Nakedness, Story 1: Exposure Therapy

Destiny Cunningham learned shame early. The comments that teachers, church leaders, and other kids made about her body led her to wear clothes like armor, hiding herself from others so she wouldn't be noticed. Years later, Destiny and her friends decide to visit a nudist retreat in the hopes that she'll learn how to become naked without feeling exposed.

Transcript for Nakedness, Story 1: Exposure Therapy

Opening

Alina:  This is State of the Human, the Podcast of the Stanford Storytelling Project. 

Each episode we take a common human experience, like teaching or breathing or joking, and bring you stories that deepen our understanding of that experience. My name is Alina Wilson, and in the next few episodes we’re looking at the theme of nakedness.

This series will feature stories about naked theater, worker-owned strip clubs, and nudist retreats. It’s about the transformative process of revealing ourselves — physically, mentally, and spiritually. It’s about the tension between shame and acceptance — and the process of discovering who we are in the middle of it all. And — especially in today’s episode — it’s about learning how to walk through the world as our full selves. 

Destiny: It was junior year. I was walking confidently through the halls of my high school in Oklahoma City. I was wearing my favorite sweatshirt, a beaten up Stanford University hoodie that I stole from my mom, and a pair of black leggings. I was late to class, as always, and I was rushing from third period to fourth.

The dean of students stepped into the hallway and motioned for me to come see her. I speed walked toward her, expecting to check in about the service organization I ran or the scholarships I was applying for. 

Instead, she told me that my sweatshirt was too short. That it violated the school dress code. That I needed to wear something less distracting.   

I sleepwalked through the rest of my classes that day. And when I finally sat in my car in the high school parking lot, I started crying. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t about the dress code. It was about this feeling that I had been singled out. 

Everyone knew the dress code at my school wasn’t applied fairly. The basketball guys got away with wearing athletic shorts. And the skinny white girls got to wear leggings with tight lululemon shirts. And flat chested girls got to wear v-necks. We actually had a school assembly about the dress code. Lots of students, especially many of the girls, had complained to admin about the way it targeted certain students. 

But I guess I hadn’t expected that the dress code would affect me. Usually, the dean of students only pulled me aside to congratulate me or pull me into a new project. For the first time, I felt like I, or at least my body, was the problem.

How do we learn shame? How do we hold the tension between what makes us feel comfortable and what the world will accept from us? And how can exposing ourselves set us free?

Today’s episode tackles these questions and more. 

Alina: Growing up, destiny had a pretty strict routine. 

Destiny: I'd come home from school, rush to the bathroom, get my brother off his school bus, then lock the front and back door. I tried to keep everything in order to avoid mistakes,

Alina: but sometimes she'd forget to lock the doors after coming inside. 

Destiny: When I was 10 years old, my mom installed double cylinder deadbolts on the front and back door of our house. One of those locks that needs a key every time you lock and unlock it. She installed them because my younger brother had a bad habit of running away from home. He didn't run away because he didn't like being at home. He was non-verbal and diagnosed with autism before he could crawl and found his love for escape.

Then when he was really young, my older sister and I would take turns catching him when he recklessly tried to go up and down a flight of stairs. It's easy to catch a crawling baby, but a sprinting 8-year-old is another story. Luckily, he'd always run away to the same places. The swing set of the neighbors across the street or in the yard and sometimes inside the house of our neighbors next door.

None of them really minded. His visits. They actually thought it was funny. The only problem was he did all these things naked.

Alina: Destiny didn't have a problem with her brother's nakedness until after kids in her neighborhood started saying she lived in the naked kid's house, making her. The naked kid's sister.

Destiny:  Kids would ask me, why is your brother so weird? Or What's wrong with your brother? One time when spending the night at a friend's house, something my mom rarely let happen.

The situation of my brother's nakedness came up. I don't remember how we got on the topic, but I remember the three of us sitting at their dining room table. One of the girl's moms was cooking in the kitchen that was only separated by a half wall. The night had started off fun. I felt like I was finally joining in on this experience that all the kids around me had, and they made me feel normal.

The interrogation started when one of the girls asked me, don't you ever wish your brother was normal? He's so scary to be around. Immediately I started reciting the lines. I had rehearsed time and time again for moments like these. I told them that there was nothing wrong with him. He just doesn't like clothes.

That there was something about the feeling of clothes on his body that made his skin crawl, and so he takes 'em off to stop that feeling. At some point within our conversation, I started to cry. I couldn't stop the tears that spilled out at that moment or how those tears grew into a deep sob. It caught me off guard because I was always good at holding back my tears.

