Permission to Be Sexy

I killed my TV ages ago—or rather, my ex did, firing a water pistol at it during an argument. That was the end of Alles was zählt for me. So I don’t know much about the show anymore, but apparently Juliette Greco, who’s on it, posed for Playboy again.

In the interview, she talks about why. After she had a kid, it took years to feel okay in her own body again. She’s hard on herself that way. But posing for Playboy does something for her. For a few days she can be someone else—sexy, confident, nobody’s mother, nobody’s wife. She gets to step out of the weight of her actual life and just exist as this other version of herself. Then she steps back in.

There’s something honest about that. Not the magazine part necessarily, but the idea that sometimes you need permission from something outside yourself to be the version of you that you actually are. A frame, a camera, someone else’s desire—something that says you’re allowed to be this now. And if it works, if she feels better, then it’s real.

The weird part is how ordinary it all is now. You can download naked pictures on your phone like you’re ordering groceries. The whole mystique is gone. That’s its own kind of freedom, I guess.