Letter of Recommendation: Naked Attraction
the healthiest hour you can spend!!
Hi bb!
You ever feel weird about having a body?
I’m guessing yes? Like yada yada yada, we’re all ghosts driving meat-coated skeletons made from stardust and riding a rock hurtling through space, I know, but also? we have to live in our bodies every day, and these bodies are perceived by others, and also our bodies have physical limitations and also we use them for everything we do while alive, including finding other bodies we might want to spend time with sometimes.
It’s weird, right? It’s kind of weird to be the ghost inside the meat-coated skeleton.
It used to be that every time I started to feel like having a body was something I was struggling with, I would call a friend and get them to go to the Korean spa with me. Korean spas– like Olympus Spa in Seattle and King Spa in Chicago– were the only places I knew where I could be fully naked in a public-ish setting, surrounded by other strangers who were also fully naked. At the Korean spa, you walk into a locker room, drop your towel, enter a room full of differently heated or cooled pools, and see dozens of people completely naked all at once.
Seeing that many naked bodies at the same time was, and is, a kind of therapy for me. The sight of all of those bodies – all of them different and all of them good – invariably shuts up the voice in my head that’s critical of my own body.
At the Korean spa, the first 30 seconds are always a little scary. That’s because people glance up from the pools as you walk in, and they look at you, and you think, ‘omg i’m naked, everyone can see me.’ But then… you relax. Everyone else is naked, too, and no one gives a single shit about what you’ve got going on.
You see everything. I go to the women’s side (I’ve never been in a Korean spa that wasn’t conventionally gendered when it comes to the naked pool rooms, but the other rooms, where you do wear clothing, are usually unisex), and nothing is off the table in there. You see old bodies. Very young bodies. Big bodies and small bodies, surgically modified bodies, boobs that hang and boobs that bounce. You see faded tattoos on dimpled butts; you see piercings and huge bushes and stretch marks and cellulite and scars. You lay back in a heated pool, idly watching the naked scene, and you see for yourself that everyone’s body is similar and different and useful, and that everyone’s body shines with sweat when they come out of the sauna, and that everyone likes to ease into steaming water and go “ahhhhh” in exactly the same way. Being at a Korean spa is as close to ‘animal’ as I ever feel. We’re all just animals having a strange time on our planet, ya know?
For years now, though, I’ve lived many, many hours away from a Korean spa. It’s a tragic state of affairs, and I’d never figured out a workaround beyond visiting Chicago and texting “king spa on sunday biiiiiiitch” to friends still living in the city.
Until I saw a TV show.
A show worth seeing.
A TV show that does almost exactly what a visit to a Korean spa does for me: It reminds me that we all have bodies and gets me out of my head and back into mine.
I’m talking about Naked Attraction. Have you seen this fucking show??!!!? Naked Attraction is a British reality show that you can now watch on Max, Amazon Prime, or YouTube, and if you haven’t seen it, it’s going to blow your mind. Davin and I first saw it in Scotland two years ago, when our friends Rae and Janet sat us down on their couch.
“There’s something you have to see,” Janet said.
“We’ve been waiting to show it to you,” Rae said. He turned on the TV.
What followed was a revelation.
Here’s what Naked Attraction is, according to Wikipedia:
“The series premise involves a clothed single person presented with a gallery of six nude potential partners, who are hidden behind differently colored booths that concurrently reveal themselves from the bottom up.”
OK, so, yes; this is a dating show where they “date in reverse”, meaning a person wearing clothes picks someone to date by looking at six potential dates’ naked bodies; but also this is the least informative Wikipedia paragraph I’ve ever read!!!
The bodies of the six people standing in booths are revealed concurrently, yep, but they do it in sections, and the first section is “lower body”!!! Bare feet all the way to FULL!! FRONTAL!!! GENITALS!!! What!!! WHAT!!!
When we first saw Naked Attraction, I was screaming before the intro was finished. The entire first episode, I just kept yelling “I CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE WATCHING THIS ON NATIONAL TV, WHAT THE FUCK” over and over.
I cannot believe this show exists. I just can’t.
