\n<\/p>\n
The title of the writer Pamela Redmond\u2019s new one-woman show, \u201cOld Woman Naked,\u201d isn\u2019t entirely metaphorical.<\/p>\n
Redmond, 73, bares her soul in the 75-minute piece, which she will perform for the fourth time publicly on May 17 at the Broadwater Second Stage in Hollywood. She also appears fully nude at the end.<\/p>\n
Redmond, the author of the novel \u201cYounger,\u201d which became a hit TV show, said she wasn\u2019t thinking that \u201csex sells\u201d when she wrote the play last year at her home in Los Angeles. \u201cI\u2019ve had three 10-pound babies, two surgeries, gained and lost the same 35 pounds at least 10 times,\u201d she wrote recently in her Substack newsletter, the Jubilarian. \u201cI haven\u2019t had anything lifted or tucked, no fat sucked out of or injected into me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, she was motivated to stage what she called an act of \u201cstealth feminism\u201d by baring it all at an advanced age. The show, which she hopes will eventually be performed by a professional actor (her wish list includes Jessica Lange and Whoopi Goldberg), is also, she said, a rebuke of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Redmond, twice divorced and now single, had witnessed the popular baby-naming website she co-founded decades ago, Nameberry, reduced to near rubble after A.I. scraped its contents. The technology was also threatening to render pointless a \u201cpainful\u201d three-year rewrite of a novel. \u201cI thought, By the time I finish, A.I. is going to do the same thing, only better,\u201d she said. \u201cA.I. was eating my lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t have a body, though. She did.<\/p>\n
\u201cFiguring that out was my lightbulb moment,\u201d she said. \u201cThe whole idea came to me in 15 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOld Woman Naked\u201d tells the story of the permutations of Redmond\u2019s body from puberty onward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.<\/em><\/p>\n Your two sons and daughter, all adults, are not planning to see \u201cOld Woman Naked.\u201d Are they horrified?<\/strong><\/p>\n They\u2019re supportive of my creativity and my success, they just don\u2019t want to see me naked. They don\u2019t want to hear about my sex life. They don\u2019t want to hear about my puberty experience. I respect that. But my two sons-in-law, my daughter\u2019s husband and my son\u2019s husband, have both been so encouraging. It\u2019s not the same thing for them. I\u2019m sure with their own mothers, they would be like, Ugh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What about friends and colleagues? Did you worry what they would think?<\/strong><\/p>\n No, my friends were always incredibly supportive. It\u2019s strangers I think about. I have never written anything anywhere close to this personal. These are stories that I\u2019ve never told anyone in my whole life. It\u2019s like, do they think I\u2019m weird? Are they feeling sorry for me?<\/p>\n A few of my friends have brought their husbands. I\u2019m like, What are they thinking? People have told me they get so caught up in the story that by the time I\u2019m naked, that\u2019s not really what they\u2019re thinking about. And they might be just being nice, but that\u2019s kind of how I feel. By the time I\u2019m naked, it\u2019s like, this is the least of it, baby.<\/p>\n You describe yourself in a stage direction as \u201clike Mister Rogers shrugging off his cardigan.\u201d Do you feel as sexless as Mister Rogers in this role?<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s a great question. The director said to me last night (before an L.A. performance), \u201cTry to make the whole thing more of a striptease and have fun with it.\u201d I don\u2019t know if I succeeded in that, at least until I took off my red bra and threw it at my friend in the audience. But I start out wearing, like, five layers on top because I want to have the maximum number of things to take off. So I\u2019m feeling very sexless until that bra comes off.<\/p>\n The show might bring to mind \u201cThe Vagina Monologues\u201d for some. How do you think it compares?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe Vagina Monologues\u201d is a compendium of a lot of women\u2019s experiences. And it\u2019s very focused on this one body part. My show is about my experience over a lifetime in a female body, and some of those experiences are about sex, about my vagina, and a lot of them aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n The recent Broadway show \u201cLiberation\u201d had nude women of all ages onstage. Are older women\u2019s bodies having a moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Yeah, it\u2019s definitely a cultural phenomenon right now. It\u2019s like, Oh yeah, we\u2019re going to take menopause seriously now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n You say at one point in the play that you and many of your friends don\u2019t remember much about the consensual sex you had as younger women, only the date rapes. Then you answer your own question about why some of them didn\u2019t speak up. \u201cUltimately,\u201d you say, \u201cI\u2019d rather do something I didn\u2019t want to do than say something I didn\u2019t want to say.\u201d Why is it so hard to say things we don\u2019t want to say?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think a lot of women feel that if they speak up, they\u2019re told, don\u2019t say that, don\u2019t feel that. I remember as a kid my mother used to call me Sarah Bernhardt, meaning, \u201cyou\u2019re so sensitive, why are you making a big deal about this?\u201d It just feels safer and easier to have the sex than to confront a guy with, \u201cOh, I don\u2019t like you anymore and I want to leave.\u201d Which has historically been a very dangerous thing for women to do.<\/p>\n You talk about your use of GLP-1 drugs and your recent weight loss. How much weight did you lose?<\/strong><\/p>\n Fifty-five pounds.<\/p>\n Would you have performed the show if you hadn\u2019t lost the weight?<\/strong><\/p>\n You know, probably not. I have this whole passage where I talk about this endless yo-yo diet of gaining and losing the same 30 or 40 pounds. When I lost the weight, it was the first time that it felt easy. When I got down below 150, which I hadn\u2019t been since I was in my 20s, I asked the doctor, \u201cWell, how much more should I lose?\u201d And he said, \u201cWhat do you want to weigh?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That was the first time I had even asked myself that because I thought that what I wanted to weigh and what it was possible to weigh were two different things. At first, I said, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d And then I thought, No, I do<\/em> know what I want to weigh. I want to weigh 137 pounds because that\u2019s what I weighed when I was young. I feel like my young, beautiful self at that weight, I guess, and not a compromise self.<\/p>\n What are your thoughts about the body-positivity movement?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think for women in their 20s, it doesn\u2019t matter how much the fashion industry or magazines or ads or movies talk about body positivity. Celebrities are thinner than ever. At that age, you can\u2019t help but compare yourself. You\u2019re in this world that\u2019s telling you, \u201cOh, it\u2019s not cool to want to be thin. You\u2019ve got to be body positive.\u201d And at the same time, everything you\u2019re seeing is contradicting that. That\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n