Nude Ambition
Riding the tram towards the city I found myself seated alone. In the next aisle sat a group of four twenty-something year old women adorned in colourful cultural head scarves. When they started discussing the difference between being nude and naked I couldn’t help but glance up from my novel.
One of the women explained the meaning of both – naked means you are undressing in private with no intention of an audience while nude means you are undressing for an audience, such as a life modelling class. The discussion ended with the women contemplating whether they would ever model for a class should their religion allow it. The answers were an even split of yes and no.
Their discussion lead me to ponder how life and society has changed since nude women were painted during art movements such as the Renaissance, in which female nudes were natural, goddess-like and beautiful. Visit the public bar of Young & Jackson on Flinders Street and you’ll find Melbourne’s most famous nude painting, Chloé, by Jules Joseph Lefebvre. It is a perfect example of a time where women’s bodies were celebrated for the right reasons. There was no shame in being nude, no attention seeking on the model’s part, and the muse was respected and viewed as a subject, a source for inspiration, rather than an object for sexual pleasure. I doubt the model for Chloé bragged about how empowered she was as a nude model, or shared postcards of herself nude on a street corner, a 1800s crude equivalent of the attention-seeking Instagram.
In 2016 we live in a society where the lines of private and public are easily blurred due to our obsession with celebrity and compulsion to use social media and nudity as a tool to gain attention, popularity, and generate followers under the banner of “female empowerment”. By doing so you are marketing yourself as a sexual product and this can make you money and generate fame, but is it for the good of female empowerment or the selfish pursuit for attention?
If you ask me it’s the latter.
A few months back Kim Kardashian used Instagram to market herself as a sexual modern day woman who loves her nude body and wants the world to see. The caption below her nude selfie claimed she had nothing to wear. Later, responding to backlash, she commented that her nudity made her feel empowered. This selfie and her sex tape thirteen years ago are two life choices that Kim will never live down, yet Kim chooses to celebrate them and build the product that is herself. And people buy it.
As a female life model I’ve never felt empowered by taking off my robe for a class. I’ve been a life model just over two years now and it’s a job I first undertook to make a bit of extra cash. If you had told me three years ago, even when I was a burlesque dancer performing in underground clubs, that I would enjoy posing nude in front of arts students, I would have laughed at you. Years before, I also laughed when as a photographer and reporter for indie burlesque gigs in Sydney, my workmate suggested I become a burlesque dancer because I had that classical look.
However, on returning to Melbourne from Sydney in 2013, I dabbled in burlesque and took up classes as a means to gain confidence and feel content with my body. I would be so nervous before a show I would be shaking backstage but it worked: I did gain confidence through burlesque and, looking back, I grew as a person too by facing my fears and performing while taking off my clothes. Still, as an introvert I struggled to engage fully with the crowd, and my burlesque career was short.
Life modelling, however, gives me more control, and the crowd is not their to hoot and holler, but rather to work and learn. They are artists like myself and I enjoy contributing to their practice. Like burlesque, I was very nervous the first time getting nude, which was in the introductory class by the Life Model Society. The newbies had to get nude in front of artists (who were there to judge our poses) and experienced models (there to guide us). When we were all simultaneously given the command to disrobe I looked around, reluctant and shy, but then had a “what the hell” moment. Next thing I knew I was nude and I felt … relieved. Nobody was their to judge our bodies and we were all there to learn. And I was facing my fears and doing something I never thought I would or could – I was nude. I remember my first booking with an art class too. I was so scared that I would do something wrong, but I got through it, got praised, and I haven’t looked back since.
There is something magical about standing proud as a life model and being the inspiration for a painting. Just as the model for Chloé, a young Parisian girl named Marie, stands tall, the female nude in painting will forever be cherished and respected no matter how many celebrities Instagram nude selfies and beg for attention by flaunting their bodies. As a life model you are also respected by artists and never seen as a sexual object. Nudity is not about ‘empowerment’; no matter how Kim Kardashian tries to dress it up. Nudity is about art.
