I Stood in Front of Thirty People Naked: It Was Okay

In adulthood, there are only three times you are ever really naked: taking a shower, in between getting undressed and dressed, and having sex. For something so natural, nakedness has always felt forbidden to me; I come from a prudish, conservative family where bodies are rarely openly acknowledged. So for my mother, trying to understand why I attend life drawing every Tuesday is a difficult concept. She pleads with me to draw people who wear clothes instead.

One night on FaceTime, after accidentally flashing sketches of naked people on my desk, my mother declared, “Promise me you’ll never be a nude model at that school of yours.” Being the youngest of four girls, I got away with a lot. My parents were worn out by the time they got to me: not having a physical baby book, baptising my sister twice instead of me, and, from time to time, leaving me at places. Their nonchalance extended to not imposing many rules when it was just me in the house after my sisters had long since moved out. When a rule was made, I always broke it. So, of course, I signed up to be a nude model.

My relationship with my body is not particularly unique: for the majority of my life, I didn’t think much about it. I always ran naked through the halls of our house and back garden with my pink rain boots on, holding onto that childhood ease when your body just is.

But like so many girls, I felt the shift in my attitude towards my figure when it started to change in my mid and late teens. However, it wasn’t weight that poisoned my self-image; it was quiet comparisons of what our bodies are supposed to grow into. 

As a result, I couldn’t show my body to anyone in high school. I hated being touched and kissed in the light of day. Once, I made a guy kiss me in his dark closet on his pile of unfolded school uniforms with a belt protruding into my back. It was this over his bed, which was illuminated by an immense amount of light from his windows. I did not want him to see me with a shirt off. At seventeen, I was the least confident person I knew. 

Not much shifted in my perception of myself when I entered St Andrews. I just learned how to pretend to be confident and not care when taking my clothes off in the presence of a man, or look the other way in front of a full-length mirror. It was easier to avoid my body altogether than think about it.

I signed up to nude model not just to defy my mother but also to confront and get over my own issues. I spent two weeks sleeping naked, walking around my room naked, and replicating naked poses from my Pinterest in my mirror, getting familiar with a part of myself I had never truly known. I had never been naked in the company of my own presence so much before, and I started noticing the small details of my body: how my left hip curves slightly more than my right and how my chest is layered with more freckles than my face. 

On 1 April, I walked down South Street in a trench coat with nothing underneath. However, I was not entirely naked when I dropped my trench on stage in School VI. I wore my black flats, beaten up from tripping all over the cobblestone in this town, and a pearl ribbon necklace.

I went, I posed, and I almost fell asleep with my legs dangling in the air, my hands beneath my chin on the couch. I wasn’t thinking about my body. I wasn’t listening to the music the live performer beside me played. I was just there. I was just existing. Afterwards, I went to St Mary’s Library (still naked under my trench) to finish an essay.

Truthfully, I thought this experience would be something monumental in my life: this girl from Texas, finally learning to fully love and accept her body by boldly standing naked in front of so many people. But from what I learned, the spectators were not needed to accomplish this. All along, my body had always been loved.

After all of this, I can only summarise my experience of being a nude model in just a few words: I stood in front of thirty people naked. It was okay.

Drawing by Euan Bond