| My SO brought the article below to my attention. I remembered the
note about nude modelling being in this conference, and thought that
it would be very appropriate to put the article in here. The article
comes from "Womans" magazine, and the author is Hazel Martin.
(Reproduced without permission)
"Posing a question of nudity"
I have been thinking about being a nude model. Not a Page Three
type nude model, let's be serious, please, but a life-model, the sort
who sits motionless in front of a class of art students.
This is a far cry from my usual daydreaming. The more normal
scenarios for this are: I win the pools (lottery) and buy a huge house
with an indoor pool, a Jacuzzi, stables set in five acres of grounds, a
butler - what heaven, to boss a man about and know that he won't answer
back - and write the first of many bestsellers.
These daydreams, as you can easily see, have a link, albeit
tenuous, with reality. Or rather, they will have, as soon as I start
doing the pools or settle down in earnest to write my bestseller.
Being a nude model, however, falls into the category of pure
fantasy. I am never going to be a nude model, but I have been thinking
about it - about whether I could bring myself to do it and what it
would feel like.
This train of thought was set in motion by my friend Pambo who
coolly announced to a group of friends across the table of a Chinese
restaurant one night, that she had spent several months in America with
her only source of income being the fees she was paid for being a
life-model.
Pambo is quite blase about her life in the buff. She needed to
earn some money, she's not ashamed of her body, there was nothing
sleazy about sitting in a well-heated studio, keeping perfectly still
while serious art students studied the way her flesh covered her
muscles and bones.
Exactly. She's absolutely right. But how on earth did she bring
herself to take off all her clothes and walk into a room of fully
clothed strangers ?
I speak as one who can't even bring herself to go topless on a
topless beach. The worst of it is that I have the awful feeling that
by not baring all, or at least all above the waist, I probably draw
more attention to myself.
So, hearing that my friend Pambo had not only gone topless but
bottomless, too, was fascinating, horrifying and amazing in equal
parts. "Oh, the first time it was a bit grim," she said. "They just
said, 'You can go and change in there'." Other diners in the Chinese
restaurant were treated, at this point, to loud guffaws and pained
shrieks of "Oh, Pam", and "Change into what?" It turned out that she
had taken a robe and slipped into it to make her entrance.
But she had to take it off and get onto a platform in the middle of
the floor. "I did panic a bit, but it was too late to back out then,
so I just took it off, and it never worried me after that," she said.
My God, I thought. Not only did she not wear any clothes, she
actually climbed onto a platform !
I suspect that if ever the time came when I decided to become a
life-model, I'd be an extremely successful one, if only in terms of
keeping still. I'm sure I'd be so rigid with horror and embarrassment
that I wouldn't be able to move, even if I wanted to.
I can imagine the life-class packing up their paints and toddling
off home, while I remain completely motionless. Days later, they'd
return for another session, and I'd still be sitting there, fixed in
place, rigid with embarrassment.
Anyway, I'm going to continue to mull this subject over in my mind.
If I could only come to grips with the idea of being absolutely nude in
public, I might just be able to take off my bikini top next time I'm on
a topless beach.
The danger is, of course, that I might have to stay there,
motionless, for ever and ever.....
The end.
Cute article.... She should try a nude beach the first time, ( as opposed
to a topless beach ), then she'd be able to overcome her disillusion
with total nudity,.... and probably enjoy it !
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