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Overheard…
by Kristen Bartus, Pacific Sun

It's amazing how quickly women bond when they start taking their clothes off.

I discovered that little nugget last Thursday night when I attended "The Sacred Art of the Striptease." And thank goodness for that quick camaraderie because it's a big part of what made the evening fun.

When I first heard about the class, I thought it would be a hoot. Getting to frolic about in my skivvies as work—does it get much better? But as the date drew closer, I began to dread it. While I absolutely adore dancing, I shrink from everything New Agey or hippie dippy. I wanted the stripping without the sacredness.

Lucky for me, instructor Diane Greenberg (a Novato massage therapist who previously worked as a stripper) didn't focus too much on the spiritual aspects. After a few brief words about our "yonis" being sacred temples and how the closed-off room was a safe place for us to express ourselves, she got down to the good stuff.

Greenberg put on some sassy music and started showing off her moves. She demonstrated to the 12 of us—a variety of body types who ranged in age from about 20-60—that pulling off a successful striptease is about feeling confident, feeling sexy and simply letting your body go. It's more about the attitude than the actual moves. Within minutes, she had us all trying out her movements—running our fingers through our hair, rubbing our hips and posing on the floor. We weren't so much learning hard and fast choreography as getting ideas and then improvising.

Most of us felt a little bit self-conscious, but there was also safety in numbers. And by jumping right into the striptease, Greenberg didn't give us a chance to get too nervous. Once we got warmed up, we started to forget about everybody else and just let our bodies react to the mood of the music.

After we finished our warm-up routine, it was time for each of us to strut our stuff in front of the class. Greenberg, a self-proclaimed exhibitionist, took the stage first. Skill-fully executing many of the moves she had just shown us, Greenberg stripped her way down to her birthday suit. Oddly enough, this didn't seem strange, even though we had only met her an hour before.

The rest of us, however, were not quite as eager to do our thing. Greenberg was perfectly understanding. She told us that we should do only what we were comfortable with. We could dance with a partner, we could dance with her, we could take it all off, we could leave everything on or we could choose not to do anything at all. Just coming to the class was a big enough step.

At that point, I knew I wouldn't be skipping out on class early as I had planned. We were all entering into a strange and intimidating new territory and it only seemed right to support each other through it.

Almost all of the ladies eventually found their way to center stage that night. Some neared "fully monty" status and others, like me, merely strutted down to camisoles. Every one of us, however, looked truly sexy. Thanks to lots of compliments and encouraging words from our compadres, we "embraced our bodies as they were" and had a blast doing it. It was like an educational bachelorette party, but not too touchy feely.

Greenberg holds the classes once a month for both men and women. "I experienced it like the ultimate costume party," she says of stripping. "I could put on a costume and I put on a persona just because I wanted to. I came away with the feeling that, for me, stripping is an expression of self-love. What I want people to get out of the experience is that they are just right, right now."

For information on call 415 898-7510 or email Diane.

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