It’s not often we get to experience the stuff dreams are made of. Being able to fly is cool, but the ol’ showing-up-to-an-event-only-to-realize-you’re-naked dream is still a classic that leaves you reeling for days.
Standing naked on a wooden platform in front of a group of drawing students last week, this dream crossed my mind. I was a over a minute into a three-hour nude modelling gig and still couldn’t believe the bathrobe was on the floor, and not me.
Silently cursing my adventurous side, I avoided eye contact with the racing gazes of 20 or so second-year art students skillfully transcribing my birthday suit onto paper. Crawling into a hole would have been ideal, but I soon realized this endeavour was about to change a lot of things for me in ways I really didn’t see coming.
Unlike me, this wasn’t the students’ first rodeo – most of them had already had a semester of live figure drawing. Their instructor, Jen Lee, was formal in a way that still managed to calm my nerves when I walked into the third-floor drawing studio at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design last Friday.
I didn’t immediately mount the podium sans attire – the class went over some homework assignments and slides while I sat working up my courage (read: texting my BFF maniacally, hoping for encouragement) in a bathrobe.
All the same, I learned what the artists would be working on – foreshortening. Simply put, foreshortening involves drawing visual depth. Because I was in the middle of the classroom, students would be drawing me from two or three different angles which worked perfectly for the task at hand – to build off one perspective point of my body and use it as a measurement to draw my form proportionally. We spent the first half-hour or so ‘warming up‘ – I would stand in one position for about a minute while my onlookers worked to capture the shifting of my weight and the human form.
It was around this time I felt a slight trickle down my side. Looking down, I noticed my armpits having a flood-gate field day. I have jogged marathon distances and had never seen this kind of sweat before. Cue self-conscious moment #4532 – would they notice? The soft light illuminating my bashful self was going with a strong ‘yes’. I found myself cancelling out my embarrassment with positive thinking – at least they’d get to see the wicked tattoo on my rib cage that I rarely get to show off, right?
Which led me to my next thought (I had a lot of these. It was three hours) – like any 20-something North American female, I have a few body-image issues. I don’t wear bikinis in the summer unless I’m around people I’m really comfortable with. Even then, I still find myself judging my non-six-pack and what I’d look like if I cross-fitted or actually worked out.
I don’t know what exactly I managed to blurt out to one of the students about these inhibitions, but she countered it perfectly with a great analogy in comparing me to a vase. The key was not to focus on who or what the subject at hand was – merely what was to be learned in technique and style – what she would take away as an artist. So no, Emily, they weren’t going to notice your stretch marks or unclipped toenails. Stay cool.
I was soon after instructed to lie on my stomach for the first reclined-position portion of the class. I found both refuge but strange accompanying disappointment in this – suffice to say I was sad to be covered up. I had worked myself up so hard that I actually wanted to showcase more than my bare behind. Self-confidence: 1, Nervousness: 0.
My chagrin was soon to be upended, however, when for the last hour of the class I was lying on my side with all my bits exposed. The urge to utter ‘paint me like one of your french girls, Jack‘ was almost unbearable at this point. I carried on silently, however, when I noticed just how focused these students were. The sound effects were awesome – hearing multiple pencils scratch furiously in tandem with their owners‘ fiercely concentrated faces was awe-inspiring. It made me want to enrol at NBCCD.
Jen made sure to check in with me throughout the process – too cold in here? You doing okay? and for the last half-hour, I actually was. For someone who is usually pretty confident on the outside, I was surprised to find out how differently I deal with nudity. I had two weeks to mull over this very day after setting up an appointment with the college, but still managed to shock myself by actually doing it.
I won’t be joining a nudist colony anytime soon, but I really am one step closer to self-acceptance. I found comfort in knowing you can be fully exposed and it still doesn’t matter what people think about you. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a lot of work to do in the self-love department, but for now I can confidently say I‘m no longer ashamed of my flaws in the way I was before this endeavour. Hell, I may even go back – there is much to be gained in exposing yourself wholly to a group of strangers – especially in today’s world of hyper-juiced up ideals of perfection.
This experience jolted me into the realization that we really are just a group of meat bags hanging off skeletons. There is no perfect – it’s all relative. The beauty is in the eyes of the beholder (of a naked bum).
