“We shed our clothes, we move our bodies, and we face what has terrified us for so long.” — Powerful words from YourTango blogger Eden Strong, one of a growing number of sexual assault survivors who finds freedom, empowerment, and strength in the art of stripping. But these women don’t take their clothes off to please men. No. Find out how stripping helped a rape survivor.
It begins. Strong rushes into the room. She’s late. “I’m sorry,” she says. “The sitter was late, and the kids didn’t want me to leave. But I’m here.” She’s yelling this as she peels off her jacket and lowers the lights. “Are you guys ready to get sexy in here?”
Class is in session. Strong is standing in front of a mirror, clad only in a pink bra, black lace underwear, and… that’s about it. But she won’t be the only one taking her clothes off today, other women do it with her. And some of them are crying while they do.
Twice a week. Strong gathers with a group of women two times a week who she helps to “not only take their clothes off in the sexiest way possible, but also how to love their bodies.” It’s more than just strip dance. For Strong, and the women who flock to her, it’s about control and empowerment.
Shedding layers. “As we take our clothes off, we heal,” she explains. These women may be learning how to please their partners through the art of strip dancing, but Strong says the most important lesson at the end of the day is about loving themselves.
Rewind. “A little over a year ago,” Strong explains. “I stood in front of the mirror and looked at the body reflected in it. I paused for a minute, holding my breath as I gazed at myself… There I was, in front of the mirror, yet I didn’t recognize the reflection that was staring back at me."
Who is this? Strong says she knew that what she saw in the mirror was indeed her, but her body was not her own. “It hadn’t been mine since the night that he had stolen it from me — the night that I ceased to be the woman I once was”
Possession. The night that Strong was raped, she says she lost possession of her body. It was taken from her. “Every single day after that I had let him keep it, avoiding my thoughts, avoiding mirrors, avoiding me,” she says. “I didn’t want to acknowledge myself or that body of ‘mine’ that felt entirely foreign. So I stopped looking at myself.”
Touch. Even showering in the morning was difficult for Strong. She said her movements under the water were robotic as she washed a body that wasn’t her own. “If I didn’t have to look at it, I wouldn’t have to remember,” she says. “If I didn’t remember, it couldn’t hurt.”
One man enters. Another man leaves. A new man had entered Strong’s life and one night when they were spending time together, his hand grazed one of her scars. A scar she had received during her sexual assault. She apologized for “the ugliness it brought to my body,” but he told her to “get over it.”
”GET OVER IT?” He explained to Strong that “those scars weren’t evidence of what was taken away from [her], they were proof that [she] had survived.” She didn’t end up staying with that man, but she did appreciate that lesson.
A new beginning. “That night after he left, I stood in front of the mirror for the first time in as long as I could remember, and I let my clothes slip to the floor,” she says. “There I was again: my hair, my eyes, my body, my tears, my scars, me. That reflection was me. It was all of me.”
Dance. It was dance, a passion she gave up when she felt she couldn’t control her body, that saved her, liberated her. “Time passed, and I found myself running a domestic violence and sexual assault support group,” she says. “I watched women struggle to not only love themselves, but to love the bodies that they were in. How can you love who are you if you hate what body you’re in?”
Dare you to look. Strong realized the shortcomings of the support group format because some of these women were too scared to look at themselves, and no amount of talking would alleviate that fear. So she found another way! “The Sexy Survivor’s class meets twice a week now. It’s a group of women, all makes and models, none less beautiful than another, and all trauma survivors,” she says. “We shed our clothes, we move our bodies, and we face what has terrified us all for so long.”
What do they learn? “We run our hands across our scars and we shake what our mamas gave us,” she says. “We move in the ways that feel good to us — for us — and we become proud of the women that we are while regaining the confidence that was torn for our very souls.” Sexual confidence is learned, but the right way, “by connecting with who we are and being proud of what we possess.”
Strength. It's ironic when you find out Strong's full name – Eden Strong – because what she offers in her classroom is a paradise, a place for women to take back their strength, a place for women to feel strong. And in Strong's own search for strength, she has empowered women who felt small to stand tall again.
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