Pinky Promises
Copyright© 2026 by BareLin
Chapter 6: The Stage
Let me tell you something about standing on a stage in front of thousands of people while completely naked.
It’s not like a wedding. The wedding was intimate, with two hundred people who mostly loved us, who had known us for years, who had a stake in our happiness. The wedding was scary, but it was also safe, in a way. It was home.
The stage was not home.
The stage was a cavernous auditorium in New York City, filled with three thousand people who had paid good money to see us. Thousands more were watching online;e the event was being live-streamed to over a hundred countries. The cameras were everywhere, huge professional rigs that could capture every inch of us in high definition and broadcast it to the entire world.
And we were going to walk out there. Naked. And talk.
For an hour.
About our bodies. About our friendship. About our pinky promises. About everything.
The invitation had come from an organization called “The Body Project,” a nonprofit dedicated to body acceptance and ending shame. They’d seen our interview, followed our story, and reached out with an offer: their biggest stage, their biggest audience, and complete creative control.
We’d said yes before we could talk ourselves out of it.
Now, standing in the green room an hour before showtime, I was seriously questioning every life choice that had led me to this moment.
The Green Room
“This is insane,” Marnie said for the seventeenth time.
“You’ve mentioned that,” Maddie replied.
“I’m mentioning it again. This is insane. We’re about to walk onto a stage in front of three thousand people and the entire internet and talk about our feelings while completely naked.”
“Also insane,” Grace agreed. “But we promised.”
“We promised a lot of things. We promised to stand together. We didn’t promise to do things that would literally kill us from terror.”
I laughed. “You’re not going to die from terror.”
“You don’t know that. You’re not a doctor.”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“The point is,” Marnie interrupted, “we can still back out. Right now. We can walk out that door, get on a plane, and never speak of this again.”
We looked at each other.
It was tempting. So tempting. The door was right there. Freedom was right there. We could go back to our lives, our families, our carefully constructed normalcy.
But then I thought about my mother-in-law, standing in my parents’ living room, admitting she’d been wrong. I thought about Marnie’s mother, stripping naked to stand with her daughter. I thought about Grace’s little girl, taking off her dress to be brave like Mommy.
I thought about all the messages we’d received, the thousands of emails, DMs, letters from women all over the world who’d seen our story and felt less alone. Who’d stopped hiding, even just a little. Who’d looked at their own bodies in the mirror and thought, “Maybe I’m okay. Maybe I’m more than okay.”
“If we walk out that door,” I said slowly, “we’re not just letting ourselves down. We’re letting them down. All of them. The women who need to see that it’s possible to be seen and survive.”
Marnie was quiet for a long moment.
“I hate when you’re right,” she said finally.
“I’m always right.”
“You’re not always right.”
“I’m right about this.”
She sighed. “Fine. Let’s go naked on television.”
“That’s the spirit.”
The Warm-Up
The producer knocked on our door ten minutes before showtime.
“Five minutes,” she said. “We’ll count you down. Just walk out when you hear your intro. The audience is ready.”
“Ready for what?” Marnie muttered. “Ready to see four middle-aged women naked?”
“Speak for yourself,” Maddie said. “I’m not middle-aged. I’m youth-adjacent.”
“You’re thirty-one.”
“Exactly. Youth-adjacent.”
I laughed, and the tension broke slightly. This was us. This was who we were. Jokes and banter and love disguised as sarcasm.
“Okay,” I said. “One last time. Pinky promise?”
We linked pinkies to four women, naked in a green room, about to do the scariest thing we’d ever done.
“Promise to stand together,” Maddie said.
“Promise to be real,” Grace added.
“Promise not to pass out from terror,” Marnie contributed.
“Promise to be seen,” I finished. “No matter what.”
“No matter what,” we echoed.
The door opened. The producer gestured. The countdown began.
And we walked.
The Stage
The lights hit us first, bright, blinding, impossible to see through. For a moment, I couldn’t see the audience at all. Just a wall of light and the knowledge that beyond it, thousands of people were watching.
We walked to the center stage, where four simple stools were arranged in a semicircle. We sat. The lights adjusted slightly, and suddenly I could see them, row after row of faces, stretching back into darkness. Three thousand people, all looking at us.
At our naked bodies.
At every inch of skin, every curve, every imperfection.
The silence was absolute.
I felt Marnie tense beside me. Felt Grace’s hand find mine and squeeze. I felt Maddie’s warmth on my other side, a solid presence, a reminder that I wasn’t alone.
Then the moderator spoke. Her name was Dr. Elena Vasquez, a psychologist who’d made her career studying body image and shame. She was dressed, of course, in a simple black pantsuit that made her look professional and approachable at the same time.
“Thank you for being here,” she said to us. “I know this isn’t easy.”
“It’s not,” I admitted. “But neither is hiding.”
A murmur rippled through the audience. Some people laughed. Others shifted uncomfortably. A few I could see in the front rows were crying already.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” Elena said. “Tell us about the pinky promises.”
And we did.
The Story
We told them everything.
Maddie started with the backyard pool, being eight years old and terrified, and was saved by friends who wouldn’t let her be afraid alone. Marnie took over for the middle school years, the hot tub conversations, the way nakedness became normal because we made it normal. Grace told the story of Tommy Richardson, the filming, the broken phone, and the first real pinky promise about never letting shame win.
I told them about the wedding. About asking my friends to do something insane. About their eyes, their fears, their courage. About walking down the aisle and seeing Marcus at the end, and knowing, really knowing that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Maddie told them about the photos going viral. About waking up to a world that had seen everything. About the terror and the shame and the choice to face it together.
Marnie told them about her investors, her parents, the long silence that had nearly broken her. About her mother stripping naked in a living room in Ohio to stand with her daughter.
Grace told them about David, about the custody battle, about Lily taking off her dress to be brave. About the moment she realized that being seen wasn’t just about her, it was about her daughter, and every daughter, and every woman who needed permission to stop hiding.
And I told them about the family meeting. About my mother’s wisdom, my mother-in-law’s apology, the moment when everyone in the room raised their pinkies and promised to see us.
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