It is 8:45 in the morning, too early for me to order my thoughts coherently or even realize where I am, but alas I am a working girl and have to take the shifts that come my way. So I lay sprawled naked across three different pillows, in front of the 25 intent faces of ARTS110: Observation Drawing. I try to slink into the type of sleep I reserve for these situations, the type I have perfected over the past three years, rigidly dozing while remaining aware enough to stay still. I manage to have complete dreams without one twitch.
The hardest part is waking up without the jolt. I have to be quick and catch myself before I flinch. This morning I have to be even more careful, it’s the class’s first time drawing a nude. They have been drawing fruit and chairs for the past three weeks, simple planes and lines, not the infinitely complex interlacing of light and shadow that pattern and are absorbed by my skin. They squint with frustration as I try to keep completely still.
My back is twisted front to back, testing more muscles, making the pose more interesting to draw, more challenging. As the hour passes my back strains, pushing first into pain and then into numbness. “Time,” the professor finally says and I hear it through my haze of half-sleep. Rising groggy, the feeling returns swiftly to my back and I hunch over in pain while searching for my robe. The professor thanks me, knowing it was a tough pose. Still nursing my throbbing back I smile and shiver slightly; the room is too cold in the morning.
I don’t remember exactly what made me decide to answer the ad in the NNB fall term of my freshman year that pled for models. The prospect of spending all of freshman year working in Burton Dining Hall was probably part of what inspired me. I’ve never been much of an exhibitionist or an artist, but it was first week and I was ready to test some of my previous limits in the exciting milieu that was college. So I answered the ad, filled out some paperwork, and was on my way.
After my first shift was scheduled I began to get nervous. By the time I arrived I was shaking, a nightmare to try to draw I’m sure. The professor gave me a short pep-talk, introduced me to that class and left me poised to take off my robe. The hardest moment of my modeling career was taking off that robe. I froze for a second and almost didn’t do it. But the robe slide off so easily without any fanfare or consequence, it was almost as if I was taking off a coat or a sweater. Once I stood in front of the class completely naked, my nerves began to ease. I told people afterwards that you forget you’re naked, but that wasn’t exactly true. It just became unimportant.
Nude modeling would probably be a great way to finally become comfortable with your body, as people often suggest when I mention my job. However, no one really decides to become a model in the first place if they’re uncomfortable with themselves. What modeling does is reconnect you with the reality of the body.
Modern society has made the body into a symbol for so much more than flesh and blood. We’re all supposed to take care of our bodies in the right ways. The body now says how hard we work, our self control, how many people will love us. It seems the traditional mind/body problem has taken a new turn: the soul has become an expression of our body.
Standing naked on a pedestal day after day, I cannot believe that my body is something of any great consequence. It is an object, not a sexual object, but just a thing that is there. Not an extension of my soul or my temple, it is skin and muscle, light and shadow, line and mass, charcoal and conté and if we’re lucky it becomes art.
Nude modeling has taught me a lot. It’s taught me how to sleep standing up, how to deal with a drunken person who decides it good form to shout across a room full of people that they’ve seen me naked, and how to best revive a completely asleep limb. It’s also made me question my own relationship with art. There are hundreds of drawings and paintings that would not exist without me, but I know that as soon as the artist finishes I lay no claim to their work. It is a strange thing to see yourself in a work, remembering the pain in your hips during that pose or the thoughts running through your head and yet know that it is not your own.
We equate nudity with some personal secret, as if when our clothes are gone everyone gains some special privilege, some insight into us. But this is not true. I stand naked in front of classroom after classroom full of people, hundreds by my estimate. They walk away with portfolios full of my naked body, but they don’t walk away knowing me better. Fully bared under the glare of spotlights it may seem like I have nowhere to hide, but I don’t share my soul with any of these artists.
The first response to being naked is to connect more with your body. As time wares on, though, you start to disconnect and realize the absurdity of the politics surrounding the body. If I walk into a room in a short skirt and a push-up bra I’m somehow more vulnerable than I am when I lie completely naked in front of a room full of strangers. It’s bizarre, but that why I keep doing it year after year.
Nude modeling is comforting and natural to me now. I’ve worked hard to be good at what I do and once I get a real job (god willing) I’m going to miss the calming meditative feeling it gives me. But I won’t miss the back aches.
"My Naked Self" was originally published in the Carl on May 5, 2006. Reprinted with permission from the author.
