Let's Get Naked: Sheila Kelley at TEDxAmericanRiviera

There exists in every woman an Erotic Creature. When Sheila Kelley discovered this sleeping giant, her life changed irrevocably. She had stumbled upon what women were missing and launched it into a worldwide sensation, ushering in the 4th wave of feminism by teaching women to own their sexuality. Let's Get Naked is about exposing the truth and the Erotic Creature, both of which rest just beneath the surface.

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(Music)

(Applause)

Thank you.

Wow, that was fun.

Ok, let's get naked!
(Laughter)

Ready, set, strip!

No, teasing, I'm joking!

The kind of naked that I'm referring to

is the naked that makes you
squirm on the inside.

It's naked of the heart.

Naked to the soul.
Naked to the truth,

which is what I want to share
with you today as the truth

about men, women
and the Erotic Creature.

But it's going to require some stripping
on both of our parts.

I need you to strip away
all those false pretenses

as ideas you have about the female body

and I need you to strip your minds wide open.

So this is my laboratory

where I've spent the last 12 years
guiding women

toward awakening their
feminine body movement

which awakens their feminine nature

which awakens what I call
their Erotic Creature.

Every woman on the planet
has an Erotic Creature.

She's the primal feminine body.

She's the wild, untamed,
sexual alter ego

that lives deep within.

Very often she's buried
under furrowed brows,

tensed frozen bodies,
judgmental thoughts and fear,

but she is there.

And when you awaken her

and you integrate her into your being,

it sends you into a place of wholeness

and this wholeness
of the feminine is capable

of elevating every living creature
within its reach.

Let's talk for one second
about -- oh, there it is,

the Erotic Creature --
the Unthinkable.

What if I tell you that the pole
that I was just dancing on

is a symbol for the next and fourth wave

of the feminist movement?

I know, right!?

The personal reclamation of the female body
and the sexuality within.

It's crazy, right?

A stripper pole representing
the feminist movement --

there's got to be some people
rolling over in their graves! Heros of mine!

But I'm going to tell you
about this wild journey

I took over the last 23 years
that brought me

to this place of clarity and conviction.

I'll set the scene for you.

1989, La Cienega Boulevard
Star Strip Gentleman's Club.

The first time I went into a strip club

I was a young actress,
I was helping a friend with a writing project

and I was very unhappy
that I had to go on to this place

that I felt subjugated and objectified women.

But once inside I fell in love with

the movement of some of the dancers,

Their bodies undulated and they teased

and they were provocative and sexual,
and so feminine.

And I was desperate to learn how to do it.

But I didn't want to be
a professional stripper.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!

What I did is

I wrote-produced a film

where I actually got to play a stripper.

And in the movie I needed to create a character

who lived and moved through her sexuality.

And I thought this is going to be fun.

So I, first day of rehearsal, put on this outfit

that I thought would communicate

my sexy stripper-self into the world,

please don't laugh or you can laugh!
(Laughter)

So I got on stage in this outfit

and the music comes on
and my body just goes:

uh-uh -- uh-uh -- Ain't moving!
And she froze!

Now I was a dance major,
New York University,

I'm a professionally trained ballerina,

I should know how to do this.

But my body was like,
"I am not having anything of it!"

And I started to force her to kind of --

bop from side to side,

trying to be really sexy,
it was so pathetic,

it was totally not sexy!

And what I was realizing is that

nowhere in my being did I know

how to embody my sexuality
in my everyday life.

It wasn't that I didn't have sexuality.
I for myself though it was fine.

It was bringing my sexuality
into my everyday life.

I was faltering at being overtly feminine,
like -- wow,

the body, which is a brilliantly
intuitive creature, speaks.

And what my body was saying is:

"You can clearly see,
is you have no idea who I am."

And she was completely right.

So I knew something was missing
inside of me.

I spent the next 4 months,
as we developed the film,

hunting for who I was
as a sexually embodied creature.

I went to the strip clubs,
I met dancers,

I dissected the movement
and I learned it,

and what I found inside of myself
I did not expect.

I found its dark, soulful,
emotional sexuality

that gave me a confidence
in my body and my femininity

that I'd never had before.

What awoke in me
was my Erotic Creature.

All this is amazing,
but it gets so much better,

because not only did I awaken
that side of myself

but this side of myself
started changing everything

on the home front.

My marriage went from
"Eh" to "Oh my God!"

It's stayed there for 23 years.

I became a happier mother to my children,

I became a more complete woman
on to myself.

And I had to share this with other women.

I was like, 'You've got -- this is it,

this is the Holy Grail of empowerment!'

and they're like, 'Ok.'

I developed this movement called

'S Factor,' and I started teaching it

to fellow pre-school moms
and women in the neighbourhood

and they too started releasing their sexuality

into their everyday lives
and into their bodies and --

the same changes that I'd had in my life

they were having in theirs.

