Nakedness, Story 2: Stripping Down

Being naked–or seeing others naked–can evoke a firestorm of emotions . . . everything from freedom to vulnerability to sensuality to shame. In three stories pulled from the Storytelling Project archives (created in 2012) we explore the glory and grit of stripping down.

Transcript for Nakedness, Story 2: Stripping Down

Show Theme Opening

Destiny: 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 Destiny Cunningham 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 news 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 transforming nakedness into a space for joy and self discovery.       

In the next half hour, you'll hear three phenomenal stories from our archives created by former Stanford students, each story answers questions about how we step out of our comfort zones and gives us insight into what happens when we push our boundaries and embrace the unexpected.     

In our first story, You will hear from Hannah as she grapples with accepting her truest self,  and contemplates the effects of nakedness on her relationships.

Hannah: My freshman year, I worked in a green library. And there was a very Spunky, charismatic woman who worked there with me, named Michelle Sutherland.  And she was a drama major. 

Rachel: This is Hannah Kopp-yates. She's going to tell a story about the time she acted in what started out as a pretty weird play, and soon became a very weird play. 

Hannah: She was doing her senior project, and she knew that I could do a little bit of Indian dance, and she recruited me. 

Rachel: The play Hannah was recruited for was called Medea, Medea, Medea. It was kind of an avant garde version of the myth of Jason and Medea. In the myth, Medea is a powerful witch who falls in love with, and marries, a hero named Jason. Jason is one of those hunky Greek adventurers with a fatal flaw. He's the guy with the commitment problem.

And, you guessed it, after he marries Medea, he isn't faithful. 

Hannah: He was in love with Glocki, the daughter of the king of Corinth. And he married her. And that was who I played.  

Rachel: Medea, who in this version is actually a puppet in a long frilly dress, discovers that Jason has betrayed her. And so, she takes her revenge on poor Glocky.

Hannah: She crafts this long crocheted red rope. And at the end, she comes and offers it to me as a wedding gift. And Glocky, who's young and vain and beautiful, is of course really excited to try on this fancy new article of rope clothing, and winds it around herself ritualistically, and then dies a slow, horrible death as the poison sets in. So yeah, that was my terrible fate. 

Rachel: At this story's core are raw emotions that almost everybody who has ever fallen in love has felt. Passion. Jealousy. Betrayal. Hannah and her castmates wanted to really make the audience feel those emotions, to access them on a more primal, physical level than dialogue or even words. So, they threw away the script.

Hannah: And had no more script by the end of the first week of working together. 

Rachel: But after a few practices, they decided that doing the play in silence was not enough. They needed to strip away more. 

You're listening to State of the Human, the radio show of the Stanford Storytelling Project. I'm your host, Rachel Hamburg, and this week's show is all about what happens when people strip down to the bare necessities. 

Hannah: Our director was working with the costumes people, because they help with like every play that someone puts on, they'll help you figure things out. There was some talk of like, everything white, um, but then we ended up having a, a white costume.  And so we didn't want to blend in with that. And black felt too stark. She definitely didn't want to go period. And so, like, the more we thought about it, I think, I wonder, I can't quite remember, but I think I might have been the first one to say the idea out loud. But at one point I was like, Well, I guess we just have to do it naked. And she was like, Yes. And I was like, oh, oh, oh,  I, okay, alright. 

Rachel: Of course, the cast didn't just decide to go naked on stage because they couldn't find the right backdrop. They were trying to find a way to make people really feel something.  

Hannah: We didn't want people to come in and think, like, oh, I know what this is about. This is about these, like, Greek people in this ancient period, killing each other. This is a myth. We wanted people to be like, oh, like, these are human beings. I look like that too when you strip everything away from me. 

Rachel: In choosing to do the play naked, Hannah and her castmates were trying to establish a more intimate connection with their audience, a connection that went beyond era and culture and clothing. By showing more of their bodies, they were trying to show more of their humanity. 

But is that how it works? When you see someone naked, do you think, oh, they're revealing their true nature and that calls out to my own innate humanity? Or do you think, that person is naked! 

When Hannah performed her show nude, she knew what she wanted. She wanted other people to feel moved. But she was kind of worried. What if they just felt weird? I definitely feel weird when I think about nakedness. When I even hear the word “naked,” my brain goes into this amazing overdrive. 

I think of everything from classical Greek statues, to hippies in their gardens, to sex and pornography and cellulite and unwanted staring. I think about airport body scans and the Supreme Court allowing strip searching, but I also think about sunbathing and streaking and skinny dipping and summertime in the words “your true self.” 

