Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

Here’s a strange confession. I’ve never sent a nude photograph to anyone. Maybe that makes me a prude, or maybe it ages me a bit, but even in my twenties and even when I was flirting with my now husband, I couldn’t help but see all the horrible consequences that might come after sending a nude photo. Where would it eventually end up?

But one thing is for certain, that’s not how the younger generation feels. Again, I might not do it myself, but I can’t help but feel a little shiver of excitement that there’s a sexual and physical openness on the rise. I keep thinking of all the body shaming, the constant need to look perfect, the airbrushed models, the diet culture, the ways in which my generation was taught to hate their bodies. We were taught to look at our bodies and point out what was wrong.

But now? Now, I see a sort of excellent strutting happening, an awakening of appreciation for bodies and desire. I can scroll through Instagram and see any one of my fellow writers dressed in nearly nothing to honor their book release or their cover reveal. It feels like a new way of praising the body in a public way. A casual kind of celebration of identity and selfhood.

Okay, sure, sure, I sometimes see folks post thirst traps on social media and immediately the older sister in me kicks in and wants to shout, “Cover yourself up, young blood! Who is going to take you seriously now?” But the other part of me wants to clap and after so much drudgery and suffering and feeling cut off from the world, isn’t showing a little skin like showing a little light?

Perhaps what I want to say is that I am learning something from my younger friends about loving myself, my body, my own needs. And for that, I’m grateful.

Today’s smart poem is about the way a nude photograph can offer a new type of visual vocabulary, a new way to connect.

Explication on a Nude Photograph Taken After Hours at the Bright Beach
by A. Prevett

The sun has a funny way
	     of threatening this body, reddening
only the exposed skin, leaving
	     the breasts and back white
as if to say Next time
	     I won’t be so gracious.
		          And funnier because
I wouldn’t mind giving everything
	     to the light right now, after this
dark, dark season. I’m in need
	     of excess, gluttony, pleasure
that implodes into suffering.
		          So I take photos for future strangers,
	     strip away the day’s swimsuit in pieces, take care
in documenting the whole process, the big show.
	     Some parts of me are pink, some
off-pearl. All of them supple
	     with water and salt.
		          There’s an art to this.
In it, a grammar, sweet syntax. I am writing
	     a letter to you in fragments, and dear reader,
it’s just for you: the crook of an arm blowing kisses, the strong ethos
	     of a thigh, this plush waist a signature, Yours and yours.
Everything yours to receive, to make a language of.

"Explication on a Nude Photograph Taken After Hours at the Bright Beach" by A. Prevett. Used by permission of the poet.