At first, my clothes stay on. “I can just imagine you naked if you’d prefer?” says illustrator and graphic artist Aley Wild. I’m the first to Wild’s booth at Sydney’s showcase of independent artists, The Other Art Fair, where people can pose for a take-home nude portrait, with the option to stay dressed and let Wild disrobe them (with her mind).
“No, I want to do the naked one,” I say. “But can I do it with clothes on first?”
I’m stalling to do a vibe check. Life modelling is not sexual but a similar consent framework applies and I’m clear on two things, in particular, that I wasn’t when I was younger. The first is that a “hell yes” can turn to a “hell no” on a dime and needs no explanation (even to yourself). The second: trust your gut.
Wild passes with flying colours but the privacy screens have gaps and there’s a two-metre-ish opening towards the front to ensure her booth stays visible to drop-ins. The room is packed with arty hotties on the prowl: the fair’s entire point is to have a thorough stickybeak. To do the portrait I need to relinquish the assurance of privacy.
Wild nips behind the posing couch to adjust a screen. It threatens to topple; we laugh and steady it. Next thought: what if it topples when I’m naked? It would make a calamitous clattering on the polished concrete floors. Would I be my best self and yell “as you were!” to onlookers, perhaps to a round of applause? Or shriek and use my hands to cover what flesh I could, like Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give when Jack Nicholson ambles into a full frontal? It’s anyone’s guess.
“How should I sit?” I ask Wild from the couch (still clothed). She tilts her head. “Maybe go more sideways, something contrapposto?” I can’t remember the last time someone asked me to do something with my body using a word I didn’t understand.
When clothes-off time comes, I babble. Truly banal stuff. I have zero idea why I can’t STFU but later I realise that undressing silently would have felt like leaning into a strip-tease. Wild chats back. She’s from San Francisco (where public nudity was legal until 2012) and “wasn’t raised with an idea that nakedness was shameful”.
I wasn’t raised in San Francisco and when I step towards the couch, I leave behind a clammy foot outline. My nerves are steeled recalling an interview with writer Lena Dunham, who was naked on TV series Girls quite a lot. Dunham feared people would say awful things about her, and then they did. All of it and worse. But the world didn’t end; nothing even fell over. The bad thing happened and it wasn’t that bad.
As I sit, Wild says “beautiful”. Not in an awkward “you are beautiful” way but how people say “lovely” when a plan has just been settled. It puts me at ease because I was worried I’d disappoint. I’d be too flabby or formless or wouldn’t pose with enough flair. But what I have, what I am, and what I offer in my rawest state beneath these frankly-quite-brutal lights, will do just fine. The drawing is nearly half-done!
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Wild’s portraits are speed-drawn in a bold, graphic-art style. When a shadow suddenly looms dark and large at the screen’s edge, she turns swiftly and holds her hand up. “Sorry, no, sorry, can you wait?” My gratitude for her ability to multitask is disproportionately strong. She can draw me and protect me. Fuck, this is some quick onset Stockholm Syndrome. How long have I been sitting here naked?
Wild’s eyes flit to my body and back to her paper again and again. I go almost woozy with how not-dreadful this is making me feel because dreadful is how I often feel when I look at my body. The specificity of how I’m being objectified here is so new. She’s not seeing what I see and the eye of the beholder is kind. A final flourish and she sprouts a tender, satisfied smile.
My clothes are back on ultra-fast. A stall nearby is doing tattoos and I nearly sign up, clearly on one of those weird highs where friends warn you “don’t make any decisions for a while”.
I don’t have a platform terrifying enough to emancipate myself from others’ judgement, as Dunham did. As for body positivity and radical self-love, I am supportive of others’ quest but I’ve never quite fathomed how to get there myself. Experiences like this give me a chance, because the only way to the body is through the body. And some phototropic instinct in me knows it, arcing us towards the light.