In the space of about a second, my brain covers all of these associations with nakedness, and then it tries to home in on one socially appropriate response. No wonder I feel at a loss. And I think most of us are like that. That's why so many people giggle when they see naked people in public. They're trying to aerate their whirring brains. 

Nakedness is complicated. Stories can help you figure it out. That's why this week's episode of State of the Human is Naked Talk. Stories that ask, why reveal yourself? What are the Consequences? And what might you gain? 

It's time to come back to Hannah's story. If you remember, they had tried throwing away their scripts, but they still wanted to get more bare bones, so they began practicing the show naked. At the time, Hannah was dating somebody who she really liked. Initially, Hannah says, he seemed like the kind of guy who would be into a Greek myth done in the buff. But he wasn't. 

Hannah: Part of the reason that we really hit it off was that he was extremely  free spirited and, and kind of bordering on hippie, as I would characterize it. He did a lot of yoga, and like played the guitar, loved to sing folk songs, and we would just kind of drive out into the redwoods and run around, and that was like our dates. 

And he had this person he always referred to as his spiritual advisor. I don't know if that was his rabbi. He was definitely Jewish, this spiritual advisor, but he never really said like my rabbi or, you know, the person at my temple.  It was very mysterious. This person gave him a lot of relationship advice.

Rachel: Hannah's boyfriend talked to his spiritual advisor about her decision to be naked in the play.  He made it very clear to this guy I was dating that it's not okay. Not proper, not sacred, not in line with the wishes of God for a woman. to bare herself on stage in the way that I did. 

Hannah: And it's funny because  he seemed really torn between, at least at the beginning, between kind of liking the idea that, like, his girlfriend was gonna be naked on stage. We haven't been dating for long, so I don't he hadn't seen me naked at that point, so like, this was an exciting prospect. Um, and, you know, listening to his traditions and, and, um, to this mysterious spiritual advisor. 

He definitely said to me at the beginning when I told him like, So, by the way, I'm gonna be in a play naked. He's like, “Oh, cool.”  And then the next day he came to me and was like, “I don't know about this. I talked with my spiritual advisor and blah de blah.” 

And he tried several times to convince me not to do it. 

Rachel: But Hannah was set on doing the play and doing it nude. It didn't seem sexual to her. It seemed classical in the most powerful sense of the word.  

Hannah: It felt so Untarnished by any of the twisted, um,  sexual  motives that I feel like the, the laws of, of any great religious tradition are sort of trying to steer us clear of. Um, it just felt like a purely artistic choice.  And so I kinda decided to stick by my guns. Stick to my guns? How do you say it?  

Rachel: I don't know. Hannah: Do I have guns? I don't know. Whatever.  I decided to stick with it. 

On opening night, at 5 o'clock, he calls me to check, again, whether maybe I've changed my mind yet. And I say, “no, I'm performing tonight.” And he says, “okay, well, in case you do change your mind, I've left a little something on your door.  And I want you to know that  I think  we should stop seeing each other.” 

I'm like, “okay, cool. Cool.” Generally I think it's written somewhere in the dating book of etiquette that you wait, like, until after the performance to break up with your actress for friend. Girlfriend.  But, I guess he didn't look that up, so I went through the play. 

Rachel: When she got to her room, she found a Victoria's Secret bag hanging on her doorknob. 

Hannah: And, um, there's a little note from him saying like,  um,  This is for you, in case you change your mind. Wishing you all the best.  And there's like Two sets of nude, like, skin toned  lingerie in this bag, and the receipt's still there. And he spent, like, 150 on Victoria's Secret on this skin toned lingerie. Um, apparently with the idea that I might, at the last minute, say, “wait guys, stop the train. Stop the train. I have to do this in a bra and panties. Because, yeah, no. You guys can stay naked. But I'm, I'm just gonna wear my bra.”  No. 

So, that was that. And I continued to perform it for the next three shows naked and delighted, and I was always really I brought that bag back to him and I said like, “I can't, I can't take this.” And he said, “oh, you should just return it and get some other lingerie.” I'm like, “this is not this is not about  the world in which lingerie exists. Like, this is not about sex or temptation or sensuality, well, maybe a little bit about sensuality, but like, this is about art. I don't think you understand that, and I don't want anything to do with your pink Victoria's Secret bag or any of its contents.”  So that was that. 

Rachel: Hannah's participation in Madea, Madea, Madea ended her relationship with her boyfriend. But she doesn't regret it. She said she could see the effect that the play had on the people watching, and she said they were enraptured. She said her friends, even her mom, who came to watch the play, didn't think that the performance was strange or awkward or uncomfortably sexual at all. Many of them identified deeply with the naked people on stage.  

