Diet Coke and practising body neutrality at the nude beach

a postcard from Greece x

To: My darling subscribers
Address: you@yourinbox.com
From: Me, two weeks ago when I bought this postcard in Greece.

Can we pretend that I sent this to you in the mail with a stamp and everything? I want you to think of the contents of this newsletter as a postcard I mailed to you in my best cursive handwriting & with my favourite fountain pen.

yes this is an actual postcard I’m going to send to someone in the mail

💋
x Aurelia

Diet Coke and practising body neutrality at the nude beach

Is that one big or small?
Tamara nudges me to look up from my book and at a middle-aged man’s penis. He nods hello in our direction, wearing nothing but jelly sandals and a leathery European tan. We’re at Agia Anna nude beach in Naxos, topless, carefree and the youngest we’ll ever be. We’ve picked a flat spot on the rocks, tucked away and out of sight from the sandy part of the beach where about a dozen nude retirees are sun tanning. Every now and then, maybe once an hour, someone walks past our spot to explore the cliffs and go for a skinny dip in the crystal clear Aegean. We stopped by a small supermarket on the way to grab the essentials for a morning at the beach:

1.5l of mineral water
a pink souvenir lighter saying “I ❤️ Naxos”
two ripe peaches
two diet lemon flavoured diet cokes (why don’t they sell these in Australia?)

I sit up and look at the wet silhouette my body has left on my striped beach towel. The man’s leathery ass cheeks disappear in the distance. A sailboat glides by. The waves gently swish the seaweed on the rocks around and it looks a bit like public hair.

On our first day on the island we discover that we are staying within walking distance of a nude beach. We agree that we should come here every day, and for the next five days, we do. Since our checked luggage is delayed by two days and outfit options are limited, this plan ends up working perfectly. We deem the morning sun most gentle for our delicate, untanned skin so we got up early, lather each other in SPF 50 and head to that flat, slightly secluded spot on the rocks. At lunchtime we’ll pack our beach bag and walk back to the next beach over where bathing suits are mandatory and two sun beds with an umbrella can be rented for 15 Euros.
Hmm, I say, trying to conjure penises of relationships past. I’m not sure how to tell anymore. I’ve got more experience dating men than Tamara, but I’m more focussed on the single bead of sweat dripping down from the nape of my wife’s neck than the anatomy of the people around us.
He had a hip replacement scar, she says.
How do you know that?
Cause dad had one. He had two, actually. Both sides.
How does it work?
They make a cut and just flip your leg back over your shoulder and then they lob off the top of your femur and replace that with titanium and then drill into your pelvis to make a new socket and then you’re good as new.
Wow. Who wouldn’t want to be nude at the beach after getting a whole new lease on your hips?

When I was younger I thought nude beaches were just a place for old pervs and exhibitionists to get off and cruise. Maybe because that’s how nude beaches were portrayed in mainstream media, or maybe because I was raised in a strict Christian household. I can’t tell if any of the people around us are pervs by looking at them, and I can’t detect any cruising. But I wouldn’t mind either way. Everyone at Agia Anna nude beach just seems happy to be basking in the Greek sunshine at 10am on a random Tuesday.

Before we left on this trip I foolishly spent $200 on an ill fitting polka dot bikini that I think makes me look like I have chicken pox. It was an online impulse buy, no try ons, no returns. My boobs spill over the balconette bra (a bit slutty) but the bottoms are almost too modest with lots of coverage and a high waist (too conservative). I put on the polka dot bikini, even though I don’t love the way it fits, because it was too expensive not wear. This morning when I put it on I tell Tamara that I think it makes me look fat. She says stop being stupid, I love your body so much, you’re out of your mind saying this, etc. etc. In this sapphic relationship we take turns annoying the other by saying “I feel fat” because we’ve both lived through eating disorders and still deal with the lingering body dysmorphia that rears its stubborn head in regular intervals but especially before our periods. There’s nothing wrong with being fat, and I know that. But my mum was fat and never not on some sort of diet so I absorbed the lie that everything in life changes for the better if you’re skinny when my brain was still a sponge. I’ve spent the better part of my twenties unlearning ideals of thinness and health I was raised on. I still remember when the body positivity movement first took off and the idea that you could love your body in whatever state it’s in became somewhat mainstream, and I was sad that mum never got to experience this cultural shift (which lasted only briefly and swung back the other way with a vengeance but I won’t get into that too much now). I get mad when I look at pictures of her and realise that she would have worn a size 16-18, which is the average size for women in Australia.

Diet coke in hand I slide off the straps of my top and put on an extra large hat to compensate for the fabric I’ve just taken off. This holiday, I’m going to practice body body neutrality. Body neutrality is a concept I learned about in an Instagram post or TikTok last year. Apparently I could simply think of my body as the vessel that carries me through life instead of feeling positive about my body — which I always thought sounded lowkey fake and like a lot of effort because positivity doesn’t come naturally to me. Also, if I’m being completely honest, I don’t always love love my body. I doubt that most people who say they do, actually do. I noticed that I’d get into this cycle where I would first feel bad about my body and then feel bad about feeling bad about my body. Moving my goalpost from forced positivity to neutrality feels good, and maybe even a little boring. Boring in a good way. Girl boss era self-love body positivity isn’t sustainable for me and that’s okay. I’ve gotten to a point where I’m just trying to exist in my body without judgement.

Why ruin a perfectly good beach day just because my body doesn’t fit the size I was before my frontal lobe developed?
It’s time to take off that ill-fitting, expensive, non-refundable bikini and just float.