Unpopular Opinions On Hot Weather

And medium popular opinions on nudity. Plus, A BIG SALE.

A Note for You, If You Are Having A Hard Day

My roommate for my freshman and sophomore year of college was iconic; I can’t remember a single thing about her I disliked. I dislike that we aren’t still in touch, but that is almost certainly owing to my own inherent flaws (both as a Person Who Fails To Keep In Touch and as a Former Roommate), and having nothing to do with her. She is (iconically) not on social media, and not in a way you could possibly dislike. She’s never been on it, and she’s never been judgmental about it, either. As far as I can tell, she’s just not that interested in it. I’m preambling like this to excuse myself for not using her real name (it’s such a good name, too), because I can’t ask her permission for sharing this story, as I don’t have her contact information anymore. Let’s call her Dorothy, which is such a hideous departure from her actual name that it’s almost cruel. But anyway, Dorothy had the top bunk, and I had the bottom one, and sometimes — really, often — we talked before bed, which was just lovely.

This was how I learned that she liked to eat in our room, naked.

College aged Sophie, in a thrift shop.

“Does it bother you that I have naked picnics in here?” She asked me. I remember her question, and not how I answered it, although I'm sure that I told her I was totally fine with it, since I was, and since I am a people-pleaser who would never tell anyone that anything they did bothered me — at least not in this type of context.

She explained that she liked to unfold a blanket in the middle of our dorm room floor when there was a sun splotch there. Then, she’d get naked, and eat peanut butter, apples, cheese, and crackers on the blanket. She found that she enjoyed the pleasure of food much more when she was naked on a blanket than she did any other way. Something about not having to hide anything.

Dorothy was not, AT ALL, a sex pot. (What even is one? I have no problem with sex pots. I love them. Without knowing what one is, I still know that I love them. But Dorothy was not one.) She had never been kissed when we met, so we had a kissing party in order to get her kissed. She asked if any of the people at the kissing party would be willing to kiss her upside down, like in Spiderman. One boy did. Now they are married. This detail feels both relevant and irrelevant to what I’m trying to get at, which is about being naked.

I didn’t know anything about being naked until I met Dorothy. Until I met Dorothy, I believed that being naked was a test you were constantly studying for; a performance you were constantly practicing for; a lifelong trial for which evidence was constantly being accumulated. It had not occurred to me that being naked could be something you would do while eating on a blanket in your bedroom, because it felt good. 

The first illustrated essay I ever wrote for Jezebel was about drawing myself naked. For some reason, all the images are gone forever, lost to time. You’ll have to settle for this actual photo of me in sixth grade in a cool two piece underwear suit.

But I didn’t try it. I didn’t try being naked for a long, long time. Because even though Dorothy had said that you could be naked voluntarily and for personal pleasure, it was hard to totally believe her; and the stakes felt high. What if she was wrong? What if I got naked, sat on the floor on a blanket with a cracker, and then a whole slew of my crushes all opened the door at once, took one look at me, and then slammed the door right back in my face, in communal rejection? WHAT THEN, DOROTHY?

What it took for me to finally try on being naked was heat. Not dry heat, like we had in Portland in the 1990s. (Climate change has really amped up the Portland heat, I’ve heard. 1990s Portland heat was intense, but it wasn’t THAT bad.) I needed wet, swampy, step-outside-and-you-are-a-sopping-pile-of-laundry, Deep South humidity. I needed to experience a full face of makeup slide off my full face in the twelve seconds between my front door and my Volvo. I needed to witness nature laugh uproariously at the idea that I, a human, could have any control in trying to cover any part of my body up in the summer and stay remotely comfortable.

I get why people hate this weather. (Besides that it’s dangerous, and it’s getting worse, because: climate change.) There is no controlling one’s body in it! Your only options in this kind of heat, really, are: (1) If you’re lucky, and you have access to water: get in some water. (2) Slow waaaaay the hell down. And (3) Get as close to naked as you can.

In New Orleans, I learned how to be naked. Our house was drafty and didn’t have central air conditioning: I rubbed lemon balm and eucalyptus oil all over myself (to deter mosquitoes) and lay on my bed and let fans blow on me as much as I could. I loved going for runs so that sweat would pour down my body; then I’d come home, get naked, drink water like a toddler so it was glogging all over me, and take a cold shower. Then I’d stay naked, and tired, and eat ice cubes and salads and flowers. Everyone moved slowly when it was that hot. I had many, many, many dates that were just riding slow bikes to the lake to get as naked as was legal and then get in for as long as we could stand. 