I thought that being able to do so gave me power because I had controlled over emotions in a way that no one else around me did. But with that one question, my exciting night at a friend's house was ruined, and the control I had was gone. I felt disoriented. I tried to explain his behavior of not wearing clothes, that if you give him a chance, you'll see how sweet he is, even though he can't speak and if there's no reason to be afraid of him.

But I felt like no one understood me. Moments later, my friend's mom rushed into the room to figure out what was wrong. The two girls sat and watched as I tried to explain why I felt so hurt through tears and gasp for air, how at 10 years old I felt upset that I was expected to grow up and be understanding of others' fears, even though they weren't trying to understand him.

How scared I was of something bad happening because of that fear and that he could never tell me. All I desperately wanted was to be understood without having to ask. Instead, I told her that their comments upset me. For a moment I felt seen. She understood that I was a kid experiencing something that wasn't considered normal.

After a few minutes, she made me look at her and said that I couldn't control what other people said about my brother, only how I reacted, and that in order to be a good big sister, I had to stay strong for the both of us. When I went home the next morning, I was on a mission. I started being more strict with my brother about his clothes.

I made sure the blinds were always covering the windows and kept all the doors locked, even if that meant going out of the window. I thought that if I hid everything, then maybe I could change how people felt about him

Alina: For Destiny, learning to share parts of her personal life, especially those tied to her brother's behaviors was a challenge.

But she was beginning to realize that this was just the tip of the iceberg in understanding what it means to be exposed.

Destiny: As I was dealing with my brother's nakedness at home, I tried to do more things that I thought was normal outside. I was tired of being seen as the weird kid, so I joined different clubs at school.

I tried to play volleyball, but was too afraid to hit the ball so it didn't last. I joined a group that prepared high achieving fourth graders for college, which in hindsight really didn't make me less weird. So to counter that, I joined choir because all the cool kids were in choir. Well, I didn't join choir only for its popularity. I also enjoyed singing,

{Music “I get a feeling . . . }

Destiny: I wouldn't say I was great at singing or even a good singer. But that never stopped me from singing. I loved listening to musicians like Tina Turner, Etta James, James Brown and Billie Holiday. So when my choir teacher decided we were going to do our Black History Month performance on historical black singers, I knew I had to sign up.

There were three performances for our recital. Two in the morning during the school day for students and one at night for parents, and I wanted to make sure I looked the part, scavenging through my mom's closet with my sister. We found one of my grandmother's old church outfits. It was a red knee length dress with a small V-shaped cutout at the top, and a matching red jacket with shoulder pads and jeweled flowers sewn in, and an overly decorated massive hat to top it off.

When I put on the dress, we immediately laughed at how silly I looked. The dress was way too large for me. It made me look like an even tinier version of my grandma. We agreed to dish a jacket and a hat, and after getting the dress altered, I was ready for the show. Standing in my school gymnasium with the sun shining bright through the windows, and about half of my school sitting crisscrossed applesauce on the gym room floor.

We began to perform. When it was my turn, I excitedly ran off the bleachers, down to the mic to sing my solo.

Everything felt warm as I danced and laughed with my classmates.

I had my moment.

Ana: She had her moment.

Destiny: After the performance was over, all of my choir members talked about how happy we were, and while we were sharing our excitement, my music teacher asked to talk to me at the side of the bleachers. I was expecting her to congratulate me and say that I did well, but instead she told me that I was dressed inappropriately, that I was developing faster than the rest of the kids, and it was too distracting.

She asked me if I had anything else to wear, and when I told her no, this dress was all I had, she asked me if I had a jacket, and I remember this deafening sensation washing over me. It felt like the world around me became quiet, and the only thing I could hear was my breathing and my heart falling out of my chest.

Alina: Destiny told her that she was sorry and that she didn't mean to be distracting. But despite her attempts to address the situation, a choir director insisted that something needed to change

Destiny: Before our next performance. She cut up a piece of red construction paper and made me tape it to the inside of my dress at the peekaboo cutout.

And when we did our second performance that morning, I tried hard to cover my chest. I made sure not to move as much as before. I wanted to do things right this time. So I sang my part and got back in line. Later in that night as I was getting ready for the final show, I grabbed the matching red jacket from my mom's closet, and when she asked me why I wanted to wear the jacket when I hadn't before, I told her that it just looks better this way and was more appropriate

Alina: For years After the incident, destiny started covering herself more as her body became more visible. And people more verbal and violent.

