It took less than 24 hours for Keke Palmer’s outfit choice to take over Black Twitter.
Sis was living my teenage dream as she serenaded and swayed with Usher in Las Vegas while wearing a sheer dress paired with a black bodysuit. Palmer’s boyfriend and child’s father Darius Jackson side-eyed the occasion with a tweet saying, “It’s the outfit tho…you a mom.”
And a militia of Black women tweeted in unison, “And?”
Palmer is one of many Black women who are embracing their bodily autonomy through what they wear (or not) and how they carry themselves in the world. I want all Black women to “feel like a dream,” like Tracee Ellis Ross did as she posed in Black lingerie and topless in Paris.
The lyrics and visuals of Janelle Monáe’s “Age Of Pleasure” album is still keeping things hot and steamy since its release in June.
None of these celebrities are paying any mind to the hateration on social media. I mean, Palmer said herself on Instagram, “I wished I had taken more pictures.” But for many Black women, misogynoir, microaggressions, religious trauma and hypersexualization can prevent them from connecting with their own sense of pleasure, said Dr. Joy Berkheimer, a licensed therapist and sexologist in south Florida. The effects of those stressors sink into our nervous systems and freeze us in a state of hypervigilance. Black women are shouldering that distress while remaining pillars in the communities and churches and caretaking their families.
This is why prioritizing pleasure is a need for Black women, not an option, Berkheimer said.
“Pleasure really is as important as food, water, sleep and all those things for our emotional, physical and spiritual well being. We have long enough put pleasure in the department of just luxury, and it’s not,” Berkheimer said. “We deserve it. If you want me to live longer, to have less illnesses, to manage anxiety and depression, to soothe my nervous system and manage trauma, pleasure needs to be a part of my medicine.”
Berkheimer has been in the therapy game for about nine years. She went back to school early on in her practice to pursue a doctorate in clinical sexology after noticing a pattern with women who were having trouble tapping into their pleasure — either by themselves or with their partner — while also struggling to advocate for themselves in their relationships. She further evolved her skills by joining a cohort of women of color who are pioneering the field of trauma-informed sensual yoga instruction. Through Sensual Glow Flow Yoga, she is helping Black women liberate themselves through erotic embodiment.
Erotic and sensual are not synonymous with sex. Audre Lorde, a Black, lesbian radical feminist, defined the erotic as a raw resource of joy that has the power to dismantle hierarchies and other forms of oppression. Hence why the power of the term had to be watered down so it would only be associated with sex.
“The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation,” Lorde wrote in her book “Uses of the Erotic.” “For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling.”
I witnessed how Berkheimer eases Black women into their true feelings during a virtual sensual yoga flow last Thursday. Since it wasn’t my first yoga rodeo, I was familiar with the soothing release of the pigeon pose and found restoration in the child’s pose. But what made Berkheimer’s class different from other yoga sessions I’ve attended were her cues to gently sway, wiggle and touch our bodies however we wanted in between poses. As I settled into the practice, my body gave me a hint of what more it needed from me: a break from the hustle and grind of a capitalistic society. So after the class, I started to brainstorm how I could rest more intentionally.
To be sensual is to engage in all of your senses, Berkheimer said. And that can happen on or off the mat.
“Off the mat, being sensual may look like me literally sitting on my patio, or I’m on the beach, or I’m just doing a dance over in the tub. It can be the way that I was cutting up my fruit and eating it in the kitchen,” Berkheimer said. “Maybe it’s me just standing in my backyard next to the water under the stars and listening to my favorite song that moves me and everything in my body tingles. So pleasure is a broad thing and I can be sensual all day long.”
For those who experience sexual trauma, sensual yoga can be a space to heal and regain power by reconnecting to their body in a way that is safe for them.This is why trauma-informed instructors are important — so no one feels rushed and retraumatized, Berkheimer said.
“With sexual trauma, it will put you in a position where possibly you were told to perform and you had to be very specific about how you were presenting,” Berkheimer said. “But with sensual yoga, you’re given autonomy in your space. We move slow enough where you’re given the allowance to sit and feel how everything ebbs, pops, moves and flows… It’s OK here because you’re the one who invited you here. Nobody forced you here.”
The class was an interesting pause in the middle of my workday. Berkheimer brought out a tool that I have never used in a yoga class before: a Shibari rope. Shibari is the Japanese artform of intricate rope tying. It has meandered its way into the kink world, but that isn’t why Berkheimer uses it. Before she works with a client who feels comfortable with using Shibari ropes, she will ask them what intention they want her to infuse into the rope such as, “I want to feel loved, safe.” During the class, she taught us how to tie the rope in a way that made us feel held and loved on. By the time we were done, a small heart was designed in the middle of our chests.
“I’m helping you hold you,” Berkheimer said.
For those looking to release different forms of oppression from their bodies, whether that be microaggressions or hypersexualization, the medicine is in our breath and hip-opening poses. Berkheimer guided us through a couple poses that opened our hips, which store a lot of our emotional energy. Once we hit that pigeon pose in class, I could literally feel the emotional stress ooze out of me – in a good way.
“We’re helping to release that frustration that came up when that microaggression happened,” Berkheimer said. “The way that we are twisting our bodies is literally wringing out some of these toxins. And our breath is a renewal system. It’s coming in and taking out this stuff that we no longer need.”
Black women no longer have to shrink themselves to soothe the bruises of someone else’s ego. If you’re looking for a space to begin your pleasure practice, join Berkheimer on the mat and let your body be the compass that tells you where to go.
