What did I think this would be like? The question echoed in my mind until it became funny. I needed to laugh without actually laughing, though: I was not allowed to move.

Nude modeling was not what I had imagined. When I signed on for a class benignly dubbed "Life Drawing" at Zoll Studio in Lutherville, I was thinking in grand terms about the role of the nude model in the history of art. I was definitely not focusing on the physicality of being splayed on a platform in front of anyone who thought "Life Drawing" sounded like an interesting way to spend an evening.

Stillness was hard work. In college, I'd once thought I'd earn a couple of easy credits by taking a meditation class. The immobility was oppressive. Somehow I'd forgotten that experience until the very moment I began to repeat it, with the added horror of being completely naked.     

To distract myself, I stared at a painting of a sheep at the far end of the room. Gazing at the sheep's hindquarters, I began to see bearded faces: a clown, Edgar Allan Poe, Dostoevsky's Ivan. This eventually proved unnerving, so I moved on to dreaming up alternate titles for the class, settling on "Most Embarrassing Way to Get a Cramp."

I'd signed up for three rounds of this—one night each week, three hours each night. On the first night, I idiotically agreed to hold a three-tiered pose: My arms were elevated on a tall box, my butt was poised on a short stool, and my feet were twisted up on an even lower chair. The position seemed comfortable at first. But when I rose to put on my robe for a break after twenty minutes, I nearly fell off the platform. My right leg was completely numb.

On her website, a San Jose, California, model named Iona Lynn lists some attributes required for posing nude. Among them are flexibility, strength, and mild insanity. I heartily agree, and have another quality to add: fearlessness. I was a women's studies minor, and I try not to buy into fashion-magazine ideas of beauty. Nevertheless, when I stood in front of the class, I felt as if every eye in the room was scrutinizing my weird scar, faded tattoo, and stretch mark. One artist in particular, an attractive young art instructor named Palden Hamilton, made me conscious of my Buddha-like belly. I noticed that a woman at the back of the room was painting a pig. She reassured me she wasn't painting me. I wasn't so sure.

In her book The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf asserts that there is a "double standard for men's and women's nakedness … that bolsters power inequalities." Film theorist Laura Mulvey observed that women in film are often presented as mere eye candy. She called the phenomenon the "male gaze," and others have made comparisons to the fine arts. Nude models throughout history have largely been female, after all, and the artists that portray them have mostly been men.

Obviously, things have changed since the time of Jean Auguste Ingres' The Turkish Bath. Once you've thought about the historic imbalance, however, it's difficult to ignore. I wanted to find out if nude modeling felt objectifying in the flesh.

Matt Zoll, the studio's owner, seemed to read my mind: He looked around the art space cluttered with easels and chairs and assured me, "I've been doing life drawing from the age of 13. I always knew the difference between nudity for art, and sexualized or exploitative nudity like you might see in pornography."  

As I posed, I ran through all these things in my mind. Then I realized that fretting about objectification was probably making me look cantankerous and puffed up like a weird bird. Then again, the artists themselves looked like strange birds, bobbing their heads rapidly between me and their canvases, sketchbooks, and computerized drawing pads.

The idea of a digitized version of my nakedness scared me. Two of the artists in attendance the first night were video game designers. The female characters I'd seen in video games were lithe, large-breasted warriors. Surely my proportions must have disappointed these two. But the second night, one of the video game guys—his name was Greg Barley—was back. He couldn't have hated me that much.

I realized that there was another perspective from which to view female nudity: empowering. Given many cultures' brutal control of women's bodies, being nude could be construed as an act of political agency. Maybe my curves could do some good. Perhaps there would soon be a video game starring a Rubenesque girl with a faded tattoo and a weird scar.  

By the third and final night, however, political agency was beginning to feel elusive and naive, as incongruent with the experience as feminism and high art. My right leg was once again numb. Gripping a long staff, I must have looked like a naked shepherd, a thought that occurred to me as I stared at the now much-hated sheep painting.

Still, after nearly nine hours of glowering on freeze frame, I was slightly more comfortable. The easy atmosphere of the studio and kindness of the students and instructors was helping me relax. And as I did, I began to find a secret pleasure in the experience. None of the artists knew that I'd been up there each night passing judgment on the world of art, as they passed judgment on their creations, and perhaps on me. Even nude, we all have something that can't be scrutinized: No amount of gazing can reveal the contents of our thoughts. Plus, some of the drawings, especially Palden's and Greg's, were quite lovely. They made me almost fond of my paunch.

When the session was over, I walked into the dressing room and locked the door behind me. Then I broke out laughing. Was I afraid of someone seeing me dressing? As I left, I wondered how much I had really learned. If I was still locking doors, was I still the paradox of shame and self-righteousness that I'd been when I walked in?

I left much as I had come, but I was slightly more brave, and carried a new understanding of the physical toll exacted in the name of beauty. Above all, I'd learned something of the inscrutability of the mind, and of what can be saved for oneself.

—Molly O'Donnell


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