Imagine it: You are standing, fully clothed, in front of six booths containing the naked bodies of strangers, and the first sight you are presented with is a view of their genitals. Not their faces. Their genitals.
Then the screens in the booths go up higher– they show the naked strangers from the chest down. Then you get to see heads + whole bodies. Every time a new section of the strangers’ bodies is revealed, you eliminate someone. Finally, you’re left with just two people, and then you have to take off all your clothes and stand naked in front of them.
And then you pick a person to go on a date with.
Does this sound bad? Does this sound demeaning?
Of course it does.
But it is, bafflingly, the opposite of that. Naked Attraction is… sweet. It is hugely kind, in the mannerly way that the Great British Bake Off is kind. No one is ever, ever rude about someone’s naked body to their face. When the clothed person eliminates someone, they never – even when heavily prompted by the show’s host – explain why in detail.
Here is an example of how a person is eliminated on Naked Attraction:
HOST: [eyeing six peoples’ fully exposed lower halves] OK, Sherri, it’s time to make a choice! You’ve seen all the bums and bits – who’ll you be saying goodbye to on this round?
SHERRI: Um… gosh I don’t know, everyone’s got such a lovely bum… OK… I guess… Orange. [Person in the orange booth is eliminated; their screen raises so Sherri must look at their entire body, plus look them in the eyes.]
HOST: Why Orange, Sherri?
SHERRI [who has told us in a confession booth that she loves huge dicks above all else (and Orange has the smallest one of the contestants)]: Um… he’s a bit tall for me. Lovely chest hair, though.
Then the Orange contestant, fully naked, waves goodbye and pads off the soundstage under bright, unforgiving studio lights. We hear his bare feet slapping the floor; we see his ass cheeks wobble as he walks away.
Back in the dressing room, fully clothed, he grins at the camera and gives us a cheeky wink.
“Doesn’t know what she’s missing, does she,” he says. His name is Brian; he’s 33. He’s a bank manager in Leeds. Everyone in Britain has just seen his penis, and he is as happy as anything.
Think about this for a minute. Naked Attraction is an enormously popular syndicated TV show in the United Kingdom. If you were on it, everyone you’d ever met would know everything about how your body looks. The camera does close-ups; no filters are used. Your grandmother in Sheffield would know if you had an ingrown pubic hair! And people are DELIGHTED to be on the show!!! They volunteer for it!!!
Naked Attraction handles its contestants with care, including and especially queer and trans people. If the producers believe that viewers may be seeing anything outside of mainstream norms during a particular episode, they post a sort-of-silly-but-informative educational cartoon to help people understand what’s happening. I’ve seen educational cartoons on the show explaining top surgery, the meaning of “non-binary”, and what a Prince Albert piercing is. All of it was presented in a matter-of-fact, judgement-free way.
DID I MENTION EVERYONE IS NAKED AND THERE IS ZERO BODY-SHAMING AND IT IS SO SO SWEET????
I am rabid for this show. I love it. I think you will love it, and I want you to have it!! It’s just: You see everything, in the same way you see everything at the Korean spa.
During your first episode, you’re shocked. And then… you relax. You get used to it. There are just so many bodies. Everybody has one, and none of the people are professionally beautiful, and nothing is being hidden or airbrushed away. Scars, pubic hair, body rolls, funny tattoos, gooch piercings– it’s just bodies! These are just people inhabiting bodies!
After about two episodes, it starts to feel normal to see naked people. After three, nothing will surprise you. Someone will be eliminated and walk offstage, and you’ll watch them go, their ass jiggling with every step.
Maybe your ass jiggles, too. Maybe your thighs jiggle in a way that bothers you, or your lovely belly does, or your knees crack audibly when you walk. It doesn’t matter.
Maybe you’ll turn off the TV then, ready to be a little softer with yourself.
My homeland’s greatest export, I have to say. Nothing beats it! Although I hate how many times the phrase “neatly tucked away” gets said about vulvas lmao.
Wow, you really sold me on the show!! At first, I was skeptical and like, “Surely there’s no fat or trans people,” but you came and slapped me and said, “hell yes there are!!”
Would you say that marginalized bodies tend to be eliminated more quickly than others, though? That’s the only part that would be a bummer.