This is how I learned to feel neutral about my body. Initially, I wrote the sentence, “This is how I learned to love my body,” and friend, that’s simply not true. But the heat was good for asking me to uncover it. And then there it was: an aesthetically and morally neutral-to-me thing, not scary or shameful, but comfortable now that it wasn’t all bound down by underwear elastic and non-breathable fabric.

And in the heat, you have to forget about makeup, because you’re going to sweat, and hopefully, you’re going to get wet. There’s no use covering anything up. Your body gets to just be.

So I came to love the heat. I came to crave days like this, where people move only when they need to move, where everyone is sweating, where we go in the lake, where we chew on ice, where my chickens dig holes in the dirt and turn upside down in them, where we are thankful for breeze, where we remember to drink enough water, where no one has on makeup, where we’re careful with how we touch each other — and where in a lot of houses, on a lot of floors, a lot of people are secretly naked, because it feels better to be naked. And maybe they’ll eat dinner like that. And maybe they’ll realize the food tastes better, and it’s not just because it’s too hot to wear clothes; it’s something about not having to hide anything.

If you hate the heat, I hope you find some respite soon. If you love it, I hope you enjoy what we have left. Either way, stay safe out there. Hold all your truths at once. 

Love,

Sophie

Parenting Paragraph

We had two major revelations in the past week, and they both have to do with T’s preference for heat, though not the kind listed above. The first: T had been waking up VERY EARLY (like 5) for a few weeks, and I suggested that maybe we let her wear pants. We put her in oversized shirts every night because it’s so hot up here, and it’s so hot outside, and I, her mother, love to be as close to naked as possible and can think of nothing worse than having pants on while sleeping. But we put pants on her for bedtime, and she immediately started sleeping two extra hours per night. PANTS. Every parent we’ve shared this with has been like, “YEAH. Everyone puts PANTS on their child when they put them to sleep.” I’m sorry, young T. We should have put you in pants much sooner. I mean, she has like, a bunch of mosquito bites on her legs, too! I wouldn’t want to have pants on while sleeping with MOSQUITO BITES UNDER THEM!?!?!? But… anyway, pants.

The other revelation is soup. T. Loves. Soup. She loves it. Last night Luke made the blandest soup ever, because I have food poisoning. He stuck a bunch of horrible vegetables in it that toddlers hate, and barely salted it, because I was just trying to get better. Ginger, miso, collards, carrots, broccoli… it was a nightmare for a child. But T ate every part of the soup. The whole bowl. Slurping up whole chunks of collards with EXCITEMENT. GLEE, even. This isn’t the first time this has happened: she has eaten pretty much every soup we’ve given her. She likes hot food. She still won’t drink cold (soy)milk, even on a hot day. This child loves her liquids hot, and she loves hot liquid. I know I’m not supposed to be happy about her eating habits, but she is so hardcore in a carbs phase right now that watching her eat straight-up leafy greens made me feel like I’d sold a book? I tried not to show her how pleased I was, but I am not a good poker player. I WAS PLEASED. Anyway, soup.

Pants and soup. 

This Week In Sophie

We had a cartoon in last week’s New Yorker, and it got posted to The New Yorker’s Instagram, which is always a thrill!

I have a new job as the Editorial Adviser of F Newsmagazine (SAIC’s student newspaper). I’m really excited about this position; I love F, and I’m thrilled to be working with this team and in this capacity. 

Please consider joining the paid tier of this newsletter! There’s even a tier where you get prints in the mail every two months — I just put a huge giant stack on envelopes in the mail YESTERDAY for that tier of readers, and it was very fun and exciting. Since it is hot today, I’m going to offer a discount code for 33 percent off all paid subscriptions! Please consider supporting this work. Last week, paid subscribers put together a list of all our most essential products — like, things we always keep on hand. I alphabetized the list and sent it back out, and I printed it to keep on my fridge, because I think it’s very handy. We also have a book club and you’ll get two more newsletters per week. This year I’m also launching a drawing workshop series, which will be free for paid subscribers. Even if you can’t pay right now, subscribing for free makes a huge difference, as does forwarding these emails to friends and family! Thank you so much for all the ways you support me. I appreciate it more than I am ever really able to communicate to you.