Destiny: When I was 12, I started wearing jackets everywhere. It could have been a hundred degrees outside. My shoes could be melting into the concrete and I would still have a jacket on.

One of my favorites was a lightweight blue, black and white oversized jacket that could easily be blown away with a strong enough wind. And yet it felt like I was wearing a piece of armor that protected me from everyone's intrusive eyes with the jacket. I didn't have to worry about being seen. I was worried about how I looked and felt.

It was justified since my brother's experience constantly reminded me of how cruel people could be.

Alina: Destiny felt like there was no place where she could exist comfortably in her body, and school only made things worse.

Destiny: In seventh grade, I had PE as my second class of the day, which was already horrible.

Everything was sterile in color with its fluorescent lights and gray lockers. It was both clean and dirty at the same time. And even with my hatred of the space, I wasn't always afraid of changing. In the locker room, there was this group of girls from the class above that would make comments about our bodies with their guy friends, and made sure to laugh loud enough for us to hear one day while getting dressed, one of the girls snatched my shirt from my hands as her two friends cornered me.

They talked about my body, kept commenting how guys must, like how big my boobs were, and how I probably liked the attention. I was overwhelmed by them and the fluorescent lights and the loud chatter and my body's ability to take up so much space and still feel so small, it felt like nothing I could do would be right.

They only gave me back my shirt when they heard the gym teacher's footsteps as she entered the room. No one said anything. We all just continued to get ready. After gym class was over, I noticed my school clothes weren't in my locker. And while searching for them, I found the three girls and a few guys throwing them around laughing.

I watched as my jacket landed on the floor and became nothing but a piece of clothing. I, I didn't tell my mom what happened when I went home. I didn't want her to worry because I thought her reaction would make things worse, but I knew I couldn't stay in this school. Over that winter break, I sat down in my room and made a PowerPoint presentation with a full price breakdown explaining why that school was terrible for my future and how important it was for me to leave.

And at the start of the next semester, I started online homeschooling

Alina: For Destiny, homeschool was great. She didn't have to think about her jacket or any of her clothes for that matter. But not going to school meant she couldn't see her friends that often, so she had to find another way to socialize.

Destiny: One Saturday morning there was a knock at our front door with two women asking if we like to go to church. My sister had already gone to this church with a friend, so we knew they weren't bad people, and they told me that there were a lot of kids at a church and that there was a lot of candy. And what kids says no to candy. So that Sunday, I hopped on their tan church bus and started attending their church.

This place was like a utopia for children in Sunday School. We always played games and sing really weird but fun songs, had sugary snacks. That definitely gave me several cavities, and everyone seemed to really care about you. I started spending all of my time at the church. I was there Sunday morning and night.

Wednesday nights, Friday nights, Saturday mornings, and the occasional events on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and after a few years of attending service, there was no difference between church and home. When becoming a member of the church, there were certain expectations you had to live up to. If you were a girl, you were supposed to always wear a skirt.

That went past your knees while sitting in a non-fire hugging top that didn't expose your arms or too much of your chest. For me, this wasn't a huge shift from the clothes I already wore, and honestly, I didn't have a problem with it. In school. People got in trouble for breaking the dress code for their crazy sock choices, or not tucking in their shirt, but I was the only one whose physical body was the problem.

I was one of the people who had to do more to hide everything underneath, but here they expected. All of us to hide, and that helps me not feel alone. A plus side to dressing a certain way was being able to attend different church activities, and it was in attending those activities that I met, one of my best friends, Brittany, when I first met her, she reminded me of the girl who whispered and pitch perfect.

We would sometimes glance at each other while in service, but neither of us made the move to talk. But one night when heading out on a Friday 19 activity with people I didn't know, well, Brittany was the first person to talk to me. She actively made sure I didn't feel alone or left outta the conversation.

And as I started to get to know our small group of girls even more, we slept over at each other's houses and made embarrassing music videos, paring songs we weren't supposed to be listening to. On one of those nights when we were 15, Brittany asked me if I wanted to perform with her at church. At first, I was really reluctant.

I hadn't sung in front of a large group of people since middle school, and I didn't want to relive that experience. But after some time, I finally gave in on the day of our performance. I stood at the mic not too far from Brittany at the piano. And I saw how the faces of so many adults in the room that watched us grow lit up.

