I did a three hour standing pose
last night (with breaks at regular intervals, of course), and I valued the time
to just be alone in my head, letting the thoughts run through my sometimes
overactive mind. Given my physical state
at the time, I started thinking about nudity in our society and how my job as
an art model is perceived by the general public. Society trains us into equating nudity with
sex and that, because of this, we have to keep our bodies covered at virtually
all times. And for most people, this is
a self-fulfilling condition; the sight of a nude body does generate a sexual
response but only because they so rarely see it and because they expect such a
response. I have modeled nude with quite
a few other models over the years (although not that often since most schools
and art groups can’t afford to pay two models for the same session). In each instance, I have taken just a very brief
moment to admire my fellow model’s form and beauty (because all bodies are
beautiful) before getting to work myself.
I have never felt that that admiration and appreciation of the human body
has ever been sexual. I’ve been doing this
job for over 30 years, and I’ve seen quite a few other nude models and works of
art created from those models. I’ve been
seen countless times myself, and at 48 years old and with a few fat layers from
my full-time job sitting at a desk and looking at computer monitors, I still
marvel at drawings done of me.
I do think that there is an
allure to nudity because we as a society hide and cover it so much. When people succumb to that allure, they turn
to “adult” entertainment which keeps perpetuating the lie that naked bodies are
only to be used for sex. But then again,
pornography itself is a lie, with atypical bodies saying and doing atypical
things. I’ve often thought that if we as
a society were more open to nudity in everyday life (especially nudity of the
average body and not the idealized bodies that our media almost exclusively
presents us) that pornographers’ incomes would come crashing down. But instead, our society has prohibited
simple nudity from the public arena.
When singer Erykah Badu got nude on the spot where JFK was assassinated for
one of her music videos, authorities in Dallas launched an investigation to
find someone who witnessed it and who could be convinced to file a
complaint. Once that person was found
and the complaint filed, Erykah was charged with disorderly conduct and
fined. Why go to all that trouble for a “crime”
that had no victims? It just saddens me.