Happier relationships,
happier children,

happier women,
it caught on like wild fire.

The next thing I know I am on Oprah's.

We become --
our effort becomes international news.

I'm inundated with e-mails
from all over the globe.

Apparently, the desire to be whole --

it crosses not only geographic boundaries

but political and cultural boundaries as well.

I had tapped in a world-wide artery

of women all missing
the same something I had been missing.

The Erotic creature was asleep globally.
But how was that possible?

I couldn't understand
how could the woman from Saudi Arabia,

the woman from Beijing, the woman
from Buenos Aires and me in Los Angeles,

how could we all be missing the same thing?
I needed to understand this.

And I call it the 'Yin effect.'

Think of each person, male or female,
having within the potential

of Yin-feminine and Yang-masculine energy,

we live in a world that cuts out
a piece of Yin in all of us.

And if you jump into that Yin,
you'll see that

it's the physicality and sexuality
of the feminine body that's shut down.

And the more women I talked to,
the more I learned.

And what I learned is that
the shutting down of the Yin

starts with the first offense.

The first offense is
the first time anyone or anything

brings negative attention,
judgment or shame to your body.

So my first offense happened
when I was 7

and this is the picture of what
a 7-year-old little girl's body looks like

just for you to refer to throughout the story --
this is my daughter.

I was hanging out with my best friends,
Brian and Donald Doyle,

they were 7 and 8 respectively,
we were hanging out

in the backyard, it was summer,
it was really hot,

we were playing,
we decided to take a break

and we went to cool down,
so we all took our tops off and

we laid back in the grass, arms over the head,
it was an awesome day,

the air was cooling my chest,

it was a beautiful, innocent day.

And all of a sudden the upstairs window
of their house was flying open

and Mrs Doyle stuck her head out

and she screamed
in the most piercing voice,

'Sheila Kelley! You naughty little girl!

You put your top on immediately, you ought
to be ashamed of yourself and go home.'

My shoulders started
to pinch up towards my ears,

my chest caved-in
with this new-found emotion of shame,

I couldn't breathe,
it was the moment I began

to separate from my female body.

Mrs hadn't yelled at her boys
but she yelled at me

but we did the same thing.

What I learned that day is
it's safe and good

to be in a male body,
and it's not safe,

it's dangerous
to be in a female body.

Mrs Doyle didn't hate me,

she was trying to curb
a sexuality that scared her,

that didn't even exist yet.

She thought she had
the right to tell me what

I could and couldn't do with my body.

These kind of stories play out
every single day all over the globe.

We are stealing the light and the life

from these creatures,
these beautiful feminine creatures.

Every single woman you know

has had a first offense,
whether she's aware of it or not.

And she's had subsequent offenses
every day of her life, offenses like

'keep your knees together',
'don't move like that',

'she's a slut',
'you look like a whore'.

These offenses eat away
at the emotional boundary

and the ego of the body
until you do not know

where your body begins
and where your body ends.

You think anyone, anytime,
anywhere can tell you

what you can
and cannot do in your body

and the only choice you have
is to shut it down.

So let's understand these offenses
a little better

'cause they're tricky
and you can't always tell they're offenses.

And there's a spectrum of them
and they're global

and they range in noticeability.

If some of these pictures are difficult --
please avert your eyes.

They range from barbaric,
such as the stoning to death of a woman

who expresses her sexuality.

Or brutal, the creating
of a human chastity belt made of flash.

Or overt, the mandatory veiling
of the female body.

To subtle controls,
things like offensive advertising

that eats away
your integrity of your body.

To subliminal controls,
the infantile global uproar

over a pair of royal nipples.

Now really, honestly, I just don't know
which pair of nipples were so offensive!

But that's another talk!

So I wanna switch
the table on you for a second.

Do you know
who I find incredibly attractive

and I think if I saw his bare nipples

I would be so sexually aroused
that I couldn't control myself?

Daniel Craig.
I don't even look over there

because -- I kind of think Daniel Craig
should cover his nipples, too!

(Laughter) (Applause)

I know, I know,
it's absurd, but is it?

We are laughing at this
but we are doing this to the female body.

Globally.

What each and every one of these
offenses have in common

is the desire -- their end-goal is to control

and limit the female body and sexuality,

to control the clitoris,
to control the vagina,

to control the uterus,
to control all of it.

We don't want to think
that atrocities like acid-burnings

for turning down a marriage proposal

are related to atrocities like

domestic abuse for turning down
a marriage proposal.

But as you can see
they're the exact same thing

they're just using different tactics of control

in different degrees.

And when you hear repeatedly

that your body is obscene or indecent

you begin to internalize it,
and you start to self-control

and you start to try and hide your body,

you try and hide your sexuality
in unhealthy eating habits,

or you hide in skin and bones,

you'll do anything you can to hide.