Hannah: I had, I had several Friends come up to me and be like, “Hannah, I saw myself so much in that. Like, that was my life.”  And I was like, “oh boy. Like, do you want to talk? Cause, I'm so sorry.” 

But, y eah, I do think it really added something that would not have been there with costumes. 

Rachel: Hannah is a senior majoring in human biology at Stanford. 

{Music interlude}

Rachel: You're listening to State of the Human, the radio show of the Stanford Storytelling Project. This week, we bring you stories about revealing yourself, getting naked, or at least, getting slightly more undressed. 

This next story is about a community that united just so its members could get naked, safely, comfortably, and profitably.  

Rachel: Oh, okay, so this is, okay, we have to have our, like, naked  talk. Naked!  Naked! 

When you are naked on stage,  do you, like,  really feel naked? 

Sandy Bottoms: Yeah, I feel naked.  I am naked. Sometimes I'm cold, sometimes I'm hot, sometimes,  you know, I can feel the fans on my skin. That doesn't mean I feel exposed or vulnerable. I think that's a, those are very different feelings that, that are often associated with nakedness. Um, especially nakedness, um, in front of people. Um,  But I, but yeah, I feel naked. I am out there. People are looking at my naked body. 

Rachel: This is Sandy Bottoms. She's a dancer and the head of PR at a San Francisco venue called The Lusty Lady.  It's a peep show.  

Sandy Bottoms: There are a couple different ways to do shows here. We have our stage, which is an area where naked women dance. Um, and there are twelve windows surrounding three girls on stage and like, the windows kind of pop up at random, when people come to watch. Um, we have private pleasures in our VIP booth, which are one on one experiences, still behind glass, Um, and, and those are a lot more explicit. 

Rachel: Even if it sounds like a normal peep show, the Lusty Lady is actually a very unusual place. It's the world's only unionized and worker owned adult entertainment facility.  

Sandy Bottoms: We became unionized in the late 90s, um, and, um, in 2003, the workers, um, in response to the original male owners needing to go bankrupt, um, decided to, to buy the business. 

Rachel: I went to the Lusty Lady in December of 2011 to interview Sandy. I didn't see the show, but I saw the outside of the building and the immediate interior.  I have to admit, I was expecting something different. There was a big marquee outside, but it looked the same as all of the other signs for Gentleman's Club that lined Kearney Street.

It didn't advertise the club's status the way that I had somewhat naively imagined. You know, welcome to the Lusty Lady, the world's only unionized and worker owned strip club. It just said, The Lusty Lady.  And on the inside, I found a bored looking woman in what looked like a bondage spacesuit, sitting on a stool. One of the staffers was yelling at an old man in a long coat to get the hell   out of the building. This place did not seem cutting edge or progressive. It seemed . . . like a strip club. I couldn't imagine what would be appealing about getting naked here. But Sandy could.

Sandy Bottoms: In high school, I had these fantasies of either being, like, a stripper or a florist.

Rachel: She first heard about the Lusty Lady in college.

Sandy Bottoms: I  went to school here in San Francisco, um, I was a history major, and so I was always reading, and I was always fascinated with, um, labor movements, and feminists, the feminist movement, and, and all these, you know, great, amazing things I wanted to be a part of. Um, I I first found out about, discovered the Lusty, um, in the labor archives, actually. I was doing a totally unrelated, um, paper, um, and I just kept finding all these documents about the Lusty, and I was hooked. 

Rachel: Before it was unionized, the Lusty Lady advertised itself as an alternative club. The original owners hired a lot of women with unusual body types, girls with piercings or tattoos, and quite a few feminists. But that didn't mean that the managers treated them well. In fact, there were a lot of unsavory things going on. There was one way glass, which was dangerous because it meant that dancers couldn't see who was looking at them. And worse. 

Sandy Bottoms: Blatant racism. You know, you had to, if you were trading your shifts. Um, you know, the person who was taking your shift had to be a lighter skin color than you. They had to have your color hair or lighter. They had to have your size boobs or bigger. Um, and there was, it was, it was an awful practice. And that's certainly something we got rid of, like, right away with the union contract.

Rachel: At the Lusty Lady today, Sandy makes a guaranteed hourly wage, plus bonuses and benefits. All the dancers also have a vote in company decisions.  This is different from most strip clubs, which hire dancers out as independent contractors. Independent contractor sounds good, right? Almost kind of feminist? It's not. 

