Location: Venice Beach, Los Angeles

Movie: Baywatch

Year: 2016

Baywatch was filming in Venice Beach when I got the call to do a day of shooting for the movie’s trailer. The stunt coordinator asked if I wanted to get tackled on the beach by a guy playing football in a bathing suit. One day of work? Sounded super easy. And on sand? Sign me up! I’ll take naturally soft landings any day.

I arrived at base camp, where a PA showed me to my trailer. I walked in to see two bathing suits hanging up. The PA said there were two options for me to try on so wardrobe could take a look. I said okay, undressed, and quickly realized that both bathing suits were high-waisted thongs! Hashtag Dying inside! Call me old-fashioned, but the stunt coordinator never mentioned that I’d be doing this but butt floss. Maybe to him, it wasn’t a big deal, but I really, really didn’t want to show my white booty to the world! And I thought I’d be saving people from having to see the pale booty flying through the air. I usually prefer a nice, full coverage one-piece like actual lifeguards wear, ha!

Apparently, the makeup department felt the same way because they spent the next two hours tanning my pale butt. Yes, this was the only time in my 14-year stunt career that I had two people working on darkening my ghostly white cheeks so they wouldn’t stand out, shining bright like a diamond on camera.

Cold hands rubbed tanner all over my butt for not one, “but” TWO hours. Once they thought they had it dark enough, standing in the sun quickly proved them wrong. More tanner. And then more again. I would step back into the sunlight for them to realize it was still a full moon on a sunny day. I had never had my butt so loved and…so tan. Finally, they reached a point where they figured it couldn’t get any darker. “Well,” they said, “let’s hope this is good enough.” I was relieved—my butt belonged to me again. No more hands buffing my booty.

I arrived on set. It was a bit overcast and the sun was setting, which I hoped would work in my favor and keep my butt from glowing too brightly. Deep in worry, I thought about nothing more embarrassing if the director asked Make-up to darken my butt again. We started shooting the tackle scene, and at “cut,” I would walk backward to my start mark, hands covering my butt so the crew wouldn’t stare. At the time, I was extremely self-conscious. It felt beyond awkward being the only mostly naked female in a thong in front of a crew of dozens of dudes.

You’d think filming one simple shot of me getting tackled wouldn’t take all day, but somehow, they managed to find every possible angle to capture me eating sand—in a thong.

By the end of the day, the stunt coordinator asked if I could do a flat-back fall, kicking my legs up so it looked like I “taco-ed” after getting pretend slammed. Oh great, another angle featuring my butt and my crotch? When will this day end? But, being a stuntwoman, I said, “Of course, I can taco.”

The first take was just okay. I was too timid, afraid of throwing my legs too high and exposing more than I already had. I ended up doing two takes before I realized that if I just fully committed and if I did it right once, I wouldn’t have to keep showing my crotch and butt over and over again.

Finally, I let go of my self-consciousness (maybe some deep-seated childhood programming?) and just went for it. We got the shot. And guess what?

It NEVER MADE THE MOVIE. Not even the trailer that we were there for.

That’s the risk of being a stunt performer. You can give your all—take the hits, eat the sand, tan your butt for two hours—but in the end, sometimes, your work, or your butt, just doesn’t make the cut.

Moral of the Story: 

The things we stress about the most often never even matter. We waste so much time overthinking, worrying about how others perceive us, and imagining worst-case scenarios—only to realize later that no one else was paying nearly as much attention as we thought. In the end, our fears are usually just that: fears. They hold us back more than any external judgment ever could.

The real win isn’t in impressing others or avoiding embarrassment—it’s in pushing past our own insecurities. When we stop caring so much about what people might think, we free ourselves to show up fully, take risks, and own our experiences. Whether anyone else sees it or not, confidence is built in those moments of discomfort, when we choose to lean in instead of shrink back.

One thing I know for sure (now), a white butt might not be sexy, but confidence is.