How I experienced some kind of objectification

“I’m sorry to ask this at the last minute, but I’m teaching a drawing class this evening and my model just cancelled. Do you think you could find someone to pose naked?” It’s 12:30 on a Wednesday in late September 1992. The young woman with curly brown hair look at me with a pleading expression. She is cute, probably not yet thirty, and seemed genuinely anxious. I’m alone in the Student’s Jobs Office at my university, and I suspect that finding and convincing a replacement won’t be easy. Nevertheless, I reassure her and promise to do everything in my power. But at the beginning of the academic year, our database of job seekers isn’t very extensive yet and in this pre-cell phones era, it is difficult to contact potential volunteers on such short notice… And even though the job was well paid, no one was willing to take the plunge.

When, around 4:30 p.m., the young teacher pushed open the door of the Student’s Jobs Office once again and asked me, her eyes sparkling with hope, “Have you found anyone?”, I answered a somewhat hesitant “Yes”. “If it’s a girl, you can reassure her, there will only be women in the attendance,” she added with a broad smile. “It’s not a girl. I haven’t found anyone, but I’m OK to do it,” I said shyly. “Oh, thank you! You’ll see, it’s a lot of fun!” she added, without completely convincing me. A few hours later, with little further preparation and without any particular predisposition, I found myself in front of 13 women, naked from head to toe for almost three hours…

Honestly, posing wasn’t the most difficult part of the job. Holding a pose for fifteen or twenty minutes can be hard and even painful – you have to try to really see how difficult it can be not to move for such a “long” time. And, of course, being the only one naked in the room was not easy.  But on the other hand, I soon discovered that my nudity was not a big problem: when people are drawing, they look at you as an object. They don’t see a person, they see shapes, curves, shadows and highlights.

The most awkward moments were the intervals between poses. The unexpected nature of my first experience meant I didn’t have a bathrobe or anything else to cover myself with between poses. So I had to remain naked while the teacher was giving instructions for the next exercise. This sometimes lasted several minutes, during which I stood completely exposed to a very different kind of gaze. But I was too busy thinking about my next poses to really care.

Despite all that, the teacher was right, it was a lot of fun. I was scared at first, uncomfortable at times, but quite happy to be there… and I didn’t hesitate for a second when, at the end of the session, the young woman suggested I come back two days later!

I soon graduated, and my modeling career ended with my studies, after only a few sessions more at the drawing workshop.

Yet, nearly thirty years later, I had the opportunity to reconnect with this experience, this time at the local Fine Arts Academy. Of course, my body wasn’t what it had been at 23, but the pleasure of posing for a group of aspiring artists was undiminished.

How I pushed my exploration further