Sandy Bottoms: There are girls here in San Francisco who end up owing at the end of their the night. So after they end up working for eight hours, they end up owing the club because they have stage fees, they have door fees, they have to tip people out, and even though they are required to be here at their job in a strip club for say six or eight hours, they are not paid an hourly wage. They are going out and hustling dances and have to give a percentage of that back to the on top of whatever they owe for their fees. 

Rachel: Of course, Sandy's experience at the Lusty hasn't been perfect. Though she claims that many of her customers are funny and playful or gracious or– Sandy Bottoms: –people who have been in monogamous relationships for years and years.

Rachel: People still occasionally get aggressive. 

Sandy Bottoms: The only bad experience I ever had was when I let a group of 20-something-year-old guys in my booth. And they kind of went into pack mentality mode. I had never had people gang up on me in that way. Even though they paid, even though, you know, they were entitled to a show. I did not want to give them a show after we started. Because it was just aggressive and  not consensual. They wanted me to do things because they thought it would be demeaning to me. It just was kind of icky feeling, like they were not coming from a sex positive place. 

And I stopped the show, and I called our lovely support staff at the front and had it finished. They ended up getting kicked out.  

Rachel: Okay, so, a few guys were jerks at a strip club and they got kicked out. Big deal. But, think about it again. In another venue, this would probably go really differently. In a typical strip club, when you ask your customers to leave, you're saying goodbye to your only source of income, which is tips.

And if you don't make enough tips, you might even end up owing money for the night. On top of all that, you may have to deal with a manager, probably a guy, who thinks that you should be entertaining abusive customers. But Sandy doesn't have to tolerate customers who don't treat her well just to make a profit for the night. She can have people kicked out because, along with all of the other dancers, she owns the place. 

For me, having seen the Lusty Lady in those moments before Sandy picked me up for the interview, I still remain sort of doubtful. I can't get the image out of my mind of that guy cursing at the manager in the middle of the day because he couldn't get into the peep show.  Just standing inside the entrance, it feels like the dynamics that make strip clubs disempowering to women are still very much at play. I think of the rawness and the vulnerability that I associate with being naked, and I worry about the women dancing inside. 

But when I think about it more, I realize that Sandy said that even though she feels naked on stage, 

Sandy Bottoms: that doesn't mean I feel exposed or vulnerable.  

Rachel: She doesn't feel afraid. Sandy's experience of being naked is determined by the community of women at The Lusty Lady and the conditions that those women place on their customers. And Sandy's happy. 

Sandy Bottoms: When I dance I feel very secure with myself. I feel confident and I'm happy. I really enjoy sex work. I really enjoy this business. And I could imagine not enjoying it as much if I didn't have the setup I have here. 

Rachel: You just heard from Sandy Bottoms, a dancer and the head of PR at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco. 

We've talked a lot about how the experience of being uncovered, your sense of exposure, your sense of freedom or beauty or empowerment or shame, is at least partially determined by the people around you. Whether it's your lover, like in Hannah's story, or the people you work with, like the dancers at The Lusty Lady.  But what about being naked alone? What happens when the only person affected by your nakedness is you? 

One girl, out of all the people we interviewed, shared a side of nakedness completely invisible to the eyes of the masses. She likes to dance alone in her room.  

Anonymous Girl: I don't lead a very dramatic life, like nothing happens. Ever since I was little, I've loved to dance. And so that's always been something I've done to make myself feel better. And dancing naked in my room, I don't know, it's just like one extra layer of concealment from myself removed. And um, I don't know, it's just a way to feel better about myself. 

Rachel: What makes you feel better about yourself? 

Anonymous Girl: I start focusing less on how I look and more on how my body feels. And it's just a better way to think. 

{musical interlude: You Are My Sunshine}

Rachel: Today's program was produced by myself, Rachel Hamburg, Sofia Palica, Charlie Mintz, and Jonah Willihnganz. Thanks to Pansy Rutsch, Andy Stuhl, Samer Alqahtari, Hanna Kopyaitz, Sandy Bottoms, and all of the brave people we interviewed in White Plaza and in dorms. For their generous financial support, we'd like to thank the Stanford Institute for Creativity in the Arts, the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, and Bruce Braden.  

Laura: This is Laura Joyce Davis, the current managing editor for the Stanford Storytelling Project. Rachel Hamburg was the Storytelling Project’s very first managing editor. The stories you just heard were made in 2012.

The Lusty Lady closed in 2013, but its place in San Francisco history reminds us that even in unlikely situations, collectivising is possible.

Thank you to Rachel, Hannah, Sofia, and Charlie for their support in rescuing these stories from the Storytelling Project archives. Thanks for listening.