Getting Naked

Before I decided to become a designer, I held a whole array of jobs over the years to make my rent. I wrote for an online mag­a­zine and acted as “web­master” for a local IT com­pany during high school. I was briefly a knife salesman, before I real­ized I can’t sell any­thing. I worked at a gas sta­tion on crack alley, serving coffee from the self-serve coffee counter to very con­fused cus­tomers. I was a maid for all of an hour (before I quit). I was a crossing guard, a secu­rity guard, and the world’s fastest (and surliest) Subway employee. How­ever, by far the oddest employ­ment I’ve ever had came after my tran­si­tion to a “career”: I take my clothes off for money.

This is me–or was me, originally–done by the fan­tastic Sally Warren. I was hanging in a gallery (and may well still be)!

No, you (prob­ably) won’t be seeing me in pasties any­time soon—I’m a live model. This means that I take off all my clothes in front of a bunch of strangers and stand (or sit, and lie) around while a circle of artists draws me.

Just to clarify a few things: I model for pro­fes­sional artists and stu­dents, not for some random dude with a pack of crayons and black satin sheets. Poses aren’t typ­i­cally very “sexy”, and if they’re explicit, that’s only inci­dental. The entire process of mod­eling, in fact, isn’t nearly as sexy as most people think it is—the most com­fort­able and natural-looking posi­tions are often those that put the most intense strain on your body, it’s often too cold (or too hot) in the room, var­ious appendages will fall asleep left right and centre, and you need to be con­stantly thinking of what your next pose will be. There aren’t drop-dead-gorgeous “models” wan­dering around in the buff all the time; figure drawing is less con­cerned with phys­ical beauty than it is with the line and shape of the body (and all its varied imper­fec­tions). Often the most inter­esting models are over­weight, wrinkly, extremely ath­letic, or strangely shaped, and models wear robes during breaks. It doesn’t pay par­tic­u­larly well, and it’s def­i­nitely not glamorous.

Why do I do it, then? Ini­tially, I tried it because it was some­thing I’d never tried before, and some­thing that scared me, which I count as a decent ratio­nale for doing almost any­thing. I so whole­heart­edly believe that you’ll only grow and become a better person if you’re con­stantly finding your bound­aries and pushing them. I’ve never been ter­ribly self-conscious, but the first time I dropped trou in front of a silent-as-a-tomb room, full of strangers, I was pet­ri­fied. Not only did I have to get naked, but I also had to come up with a variety of poses, hold my body com­pletely still, and make sure not to giggle, fall over, or fall asleep. (Later, of course, I’ve done all of these things.)

Once the ini­tial terror wore off, though (and it never totally wears off—I’m still shy the first instant I take off my robe in front of a new group of people), I came to love mod­el­ling. As a cre­ative person, it allowed me to simul­ta­ne­ously act as muse and as col­lab­o­rator: I create poses with my body, and the artists turn me into art. It gave me a better sense of myself and my body: what it looks like, what it feels like, how it moves, how flex­ible it is, and how to stand in the exact same posi­tion for an hour without falling over. (The trick is tiny, tiny, imper­cep­tible shifts in your weight, by the by.) I learned not to care as much what other people thought, or saw; there was one man who con­sis­tently drew me about thirty pounds heavier than I actu­ally was, and I learned not to take it per­son­ally. I became more com­fort­able in my own skin, and more sure of myself. Mod­el­ling made me feel strong, sexy, and self-assured.

People often ask me if there isn’t a power imbal­ance that happens—don’t I feel degraded somehow, when a whole roomful of (clothed, mostly silent) strangers is sit­ting around staring at me, naked and posing for them? And actu­ally, I’ve found it’s rather the reverse—typically, the power in the room is all mine. I have an entire room fol­lowing my lead: they flip pages when I change posi­tions, they talk to me if I’m feeling chatty (usu­ally I’m not), and they draw what I make for them to draw.

I was once mod­eling for a group in Mahone Bay, and, during a break, one of the artists men­tioned that he rec­og­nized my logo, tat­tooed to my shoulder blade—he’d emailed me just the day prior asking about having a web­site built. We later met up to dis­cuss the project, and I was a touch con­cerned there might be an odd sort of power imbal­ance (very few of my clients have seen me naked). As it turned out, I was com­pletely com­fort­able with the meeting, and there was no per­cep­tible ten­sion what­so­ever. Quite often, boys have been hes­i­tant to talk to me or even make eye con­tact, but I’ve never had anyone treat me with any­thing less than the utmost respect.

Done by a stu­dent at the ani­ma­tion school in Truro–their work is far more gesture-based and often times less “artistic”. (I’m not sure who drew this, as a friend found it in their exhi­bi­tion and took a photo for me. There are prob­ably images of me all over the province at this point.)

Since I sold my car, I haven’t had much oppor­tu­nity to do any mod­el­ling, as I typ­i­cally did it in Mahone Bay and Truro, and I’ve come to realize how much I miss it—both for how it made me feel about myself, and for the way it allowed me time out to think about my work. It was a sort of brutal form of med­i­ta­tion, espe­cially the longer poses, and it helped to focus on some­thing other than the searing pain in my third ver­te­brae from the twist in my back, or the way my leg was spon­ta­neously shaking from the stress. I’d work through design prob­lems in my head as I was holding posi­tions, then scribble sketches on scrap bits of paper when­ever I had a break. I can’t tell you the number of designs that rooted from this process.

Some­times, it really helps to get out of your com­fort zone, and your usual work­space (both phys­i­cally and men­tally), in order to gen­erate a solution.

So, if you’re a random dude with a box of crayons and black satin sheets, drop me an email! I need to get naked to jump-start the cre­ative process.

Tags: life, misc, process