Getting Naked – Reflections on Being a Life Drawing Model after a 20 year Absence

I was hoping to lose a few pounds, step up my game and increase my push-ups and sit-ups before shedding my robe and stepping up onto the modeling stand completely nude. My friends tell me, “Oh, you look great,” to which I reply, “Yes, but you haven’t seen me naked.” That is about to change.

I had done this job for 25 years beginning when I was an art student and the model did not show up. My art teacher told me, “You can all go home, all twenty of you, or you can model, Cindy, and make some money.” He liked the way I was shaped, very Reubenesque- as in curves and such. (not necessarily a compliment).  Plus, I had muscle definition from being an athlete. It was a win-win situation.

Modeling did not bother me. I did the part-time job for artists at many institutions, academies and universities until I became pregnant and had enough. Plus, I was enjoying much success as a writer and didn’t need the cash. It is a very challenging job to not move for 20-25 minutes at a time. Very hard on your body.

But today, twenty years later, I revisited the modeling stand. This time for research for my new book, a memoir of sorts about using the whole world to teach my kids . My writer friend, Mary Alice, got the brilliant idea to use the modeling stand as a platform to ‘hang my stories on’. Begin each part on the stand, exposed, vulnerable, thinking unencumbered about my role as a mother, an educator, and my relationship to my children. The book is essentially about “Modeling” a life for them. It really works and to date, the book is about half done. The last part, when they are finished with college and being launched out into the world, I am sitting there thinking about this new section of my life, and I thought it would be most powerful and certainly fresher, if I actually revisited the stand once again, twenty years later. Made it real instead of fiction!

They made an announcement at the last Reading, PA’s  Berks Art Alliance meeting that after a long hiatus, I was coming back to model today. Many local artists drew me twenty years ago FOR twenty years. I am expecting to see some old buds. I feel like I should make an announcement, “Beware! I don’t look the same. Things have dropped!” As if they wouldn’t expect that. My husband wonders who is coming out of curiosity to see what the last two decades have done to me and who to only draw.

As an artist, you remember every model’s body and face that you drew or painted. So many hours you spent staring at its details, looking at the form, the color, the light reflected on the skin, into a human beings’ eyes. You really do share a special intimacy with the model you are creating art with than any other human being. It is a gift exchanged.

My husband asked me if I was nervous this morning.

“About taking my clothing off in class? No. Why should I be? I did it for 25 years. I think it will come back to me, like riding a bike. ”

“I was hoping to lose some weight though.”

He said, “Who are trying to impress?”

And I repeated, “No one. I am trying  to prevent them from throwing up.”

But I had forgotten that I was 10 pounds heavier twenty years ago and my students” today thought I looked BETTER. That’s cool. I could have used the support of my under wires but in all honesty, I feel the same that I did when I was in my 30’s. I never cared much about the wrinkling skin or the sag as long as I could still PERFORM.

My art student son Bryce, who draws models at Tyler School of Art asked ‘How was it ? Was it epic?”

“I said ‘No, a little boring actually.”

They wanted me to come back again and again. I know how to move the right way, since I have been  on the other side. I know how to create angles, juxtaposition, interesting movement. But I said, no thanks. This wasn’t about needing a job, it was just about remembering.

What it is mostly about is realizing, twenty years later, that “I am not my body.”  My girlfriend who also models in her 50’s told me that quote and it was never more vividly clear than when I watched my father die.

It was 27 years ago and we were gathered in my childhood home around his bed. His cancer began in his lungs, spread to his heart and then his brain. We stood  around the bed holding hands and praying, prepared to look up at the ceiling the moment he left so we could say good-bye to him. What was so incredibly strange was, the exact moment that he died, his face completely changed, and it was so drastic and so extreme that it was as if he were a different person. I also realized that what I loved about my father, his spirit and soul, was completely gone. It LEFT. What remained on the bed was his vehicle in this life, the package that held who he really was. I loved that body while he had been alive, held those hands, kissed that cheek because of who he was INSIDE. But he was definitely gone.

And so I realized that we are not our bodies. So if the boobs hang lower than they used to and the skin is gathering a little above the knees, it’s really okay. We don’t have to shoot ourselves up with Botox to be more attractive. What really matters is how we love, how much we love. Because now I carry my Dad and my Mom inside of me because of HOW they loved me. Their bodies mean nothing to me now. I have a hard time even visiting their graves and I beep to them when I drive by the cemetery  I prefer to visit them in the mountains, on peaks, when the wind makes those strange little swirling whirlpools and picks up leaves off the forest  floor, I think that is my Dad saying hello to me .

I had a friend, Joe Gilbert, who was Assistant Dean at Salisbury University in Maryland who used to bring his students up to our homestead for a Voluntary Simplicity workshop. The highlight was a sauna that all the students indulged in at the end of the night (in shifts!) Joe sat on the bench outside with me, wrapped in towels waiting to cool down and he said, “You know, it is startling. I feel the exact same way that I did when I was 30 but I look in the mirror and I can’t believe what I see. I don’t FEEL like I look. I am still young inside.”

I want to stay young INSIDE. I can’t stay young looking outside but I want to stay young inside. I want  to keep moving and doing everything that I can for the rest of my life and only alter my activities when I become in pain. I want to be like my 102-year old grandmother who just climbed into bed one day because she was tired, who never had a pain except for a “hammer toe” and never was on any type of medication and surrounded by her great grandchildren and grandchildren who sang Bobby Vinton Polish sings to her, she fell asleep, completely used up. She was exquisitely beautiful and I am sure she had some shit hanging low on her body, but no matter. . The important thing is ….

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of driving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaim, Wow! What a ride!”

If life modeling again after 20 years reminded me that, then it was worth it.