner and worked with women in mid-life. Basically, she helps people work on their shit. Then I found her “Shed The Shame” video.
Like a good lover, this video gave me what I needed to put me over the edge.
Short story is that, in the video, Junie gets naked and has an artist paint her body. Not on a canvas, but actually paints her nude body.
From its first moments, through Junie, Shed the Shame was telling my story.
She talks about growing up a happy, ebullient child. She talks about a great loss and the message she got from the person she loved most in the world. “Don’t gain weight because men won’t like you.”
She talks about reflecting on her childhood photos, on wondering what it would be like to love her body as it is.
Then she does it. She hires renowned body artist Andy Golub to use her as a human canvas. With each brush stroke, her hesitation, anticipation and then joy shines through. I marvel at how her general body shape mimics mine. I see her embracing the boldness and stepping into her power.
“I am not my thighs and I’m not my saggin’ boobs,” she said. “I’m a heck of a lot more than my body. My body is a vehicle. My body holds my beautiful spirit. This is my temple that allows me to have this human experience, but I am Spirit.”
I thought about that for a long time. I thought about how I was sick and tired of not loving my body. How I always felt life would be so much better if my body matched that unattainable ideal in my head. “What would it be like if I didn’t have these thoughts?” Junie asks in the video. “You have the right to live any way you want and let love in, because you deserve it.”
Something clicked for me after I watched a joyous Junie prancing fully naked and gloriously painted outdoors. I realized I wouldn’t be fully alive, or fully embrace my sexual potential, until I too shed the shame.
After that aha moment, I was able to go on a dating app and, yes, got properly fucked for the first time in a decade. My head as well as my body was totally into it. Didn’t think about anything but the sweet sensations of getting and giving pleasure. I was a horny teenager again.
This new mindset requires constant cultivation and reinforcement — it takes work! As Junie says in the video, “There were moments that were challenging . . . When I saw some of the photos, I thought ‘oooh my belly, oooh my hips,’ and I noticed my thoughts and my judgement about it, and there is some sadness that that’s still in me.”
But healing is possible. “I’ve come a long way, I’ve grown a lot, I’ve released a lot,” she said. So have I. Whenever I feel challenged by insecurity and hear that old inner critic again, I think of Junie’s final message.
“Free yourself up. Shine your light and be free.”
Besides being director/producer of the film Shed the Shame, Junie Moon Schreiber is a Transformational Love Coach, the author of the #1 Amazon Best Selling Book Loving the Whole Package: Shed the Shame and Live Life Out Loud, and is host of the podcast, Midlife Love Out Loud. https://coachjuniemoon.com
Check out my latest erotica short story, Back to the Beach: What Better Place for a First Date Than a Nude Beach?
