Content warning:This story discusses eating disorders and body image.
Mybulimiawas as endemic to my campus experience as theme parties and my thesis.
After graduation, I moved to New York to pursue an acting career.
Five years later, feeling burned out, I followed my boyfriend to Chicago.
I didnt want to act full time anymore, but doing shows was always how Id made friends.
Surely, I could find something that was just for fun.
I told myself I was only going to audition as a joke.
In all the years Id been working, every audition room had been filled with thinner versions of me.
But in this dingy black box theater, there were women of every size and shape.
It was exactly the kind of sorority-in-sweatpants situation Id dreamed of finding.
The actual strip itself was an improvised 16-count at the end of the combination.
As I walked to the first read-through, I planned to quit.
I couldnt be nearly naked onstage!
But the energy at the read-through was infectious.
Of course, I had to strip down eventually.
At our first fitting, the costume designer handed me pink rhinestone-covered pasties the size of quarters.
The smaller the tit, she told me, the smaller the pastie.
You wanted them to just barely cover the nipple.
She showed me how to use double-sided wig tape to keep them in place.
I winced when it was time to take them offlike ripping off a Band-Aid in the worst way.
One of the other girls laughed, saying it wouldnt be long before I could barely feel it.
Hopefully, my nipples wouldnt be the only thing that toughened up.
Because I wanted to be just like the other dancers.
On nights the heater worked in the garage, no one seemed to think anything of rehearsing naked.
It snuck up on me, too, that sense of freedom.
Blinded by the stage lights, I could barely see the audience, but it wasnt about them.
It was about me, finally realizing my body was just a body.
That everyone deserves cheers and rhinestones, me included.
Theyd taught me how to justbe.
When I got home that night, I peed glitter.
It felt hilariously fitting, equal parts glamorous and gross.
