First off, I want to honor what I think is the real question: what movies feature non-surgically altered women? I 100% support people speaking their desires and asking for what they want. I 100% recognize that there are plenty of people who prefer to see women in porn without breast implants, or with pubic hair, or whatever. That’s great and there are plenty of movies for folks with those preferences.

Second, I think it’s totally fine to question/critique/discuss how limited and limiting definitions of beauty trap all of us. That-which-is-considered-attractive™ causes untold harm to everyone, especially women who try to force themselves into a mold that doesn’t fit. Given that pretty much every image we see in the media these days has been digitally altered, I really value the process of seeing past the packaging and discovering ways to not let it skew our self-perceptions. Personally, I find that not reading magazines full of unrealistic or literally impossible photos has done wonders for my ability to perceive the beauty that exists in every person I see. I highly recommend trying it, although your mileage may vary.

At the same time, what bugs me about the “real bodies” questions is that everyone’s body is a “real body”. There’s no such thing as a fake body- there’s only different degrees of body modification and we all do it.

Think you don’t have any body modifications? Do you have any piercings (yes, ear piercings count!) How about tattoos? Pins or rods in your skeleton to help you heal after an injury? Do you shave, wax, or tweeze any hair anywhere on your body? How about dyeing or cutting your hair? That’s a modification, too. Do you wear makeup? Eyeglasses or contact lenses? Have you ever had a mole removed? Those are all body modifications. And every body that I’ve ever seen has been modified to one degree or another.

Of course, some of them are temporary and others are more or less permanent. Some are easy to do and others require some help, such as those that require surgery. Some of them are for cosmetic reasons, others for medical reasons, and still others for both (such as glasses, which may be medically necessary but the frames are chosen in order to look good). And some of them fit within a given culture’s definition of acceptable body modifications and others don’t.

In all of this, whatever the reason for a particular modification, whether it’s to look a certain way, to help your body after an injury, or to make it easier to move through the world, none of them makes your body “fake.” Every body is a real body.

Even so, I do think that it’s worth exploring why some people choose to modify their bodies in the way that they do. The cultural pressure that we all face to look a certain way weighs on all of us. And in particular, the pressure that most women in US culture face to fit a particular mold has devastating consequences. So yes, we can question and challenge that. But once we start labeling some people as having “fake bodies”, we deny them their full humanity and that is a very steep, very slippery slope. Because that often leads to ascribing moral judgments to people because of how we judge their bodies. And in my experience, that quickly ends up in reinforcing the either/or, good/bad model that causes so much harm.

If we want to be sex-positive, then we need to honor both the real bodies that we each have AND the fact that we are each attracted to different types of bodies. We need to have room to question the messages that we receive about bodies AND honor each person’s autonomy to make  decisions about their own. And we need to stop using words like “fake” when we talk about very real, very human bodies,

I broke into a sweat as I read the invitation to my first “stripping workshop.” Not only was I going to have to take off my clothes, I had to do it in a room full of relative strangers, and I didn’t even get to choose my own music, get buzzed off of a few cocktails beforehand, or have any guarantee that I would be stripping for people who actually wanted to sleep with me.

It’s not that I wasn’t excited, or hadn’t dreamt of the day I could learn to strip from a professional; I often fantasized about giving a lap dance to my lover or wannabe lover. But fantasies were fantasies, and in my fantasies I never got my shirt caught on my head as I tried to take it off, I never accidentally tripped while trying an acrobatic move, and I never ran the risk of having the strippee laugh at my attempts to be hot and desirable.

Not to mention, the workshop would be in a room full of twelve other queer women who likely also fantasized about being femme fatale sex machines with enough sex appeal to make every woman in the room seize with ecstasy.

I was intimidated.

Lucky for me, everyone else at the workshop was too.

The fun began as the sun set over Seattle’s skyline, with streaks of orange, yellow and purple competing for center stage with the mountain ranges and cityscape.

We all sat in a circle, tentatively nibbling on cookies and drinking juice, yanking down our skirts that were all of a sudden feeling much too short, and adjusting the fishnet stockings we thought fell into the category of “slut gear.”

Suddenly a knock pounded on the door.

“That’s MAX,” said our hostess Sam, as she adjusted her breasts and fluffed her armpit hair. “She said we can all practice our lap dances on her at the end if we want to,” Sam continued as the eyes of the women around the room started to pop out of their respective heads.

And the eyes popped further when Max walked into the room.

We had all seen her before. We’d seen her dancing in the cages at the annual pride events. We’d seen her pants fall around her hips to reveal her tight, boy cut underwear with the words “Queer” written on her ass as she stripped on stage. We’d seen her in her too-tight A-line tank tops as she strutted down the streets of Seattle. We’d seen her riding on the back of a motorcycle during dykes on bikes. And now, we were seeing her in Sam’s living room.

It wasn’t the same kind of beauty she showed on stage– brassy, tough, and in your face. There was no spiky, gelled hair, no dark eye makeup or lipstick, and no look on her face that said “I own this room and everyone in it.” That night she was softer, she was more subtle, she was…real.

“I’m feeling really nervous about teaching this workshop,” she said. “I thought about it on the entire ride over here. I feel like I don’t know what I am doing enough to teach a class on this, even though I have been dancing for seven years,” she said as she looked down at her hands and played with her fingers.

“But that’s my point. None of us feels like we know what we are doing, because there is no formula. I am here to show you that EVERYONE can be sexy, and it’s just about getting in the zone, channeling what your own individuality, and expressing what is sexy to YOU. People who agree with your vision of sexiness will agree. It’s not about being a certain size, or having a formula. Being alive is sexy. Being passionate is sexy. Having confidence is sexy. So, being passionately alive is the sexiest thing of all.”

No formula. No worksheets on how to push your ass up at the right angle, or give the perfect come hither look, or how to perfectly slither across the floor. Just being real, channeling your individuality, and not being afraid to own it. It seemed too simple, and too good to be true.

It was, in some ways. She definitely provided a fair share of technical advice, but for most of the workshop, we talked about what was holding us back, and what kept us from feeling like stripping was something we could do.

Most people said they feared not being found sexy by the people they were trying to seduce. Some people said they didn’t think their bodies would look right: too fat, too skinny, too flat chested, too much ass. Others said they were afraid of being clumsy, running out of dance ideas, or falling on their faces. Suddenly we were coming face to face with years of social programming on what is sexy, and what is not.

With the help of Max and the other brilliant women in the room, I realized that we all have to take the creation of a new culture into our own hands – a culture that encourages difference and diversity, tiny boobs, big booty, freckly face and all.

She did of course, give up plenty of technical advice.

According to our coach and stripper of seven years, eye contact and facial expressions are key. You are performing, and your eyes and your face are telling your story. If you want the tone to be playful, you need to show it in your face. If you want it to be seductive and alluring, or rough and passionate, you need to show that too.

Just like anything else, practice makes perfect. Dancing and stripping takes strength, some coordination, and as mentioned before, performance skills, but most of all, willingness to take risks and challenge yourself. The technical part is tiny if you can master that.

Turns out the real secret to giving a killer strip tease is channeling what feels most sexy to you, and not being afraid to wear it (Or to take it off).