My Body(23)

Back on my phone, I focused on the image of my body, the four women blurry in my peripheral vision. I scrolled down to read the most recent comment: “Men like mystery, stop showing your body and maybe someone will start listening to you.”

I quickly swiped out of Instagram and thought about reading the book I’d brought with me, but opened the news app instead. A headline about Kim Kardashian caught my attention: “Why Kim Is Dressing Less Sexy.” I peered over the edge of my iPhone to check on the four Muslim ladies. Still there, I thought. I took another sip of pi?a colada and sprayed a splotch of sunscreen onto my legs, feeling my pulse in my temples. That damn headache wouldn’t go away.

On my screen, Kim was saying, “I also did think, like, okay, I’m here in the White House and then the next day I was posting, like, a crazy bikini selfie. And I was thinking, I hope they don’t see this, I have to go back there next week.” Kim talked about her work on justice reform, how she’d realized that being sexualized wasn’t helping her cause. “My husband has voiced that sometimes too sexy is just overkill.” Now my sinuses were starting to ache. I once heard that headaches come from the brain swelling and pressing against your skull. This one felt exactly like that.

I spread my arms and legs out wide and closed my eyes and told myself to relax. Money means power, I thought. And by capitalizing on my sexuality I have money. The whole damn system is corrupt and anyone who participates is just as guilty as I am. What am I going to do? Go live off the grid? I have to make a living somehow. Besides, I have this damn vacation that most people couldn’t afford even if they saved for years. It’s ridiculously expensive and I’m not even paying for it. So be grateful.

But did I have power? Did the women on the beach in their headscarves? Did Halle Berry have more power coming out of the water as the James Bond girl or when she took off her makeup and got ugly in the film that earned her an Oscar? And did my young actor friend have more power now that she was wearing turtlenecks and tasteful diamond studs? Did Kim have more power going to the White House in her suit or when she capitalized on the release of her infamous sex tape, the one that made her the most googled woman on earth? Would anyone have cared about Kim’s fight for justice reform if she hadn’t had a sex tape? And why did everything these women did, what they wore and what they posted, all seem so reactive? As if they were adapting to and playing in someone else’s game, with someone else’s rules?

“My bow-day,” I said out loud, studying the glistening skin of my hips. The whole of the ocean stretched out before me, and yet I felt trapped. My body.





K-Spa





KOREATOWN IS SQUISHED right in the middle of a bunch of other neighborhoods: West Hollywood, Silver Lake, Mid-Wilshire, and Downtown. The clientele of the K-Town spas reflects the mixing pot that is LA. Spanish, Korean, English, Russian—the women speak their languages in hushed tones, mindful of the levels of their voices. No one wears jewelry inside the spas, and, at just $30 admission, it’s difficult to tell who is rich and who isn’t.

There are women with large breast implants that sit unnaturally beneath their skin; there are women with no breasts at all. There are women with scars from cosmetic surgeries, women who look like burn victims, women with faded purple lines from C-sections above their pubic hair, women stripped bare from menopause. Some women attend in pairs, but most come alone and keep to themselves. They let their faces droop, the corners of their mouths turn down, and their eyebrows sink. What on the subway would be called resting bitch face here is just looking relaxed without pretense or performance.

Understanding and agreeing to the rules of the spa is crucial to the experience. It can take a moment to absorb those rules: Shower before you use any of the pools, keep your hair up, no bathing suits. No phones. These guidelines are posted on the wall in clear view of the entrance, laminated to guard against the steam. But the implicit rules are far more important, and come only with experience: Do not make eye contact or look directly at anyone’s body. This is a place where no one is scrutinized or evaluated.

Of course, the Korean clientele are the experts; the rest of us are just students. Novices watch them out of the corners of our eyes, imitating their rituals. They are the least self-conscious and the most focused. They sit on plastic buckets turned upside down on the slippery tile floors and gaze with indifference into the small, clouded mirrors that are secured to the walls. They rub their naked bodies down with hard-textured cloths that grind and grind and grind against their skin. They wash their hair with an impressive squirt of shampoo and brush it aggressively. Sometimes they are silent; other times they speak quietly but assertively to each other in Korean. Whether they’re young or old, I feel shy and juvenile in their presence. They seem to possess an inherent understanding of how to take care of themselves. There is no fussiness involved. It is what it is: they clean their bodies with matter-of-factness and purpose.

I’ve never been good about taking care of myself. Cleaning my body is not a habit I take pleasure in but a concession to social expectations; I know that being dirty is embarrassing and not feminine. I’m always distracted and annoyed in the shower, forgetting to shave the backs of my calves or to rinse my hair for an adequate amount of time. For me, the ritual of cleansing has always been an inconvenient necessity, something I have to do for other people.

My lack of care extends beyond hygiene. I dread doctors’ appointments so much that I’m often more perturbed by having to schedule one than I am by whatever ails me. I’ve managed to avoid seeing a dentist for most of my twenties, a whole seven-year streak without a cleaning that I finally broke at the age of twenty-seven. I don’t like the way they make me feel guilty for not flossing. When I’d tell friends about avoiding the dentist, they’d screw up their faces: “The health of your teeth is crucial, Emily!” I’d shrug, feeling a little embarrassed, a little alone, a little strange.