A teenage girl and her friends learn the radical concept of loving their bodies

NOT LONG AGO some summer-camp girlfriends and I had a sleepover, and at about 3 a.m., after we'd exhausted the topics of cute guys and the new 2005 SATs, the talk turned to our 16-year-old bodies: thighs, bellies, hair, boobs, booties. Did we like them? Did Jess wish she had Nomi's legs, did Maggie covet Natasha's complexion? Did we hate changing in the school locker rooms, did we plotz at the thought of being seen in our bikinis?

Sprawled out on sleeping bags, munching on mini-marshmallows and Cheez Doodles, we were somewhat surprised to find out that we all shared a similar sentiment: We felt fine about our bodies. Sure, Natasha confided, she wished her boobs were "more symmetrical," and Maggie that she had "less hairy upper-inner thighs," but in a hierarchy of things that obsessed us, these issues fell fairly low on the list. We looked, we all agreed, "good enough" for the locker rooms. And at the beach? Well, chicken legs, love handles, flat chests . . . they were just what we'd been dealt.

We knew that this level of body acceptance was very different from that of most teenage girls. America's consumerist culture, after all -- the vast self-improvement aisles at pharmacies, women's magazines that promise 6 or 8 or 10 steps to a perfect butt month after month, our society's fixation on Hollywood looks -- all seem almost intended to make girls feel like shit. Each one of us knew girls who stuck to mineral water while the rest of us split Chinese food, who passed up incredible class trips because the thought of someone seeing them undressed or without makeup flipped them out.

It was clear to us that our summer camp's overall culture had, to some extent, immunized us against this teen epidemic of body loathing. But how?

"The BIK," Toni said, referring to our camp's communal bathhouse, a plain concrete building -- one side for girls, the other for boys -- where we all (campers, counselors, assorted others) day after day, and summer after summer, showered naked with each other. BIK is a Hebrew acronym for bait keesay ("house of the chair"), a euphemism for bathroom. Ours -- with its no-frills shower rooms -- wasn't anything to write home about: the pipe missing its showerhead, dozens of bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash strewn over a couple of wooden shelves, the slightly slimy floor.