Improve Your Body Image at the Naked Spa

The MamaSutra explains how a visit to the local spa helps improve your body image.

I went out to dinner last weekend for a girlfriend’s birthday. The party was made up of about 10 women; a few women that I already knew and a few that I hadn’t yet met. At the end of the table where I was sitting, we spoke a lot about my field of study… shocker! Basically, we talked about sex for most of the dinner.

(On a side note, it’s important for me to mention here that it does not matter who I tell what I’m doing with my life; everyone has a story that is important about sexuality and about what they’ve experienced in their life up to this point. For example, I’ve had conversations with my accountant talking about grandkids’ sexuality, with the online tech support person in India about societal differences in dealing with sexuality, and with my business banker talking about how early to start the conversations with children. One woman, who was a bit older than me, was told by her own mother that pregnancy was caused by kissing. She said she was so afraid to kiss her own father and brothers after that! As you can see, misinformation does not protect a child. But it can give them anxiety about something else.)

As the night went on and the group got smaller, we moved our chairs in closer and started visiting with people at the other end of the table. These were women I hadn’t met before and they were parents of kids at the birthday girl’s daughter’s elementary school. Our mutual girlfriend made the introductions and introduced me as The MamaSutra. One mom had a 12 year old daughter and we got started talking about the book “Queen Bees & Wannabes” by Rosalind Wiseman. We talked about “Girl World” and about girl’s self-confidence at that age. She said she was starting to be concerned with her daughter’s body image. I told her it might be an interesting exercise to go together to the Kabuki Spa (The Kabuki Spa is a spot in San Francisco, in Japantown to be specific, that has a communal bath. A few times a week they offer women-only days where use of the spa is clothing-optional). Read more