When Life Lifts Up Her Skirt

Anasyrma (noun): The gesture of lifting up one's garments to reveal one's privates as part of a religious ritual, an erotic act, or a dirty joke

“Open the kimono” is a popular corporate lingo that means to be transparent with a partner or buyer about exact numbers and facts. It means to reveal; to show the other party where you’re vulnerable, weak, and may fall apart. In other words, being naked is partially about being ugly.

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Anasyrma is the cancan dance. It’s Marilyn Monroe standing over the grate. It’s Fragonard’s The Swing. It’s the appeal of miniskirts. The ass is an animal stereotyped with stupidity, and it’s why we have borrowed its name to distinguish our backside from our head, which represents intelligence. Aphrodite, the goddess of sex, was also known as Kallipygos, the beautiful backside — she is depicted lifting her dress and looking over her shoulders at her buttocks. In a frontal society that praises progress and hates regression, we forget that there is much significance to looking backward. We seek to invent solutions, but real antidotes are not invented — they’re found, right beside the cause of the very problem they remedy.

We can regard ourselves objectively (without narcissism) and honor the desires and histories that make us who we are. When our relationship is frayed, we need to examine the backside of why it’s falling apart. When our mental state is fragile, we should look closely at what’s behind all of our troubles. Just like how the ugly backstreets make up the crotch of a beautiful city — taboo, dirty (even if just figuratively), yet somehow vital in the conception of urban legends that give the city its soul — we too conceal a shadow that we wrestle with.

Anasyrma (along with eroticism) is an odd fascination that usually belongs in the profane, but it is also involved in the sacred: