Nude Scene

by Ria Dhingra

The air today felt like Navy Pier. Not being there, but like the very Pier itself: unpredictable winds at underwhelming speeds, scented like churros, cigarettes, and sellable sin, misty fog mimicking the after-shadow of fireworks over the Lake. The hum of the atmosphere ringing in my ears, reverberating Disturbia by Rihanna and early 2000’s Fall Out Boy.

I like Navy Pier. Adore it, even— despite it being a tourist trap. For I’m twenty and at the age where I am now done liking what I believe I am supposed to like, what others tell me to like.

So, I decided, last night, I do not like that one movie the critics lauded for its raw portrayal of the teenage experience. The one about the girl from San Francisco, with the actress so far removed from her teens, her story could never really be raw. Never like standing outside at the funeral of your own youth and feeling like you are seven again, at Navy Pier, eyes widening at fireworks and the limitless potential laid out in front of you.

Today, I want to write a movie about a girl from the suburbs of Milwaukee, because Hollywood should care more about kids from the Midwest. Kids divorced from reality, kids longing to get “out,” not those complaining about being “in.” It’s about my best friend. And she’s lovely and intelligent and possesses all the qualities that make her just as deserving to be the lead of the sort of movies they make about a girl from San Francisco. She’s also a woman of color with pink hair. Not that it should matter. But it does matter. Doesn’t it? It matters enough—that, if made, our movie will be an excellent candidate for awards season, beating out all the girls from San Francisco and Boston and Napa Valley.

I have decided I like representation not because of politics, artistic diversity, or even because it's 2022, but because—last night—I witnessed a woman who looks like me, like my best friend, strip down to show nothing but herself on TV. It was not done in a way that was taking back the power or even empowering. It was not tasteless or humiliating. It was real. The woman on TV felt shame and guilt and pride and love and all the things Brown women who look like us feel when it comes to our nakedness: when it comes to our own bodies.

Because, for us, that sort of vulnerability is beyond dangerous. That nakedness.

It’s undoing careful stitches put in place by our mothers and grandmothers. It’s allowing blood to spill out. It’s saying: Here, look at me, I’m wounded. It’s demanding: Love me anyways. That’s true nakedness. It’s drunk texts without a censor, pictures without a filter, speaking mother tongues to our parents while on the phone in public elevators, it’s my best friend from Milwaukee calling me at 3am and saying: I’m sorry I’m not as happy as I should be. That’s real life.

I’m twenty and never have I been fully naked. The closest I came was when I was alone, lost, at Navy Pier. At age seven, I was shrieking both with unadulterated joy and fear as the fireworks first went off. Back then, I was still brave enough to like what nakedness had to offer, even when the sensations were uncomfortable up close.

My movie, our movie, will end with nakedness, but not nudity. With the girl from Milwaukee standing in Navy Pier—in broad daylight, witnessing the afterimage of the night before, the tourist trap of a city, herself, myself, ourselves, finally undressed.