Life drawing diaries
by Ayla Melville
I’m standing outside Cloak on Cheltenham Road. The lights are off, and there’s no one around. Why it’s so embarrassing to show up to a venue too early or when it’s closed, I’ll never know—but it is. I get as far as fishing my phone out of my pocket when I hear boots approaching.
J is walking towards me (thank God).
“I don’t think anyone is here yet,” I laugh nervously, trying to act nonchalant and like I’ll easily adjust to a change of plans (I won’t).
“They always open up late. I’m sure they’ll be here soon,” she reassures me. The part of me that demands knowing what is going on at all times is comforted. But now, the tiny glimmer of hope in me that I won’t have to draw has died.
I don’t think J realised when I told her that I can’t draw, I was not being modest. However, “an evening of life drawing” sounded very cultured to me, and I have often worried that I’m not taking full advantage of living in a city that offers so much variety in creative experience. So, artist or no artist, I said I’d go.
J lights a cigarette, and I ask to see the sketchbook that is poking out of her tote bag. This is a mistake. Her sketches are incredible. And they confirm the answer to a question I’ve felt too stupid to ask – the models are indeed going to be nude. I’d considered Googling it earlier but had felt childish, and anyways, did it really matter? I may have been raised to view nudity, revealing clothing, raunchy magazine covers, and explicit scenes in films as dirty and inappropriate, but I’d done years of de-conditioning myself since then. Nudity no longer implied something provocative to me, so why look it up?
The manager arrives, and we stand aside to let them unlock the door. Once J finishes her cigarette, we head in, grab a bottle of wine from the bar, and enter the backroom. Sunken leather sofas, tables, chairs, and pillows surround a pouffe with a blanket over it. We choose one of the sofas, and I immediately regret it. I’ve sunk so low that my elbows are touching the seat part. I am already entering this situation at a disadvantage; I don’t need additional limitations.
I pour us both generous glasses of wine and realise I am sweating. The room has filled up fast. I check out the other attendees. Middle-aged men with long hair and woolly jumpers are pulling out watercolours, girls with short fringes and Lucy & Yak jackets are fishing charcoal from pencil cases, a white man in his late 50s stands against one of the walls in a sarong.
Again: a white man in his late 50s stands against one of the walls in a sarong.
J nudges me and asks if I am okay.
“Yeah! I’m excited!” I reply, busying myself with retrieving a loose pen from my bag. Sarong-man steps over to the pouffe and strips off, taking his first pose of the evening. Even though he is the one standing exposed, I am the one who feels naked. I avert my eyes from certain areas for the allotted time, trying to teach myself how to capture the crook of an elbow, the curve of an ear, wondering all the while if I am the only one feeling repulsed.
The second model is a white transgender woman. I relax immediately. Her curly hair falls well past her shoulders. She has removed the seat and is lying on a blanket on the floor. Her face is flushed, and her hands shake slightly in the position she holds them. How interesting that society focuses so much on the perpetuated fear of cis women against trans women sharing their spaces, as opposed to recognising the fear of trans people existing in any space. No part of me views the model—or the following one, a young white woman—through a lens with any provocative or sexual connotation. But when the man stood in front of us, sarong cast on the chair, I’d immediately felt there was a sexual component, something to reject or be repulsed by. Turns out this was not an experience unique to me.
In the article “The Nudity Effect on Men Versus Women,” Lisa Wade explores the idea that a “presumably heterosexual” man experiences a world that presents him with images that legitimise and encourage his lust. A woman, on the other hand, is taught she is the object of this lust. Wade goes on to explain a series of interviews held by sociologist Beth Eck, who asked men and women to look at naked images of both sexes and recorded their reactions. When naked women were shown, men commented on their attractiveness, whereas women tended to compare themselves to the figure and confessed feeling inadequate or superior. When the naked men were shown, the men rushed to express disinterest or confirm their heterosexuality, but interestingly, the women were much more unsure in their reactions.
Eck explains that this may stem from women’s unfamiliarity with taking on the “masculine role.” Those women that felt desire experienced a mixture of guilt and shame tied to it, and those who didn’t felt complete rejection and repulsion at the image. This is such a contrast to the way they responded to images of their own sex. Eck explains this too: “When women view the seductive pose of the female nude, they do not believe she is ‘coming on to’ them. They know she is there to arouse men. Thus, they do not have to work at rejecting an unwanted advance. It is not for them.”
Identifying as a queer woman, I would’ve assumed that my reactions would’ve differed from those explained in the article—but I resonated with the other women’s perspectives. I feel oddly sorry for sarong-man. I’d considered him exhibitionist, but how could I not? Through my own experiences, I’ve been conditioned to view men’s nudity in public settings as threatening. Men will walk down the street on hot summer days with their shirts pulled off with swagger, knowing they are safe in doing so: “Look at me—whether you like it or not. Look at my skin. Love it or hate it, you looked at it.” Men have harassed me on nudist beaches in Greece, hoping that their naked approach will catch me off guard. Men have sat in my place of work for hours, waiting till they are alone with me before asking me out. The latter may not be naked, but they have certainly made me feel that way.
In reality, there was objectively nothing threatening about sarong-man—it was more what he signified for me. The brazenness of men. The discomfort I have endured in the presence of men. When it came to the women’s nudity, I shared in their feeling of vulnerability. I wonder how women felt, hundreds of years ago, posing for men in ateliers. Did they feel safe? Did they feel powerful? Did the other men in this room interpret the models differently to me? Did the women? Were they looking through the same lens that Wade and Eck had identified? I’m not saying men don’t struggle with body image or being objectified, but a man will never understand shame and fear in the same way a woman does. For a woman to stand in front of an audience, entirely naked, is to say, “I have been judged and sexualised by this—but I am more than this.”
Maybe my musings on nudity and gender were just to distract me from the fact that I drew a nipple that looked like an eye only five minutes in and immediately gave up. I am fully aware that if I was an actual artist, I probably wouldn’t have had time to consider any of these things. Or maybe everyone else in that room was used to thinking that way, and I was just very late to the party. Or maybe they had all risen above the question of nudity, gender, and sexuality, and focused merely on the bodies being bodies. Maybe they just saw the anatomical. I don’t think I’m quite as evolved as that (yet).
Image by lribeirofotografia for Pexels
Ayla Melville (she/her) is a queer writer based in Bristol, who writes personal essays, short stories and narrative nonfiction. She is currently finishing a degree in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of the West of England.