It felt like a do-over for the performance I had as a kid standing up there. I was just a girl singing a song that brought her joy. After we were done, our pastor told us how moved he was and asked if we wanted to perform at least once a month, and we agreed. Brittany and I had our next performance on Easter, which meant a lot more people would be attending church than usual.

We practiced before and after church or whenever we got the chance, I spent hours trying to find the right outfit. Going through my options, I picked a red, high low dress, which is an asymmetrical dress with a hemline that's shorter in the front and longer in the back. At first, I hesitated on whether I should wear it because it showed my knees, but after listening to Brittany tell me I looked good in the dress and how it was made for me, she convinced me otherwise.

Alina: They made sure to arrive early to practice, but a few minutes before service, their pastor interrupted. He told them that Destiny's dress was inappropriate and that they were no longer able to perform.

Destiny: All of a sudden I was transported back into my fourth grade body. I could hear my thoughts become cloudy as that same deafening feeling washed over me.

I didn't say anything. I only stared at him. So Brittany argued on my behalf. But I couldn't make out what they were saying. I just knew that I was in the wrong. I knew that I was taking a risk wearing that dress, but I wanted to wear something that would make me happy. After several minutes of arguing back and forth for Britney, he finally agreed to let us perform, but it didn't matter anymore.

That moment was gone and I didn't wanna do it, but I had to. So when I sang. I sat next to Brittany at the piano covering my legs so the audience couldn't see me. After that, we decided not to sing for the church

Alina: again. After this incident. Destiny's relationship with the church began to change years of being told to dress appropriately so that she wouldn't tempt.

The boys finally wore her down, and she didn't want to keep putting up with it.

Destiny: One day, as I was scrolling through YouTube, I stumbled across a channel called Style Like you. It's a documentary interview channel where after each question, the interviewee takes off one item of clothing until they're in their underwear.

I watched the first few minutes of one video and turned it off. There was nothing inappropriate about the channel or video, but they explored topics and discussions in ways that winni against what the church instilled in me. They were having conversations about their sexuality, sensuality, and their desires to leave church, and they were doing it in their underwear.

After a few minutes of arguing with myself, I locked my bedroom door and watched an interview, and then another, and then another. The interviews mostly consisted of the interviewers asking what certain clothing items meant or what their styles symbolized to them. And their interviewees would tell these heart wrenching stories about a hard moment in their life and how something as simple as clothing helped them through it.

I didn't stop watching the channel until I heard the birds chirping outside my bedroom window. The next morning, my bedroom floor was covered in tissues from how much I cried and I felt moved by their stories. There were so many people that looked like me a lot that shared similar sentiments I had growing up with my brother.

It was genuinely one of the first times in my life where I felt seen. There was no one there telling me to suck it up and be strong. Instead, they said it was hard, and acknowledging that pain was so liberating, but deep down, I was also jealous. Something they had felt untouchable to me, but I desperately needed it.

I kept asking, how did they get to the point where they felt happy in their bodies? And when would it be my turn? It was through watching these videos that I realized I wasn't actually afraid of being naked or wearing revealing clothes, but I was afraid of being seen for years. People talked about my body as if it was theirs, and I wasn't gonna sit back and take it anymore.

I wanted to take that control back.

{musical interlude: Wish I knew how it would feel to be free. I wish I could. }

Alina: Years went by and Destiny never stopped asking herself when it would be her turn. A few years later, after starting her undergraduate studies at Stanford, she made friends Anna, Leah s Meek, and Alina. Who are all looking for a similar experience while sitting down in a study room at Stanford Library looking for the best place to be naked.

The group found a woman founded Nudist Resort, prioritizing the safety and comfort of their female visitors. Once they had this revelation that a lodge like this even existed, they knew they had to go.

Destiny: Deciding to go on the retreat wasn't easy. I had so many fears that were both rational and irrational.

Like, what if I get a tick while naked or get bit by a ton of mosquitoes and somehow get malaria in Northern California? But what scared me the most wasn't the bugs. It was questions I kept asking myself like, what if this experience doesn't feel good? What if it actually hurts me? What if I feel worse? I was scared.

My body would somehow ruin these relationships I built, and I didn't wanna make a mistake. I was scared of people from my church finding out. I don't talk to most people there anymore, but it felt like taking a step would sever any possibility of going back. And did I want that? Was I ready? But even with all of my fears, there was this nagging voice in the back of my head that kept telling me to do it.