Or you start to cut.

Or you try to become
somebody else's ideal of perfection.

Or you'll mini-man yourself up
so that you can be taken more seriously

in a world that values
all that is masculine.

Or you just live where 80% of the women
in America live

which is where something is missing

and you have no idea what it is.

What we have done to the ego
of the female body is --

it's horrific.

We have squandered and abused

one of the sweetest, most vulnerable,

most adorable creatures on the planet,

and we -- all of us --
we are all paying the price,

because if you think
women are the only one scarred

in the relationship to their body,

think about this:
what the Doyle boys learned

on the day of my first offense

was exactly what I learned.

They learned that their body
was more valuable than my body.

They learned that if their mother
could tell me

what I could and couldn't do in my body

then maybe someday they could, too.

Men too are scarred in relationship
to the feminine body through these offenses.

In a UCLA study of normal college students

over 50% of the young men said
they would rape a woman

if they knew there was no punishment.

For the majority of men
the most arousing fantasy

was the rape of a young woman

where she experienced
both orgasm and pain.

Right? Kind of sobering.

There was a time
when the female body was worshiped,

not just for her life-giving ability,

but for her heightened senses,
her emotional acuity,

her brilliant intuition
and her dance of the fertility.

And this dance took place
at night when the women --

and only the women --
would gather over the fields

and they would do --
they would undulate their pelvises

over the crops to fertilize the soil,
to feed the village.

That's the true origin
of what we know as

'fertility dance',
which became erotic dance,

which became what we know today
as strip-tease and pole-dancing.

It was a celebration
of the feminine body.

It began as a dance of life.
The great mythologist

and philosopher
Joseph Campbell wrote,

'Woman is life and Man is the protector of life.

The male's job is to protect the women.'

Somehow we have --

the way we've learned
how to protect has become perverted.

We are protecting
by dousing the flame of the feminine.

We are serving by controlling
the body of the feminine

instead of doing what we have to do
and that is

to turn our masculine energy out and face

any on-coming threat
so that the feminine

can blossom and grow
and radiate and be life.

The next wave
of the feminist movement is actually --

it's a human movement
and it includes all of us

and it is the reclamation of the beauty

and the genius of both
the masculine and the feminine.

And it all begins with the awakening
of the Erotic Creature in every woman

because when a woman steps into
her power in her body

she calls every single masculine
into his greatest power.

When she gets stronger
he gets stronger.

When we as a culture diminish her

we are diminishing our culture.

The female-male complement can exist

and only when we cultivate it

are we really going to live up
to the potential --

the true potential of ourselves
individually and collectively.

This is my guy.
We cultivate every single day,

it's not perfect,
there are ups and downs,

but we dance the dance
of empowering one another.

Now here I am totally naked.

If we all strip bare every day

and expose our deepest truth,

we can live naked in our passion,

naked in our power,
naked in ourselves,

naked in the moment.

I reclaimed my body after a lifetime of

self-criticism brought on
by a society that

curbed her enthusiasm for life,
and in doing so

I have become, as Charles Dickens
so beautifully wrote,

'the hero of my own life'.
So the choice is yours.

Do you dare to become
the heroes of your lives

and reclaim your essence?

Do you dare to live naked?

So when you walk out of this talk,

when you leave this talk, women,

step into the grandeur,
the beauty, the gorgeousness

the sway, the curve,
the power, the fire of your body,

of your spirit, of your emotions.

I want you to undulate your spine

and just rock your body, sway it, move it,

stretch it, reach your arms up,

you can do it right now if you want to.

I want you to go out and throw a hip-circle
in the middle of the grocery store!

Just for the fun of it!

I want you to spread
your radiance with a smile

like right into the eyes of a stranger.

And I'm going to feed you
and you're going to feed me.

And men, step into the magnificence
of the masculine creature that you are.

Create a space of safety
for the feminine to thrive.

Serve her, protect her, face out and

hold her in your gaze and elevate her.

Because when you elevate her

you will behold in front of you

the eternal and the sacred feminine.

She's here right this minute,

she is in front of you,
she's next to you,

she's behind you,
she is every woman,

she is the swoop of the neck,

and the turn of an ankle,
and the curve up the lower back,

and she's the deep emotional heart,

she is the wise intuitive soul,

and when you see her,
when you awaken her

when you behold her
-- oh my God --

whether you are a man,
a woman or a child,

you will be filled up,
split open into your bliss

because that is the power
of the feminine.

And one more thing.

Women --

when you walk into a room,

remember your breasts
should enter 5 minutes before you

and your glories ass should leave
5 minutes after you're gone!

Thank you very much!

(Applause and cheers)

Thank you.
(Applause)