In 1951, after meeting and falling in love at a kibbutz-inspired Jewish summer camp in rural Maryland, my Sabba and Savta made Aliyah through the youth movement to which the camp belonged. Six decades later, a few short weeks after turning 11, I began spending my own summers at their old camp.
This was not your typical summer camp. Sure, we made friendship bracelets and played games in the pool and learned age-group-specific cheers that got stuck in our heads for days. But we also worked in the garden, learned about issues like feminism and socialism and discovered the value of collective living through shared shampoo and chocolate.
And then there was the nudity. When I talked to my friends back home about camp, they joked that it sounded like a nudist colony. Jokes like that weren’t uncommon at camp, either.
Obviously, my leftist Jewish camp in rural Maryland was not actually a nudist colony. But growing up there, I grew accustomed to being around naked girls and women from a young age. In our tents, in the cabins, in the shower. We all saw each other’s bodies and it was not a big deal. We would have shower parties together, leaving the curtains open and taking turns in the water, all the while chatting or belting out songs we’d learned at camp. Girls of different ages would be there together, rinsing shampoo out of our hair and singing off-key.
I got to see all different kinds of bodies and it felt completely normal. Whether we were 11 or 20 years old, we were all just girls living in our bodies, having a good time, laughing as we cleaned away the day’s dirt — and there was a lot of dirt to clean away at camp! Even outside of the showers, I witnessed all that was joyful and natural about existing in a girl’s body, which I did not see much during the rest of the year. Many girls at camp grew out their body hair and went braless, and I eventually started to do the same. In this camp environment, away from the pressures of mainstream society, we learned to feel freedom in our bodies. We could shave our legs if we wanted to, but there was no pressure, no fear that we would be made fun of by our friends for our legs, whether they be hairy or hairless. We could shower together, have a good time, and not feel self-conscious about our mismatched breasts.
Existing in this environment allowed me to understand what was happening to my own body as I went through puberty. I suddenly did not feel so alone or so weird. I saw what was happening to my body reflected in others around me. Knowing what was coming made me feel safe and prepared. It quelled my anxieties.
Evidently, this camp experience provided me with the tools to feel comfortable in my own skin. As I got older, these tools became increasingly essential. In the world outside of camp, I grew into an insecure teenage girl. Exposed to competition, slut-shaming and diet culture, I, like so many women and girls, struggled to love my body and tried to change it. But luckily, I had a secret weapon. June would come around, and I would go off to camp. For the summer, I would feel confident in my body. I would stop obsessing. I would take showers with my friends and I would feel comfortable, unencumbered by shame and insecurity. During those summers, I remembered what it was like to feel free and at home in my body. In showering with my friends, I remembered that we all looked different. I didn’t have to look a certain way to be accepted, or even to be beautiful. I could forget the pressures of the outside world and just laugh with my friends until our faces grew sore and fall asleep easily at the end of each day.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t live in this easy joy forever. The dreaded last day of camp would come. I would go home and take my first solo shower in weeks. It would get me cleaner than any camp shower but it was lonely and quiet. I would go back to school. The external pressures would inevitably seep back in.
And yet, even at the height of my insecurity, the way I felt during the summers never wore off altogether. Maybe this sounds contradictory, but even when I struggled to love my body, something of that summertime confidence stuck around and kept me grounded. It prevented me from getting entirely lost in my insecurities, from giving in to them too much. This is not to say that I did not struggle, but my camp experience gave me the tools to mitigate the insecurities, to make them more manageable.
Now, at 25, it has been a few years since I’ve had a proper shower party. And yet, those experiences shaped my relationship with nudity and with my body during such formative years, and that does not go away. To this day, new friends get used to seeing me naked fairly quickly, and some of them have jokingly referred to me as “the naked friend.” They know me as confident and shameless. I hope some of that rubs off on the friends in my life who did not grow up having shower parties at camp.
While I cannot say that I am completely confident all the time, I do feel comfortable and at home in my body, with or without clothes on. It feels like my own. As much as I would love to go back to camp and shower with my best friends right now, I don’t need to be in that environment in order to feel confident. Far away from rural Maryland and the group shower setting, those experiences remain with me, etched deep below my skin. Years later and living on the other side of the world, those memories retain their power. Not that I am consciously thinking about them most of the time, but the effects of those experiences outlast the wet hair, the memories of specific conversations or the lyrics to the songs we belted in the shower. At 25, living a ten-hour flight away from Maryland, I feel at least as comfortable in my body as I did during those summers. I feel like myself. And that feels like a special kind of camp magic.
Welcome to Hey Alma’s 2024 Camp Week! We’re celebrating the unique experience that is Jewish summer camp. Check back in all week long for personal essays, pop culture moments and great memes that encapsulate Jewish summer camp.