Kept reminding me of the 15-year-old girl that cried on her bedroom floor watching YouTube videos. There was an excitement in wondering, what if this leads somewhere That's better than you ever expected.

Ana: All right, I'm recording.

Destiny: How are you guys feeling? I feel like screaming.

Ana: We should, we should just scream. Yeah, we can do it now. What if we just roll down the windows and scream? Okay. Okay. Ready? 1, 2, 3. Ah,

Alina: oh man. When they finally reached the retreat. They waited for a few minutes for their last group member to arrive and took in the scenery. The lodge was nestled in a forest with a small nudist neighborhood surrounding it with peacocks and turkeys roaming freely.

Destiny: After our last member arrived, we went to the welcome desk to learn more about the rules of the lodge, which were pretty simple.

There was no photography or video recording allowed. They told us what to do if someone makes you feel uncomfortable, and who to reach out to. And they stressed the importance of this being a clothing optional lodge, so there's no need to take off your clothes if you didn't want to. Having the retreat be clothing optional helped ease some of my anxiety.

I had complete control over whether I got naked or didn't, and there was no shame in either choice, but I knew what I wanted to do.

Ana: Should we go get naked? Yeah.

Destiny: I walked through the pool, felt like it took forever. As we moved fully clothed, passing by familiar scenes of houses, tennis courts, and basketball courts. Everything seemed so ordinary, even with the occasional encounter with someone completely naked. Strangely enough, I didn't feel weirded out by anything we saw.

It actually reminded me of home, of my little brother who always preferred the freedom of being unclothed. I remember how I tried to cover him up. Anxious about how others would perceive us. Him, me, but witnessing these people so at ease with their nudity. I wondered what if I had been more accepting of my brother's nakedness?

Would I also be more accepting of my own? Entering the gate of the pool, we saw the sea of bodies lounging on chairs on that windy Sunday morning as we made our way to the showers. I don't remember who took their clothes off first. In my mind, I made a movie out of it.

I imagine the five of us walking into this secluded area and after a few minutes of talking reassuring each other that we should definitely do this. We countdown from three and then all take our clothes off. But that's not what happened. One.

What actually happened was two of our group members casually walked up to the showers and just took their clothes off, and after quickly glancing at everyone else, I did too. I was definitely nervous, but after stepping out of the showers, I realized no one was looking at me. No one was there to make me and my body into whatever they thought at the moment.

I could be myself in the most freeing way possible. Thinking about all of these experiences that got me here, I realized how much of other people's shame I've carried over the years and wondered how much I forced others to carry mine.

The retreat reminded me of something I knew as a kid before I understood what shame was. Before my brother became a problem, before the world twisted my body into something it wasn't meant to be. It was back when I was just a small girl. I was six or maybe younger. When I stood in front of our women, led all black church congregation, singing nerves and all as I was nervously standing there whispering the words into the mic.

Something magical happened. Adults joined in to help me sing and I started to march around the church and one by one they joined me clapping along. We made a full circle around the church, and I remember feeling so incredibly happy, like I was floating on air. As I grew up, I created an image of who I thought I should be to be the good big sister, the perfect daughter, the person people wanted around.

I felt I needed to accept people's comments without making a fuss, so I covered up more hoping it would fix the me problem. I was afraid that if I were exposed, if people really saw me, they wouldn't wanna stick around. The retreat didn't fix everything. I couldn't, but it helped me realize the me problem wasn't about fixing myself to fit into the world, but rather the world needing to expand, to embrace all of me,

and maybe the world isn't ready to embrace me yet. What I am. The retreat reminded me that I don't have to carry the weight of others' expectations or hide parts of myself to fit in. I'm starting to see that maybe just maybe there's a way to walk through the world as the full version of myself unapologetically.

{Etta James singing “At Last”}

Closing

Alina: That was Destiny Cunningham with “Exposure Therapy,” a story from our Nakedness theme of State of the Human, the Podcast of the Stanford Storytelling Project. 

This episode was produced by Destiny Cunningham, Ana de Almeida Amaral, and me, Alina Wilson, with support from Laura Joyce Davis, Dawn (da awn ) Fraser (fray-sir), Megan Calfas (cal-fas), Melissa (mel-issa) Dyrdahl (dear-doll), and Jonah Willinghanz (willing-gands). 

For their generous financial support, we’d like to thank the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, The Program in Writing and Rhetoric, the Office of the Vice President for the Arts, and Bruce Braden (bray-den).

Make sure to tune in for more stories of nakedness in upcoming episodes of State of the Human.