What I Uncovered When I Undressed

The surprising power of posing nude.

May 25, 2022

14 hours before disrobing

“You’ll do one twenty minute pose and see how you feel!” Bettie says into the phone. “What do you say? Tomorrow at ten AM?”

For over five years, I have waited for this chance. In five seconds, I am coming up with every excuse for why I need to turn it down. I run through all my rationale for a rain check: I haven’t practiced any poses; I’m not in the best shape of my life; I have plans tomorrow at noon, this might be tough to squeeze in; I’m not even a model.

“I’d love to—really!” I begin to stumble. “But I actually have plans already. What about next week?”

“Well, sure, Tatiana. This session happens every Sunday, so you can do it next week no problem.” Bettie seems unbothered. This invite is flexible anyway. An unpaid opportunity for me to get my foot in the door of the nude modeling world. A chance for “faculty to see if they want to hire you for a private gig,” as Bettie put it four minutes earlier.

Bettie is a seventy-something grandmother. She wears blue eyeliner. She’s been modeling nude for over forty years. Every Sunday, she poses for the faculty at a local art school that shares a parking lot with a Baptist Church. They’re always looking for new models to paint, draw, and sculpt. For the past week, I have been trying to reach Bettie to coordinate my guest appearance. Now that we’re finally on the phone, I feel unprepared for such a last minute plan. Tomorrow? Rip off my clothes? Let the world bear witness to my bareness?

My gut groans. It’s mad at me. It knows that if I don’t do this tomorrow, I’ll come up with an excuse for next week, too. Don’t be a wimp, it tells me. Go after what you want.

Before I can psych myself out, I change the course of my weekend, and maybe even my life.

“Actually, Bettie, you know what? I can move my plans. I’ll be there tomorrow.” My tone is confident. I want her to think I’m capable, but I also want her to remember that I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. “I’m nervous though!” I add with a forced laugh.

Bettie runs through what to expect. Bring a robe. Show up before the faculty. Expect mostly female artists but there might be some male ones, too.

“Don’t worry, they will all be super professional,” Bettie tells me. “You can even look them up on Google right now if you want to see what they’re like beforehand.” I find one of the male artists online and grimace when I see he’s around my father’s age. I get butterflies. Real, wing-flapping, stomach-dropping butterflies. But it’s too late to back out now.

Before we hang up, Bettie says, “Just remember what we practiced. You’re going to do great.”

Six months before disrobing

There’s seven other students in the classroom, ranging in ages from eighteen to seventy six. We’re here for an “Introduction to Art Modeling” workshop. Depending on who you ask, that means we’re all either artists ourselves or freaky exhibitionists. A mom in a knit cardigan sits next to me. I loosen up, relieved she’s here with me.

The lights are dimmed, save for a bright spotlight illuminating a small stage at the front of the room. There, Bettie sits clothed and cross-legged on a stool. She’s our instructor.

“At the end of the day, posing is all about the hands, the feet, and the story,” she tells us. “I always ask myself: what story do I want to be telling? What story am I giving the artist?” An easy approach, she suggests, is to use prompts from our daily routines. Like tying your shoe. Reading a book. Walking up the stairs.

For the next two hours, we take turns standing on stage, holding a five minute pose based on a peer-provided prompt (“You’re exhausted from a day out at work and dead on the couch!” “You’re weeding the garden!” ). We keep our clothes on, since “today is all about getting comfortable,” as Bettie says.

During my first pose, I’m instructed to “pull down a blind.” I raise my right arm and reach upwards. My back foot is on its tippy toe. By some modeling miracle, I manage to hold the pose without wobbling.

“Oh, yes, that’s lovely!” Bettie coos from the sidelines. She’s like our motivational nude modeling guru. She makes us feel confident. Like we can do this!

But the real reason I’m here is to prepare for what I’m not doing just yet. The clothes are still on; the comfort zone still exists—until suddenly, Bettie delivers the invite: “If you’d like to give a nude pose a try, call me. I host a Sunday figure drawing session where you can give it a shot.”

I save her number on my phone and leave it there. I don’t have the guts yet. I have been waiting for the guts to arrive for years, but they’re still not here. I am still a coward.

Five years before disrobing

I watch the girl on stage. She has giant breasts and a giant belly. As her body contorts, twists, turns, I draw her—curving my pink marker into hips; curling her hair with green pencil. She is around thirty. She is naked, fearless, unfazed. She is my artistic muse, my confidence inspiration.

Every Wednesday, I come to the same hole in the wall in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I pay $10 to draw live models and drink beer. Every Wednesday, I leave wishing I had the balls to bare it all for art’s sake.

I am not afraid to be naked. But I am afraid of the thought of getting naked in front of a group of strangers, exposed. Open to judgment. Unable to hide.

Figure drawing has become one of my favorite activities. For hours, I sit entranced, capturing the human form, exploring parts of the body I’ve otherwise ignored. The bend of an elbow. The shadow along the neck.

Each week, I admire the range of bodies that walk on stage. Flappy. Fit. Flexed. Flaccid. Hairy. Hairless. Long. Short. Dark. Light. The model always changes. The body transforms. The poses vary. The confident composure remains. That’s what I notice most. Their faces. Their fearlessness.

I am nineteen years old and I am afraid of being too thin, too fat, too tall, too flat. I see bodies I can never have on Instagram. I see bodies I can never have on my friends. Now, I see bodies I can never have on stage. The art models aren’t perfect, but they seem to be at peace with that. I want to be like this. I want to be able to confidently stand on stage and declare, This is my body. Draw it as you like.

10 minutes before disrobing

I’m still clothed, but I already feel naked.

Alone in the art school bathroom, I start to think of everything that could go wrong. What if I get up there and freeze? What if I turn beet red? What if the faculty artists think I’m terrible? What if Bettie has to save me?

I pull off my clothes and distract myself by folding each piece. I stare at my body in the mirror. I put on my teal satin robe and take a picture of this moment—of this random, wild turn of events. It’s a Sunday morning in May and I’m stripping down in front of strangers. After I pose, I’ll head to my bookclub meeting as though nothing happened. But something big is about to happen.

It’s just one twenty minute pose. I can do that. I can sit there and avoid eye contact and daydream until it’s over. I won’t have to worry about inventing a new pose again and again. In fact, this is ideal! An easy way to dip my toes in nude modeling.

Four minutes before disrobing

We’re all standing in the studio—me, robed; the artists, enviously in T-shirts and pants. They begin to set up their easels. They take out their supplies, pencils, paper, brushes.

“What do you guys want her to do? One twenty minute?” Bettie asks as she paces around with a cup of Dunkin’. My eyes nearly fly out of their sockets. The twenty minute pose cannot be optional.

The male artist I had Googled speaks first, “Let’s do four five minute poses. Get some variety.” The other artists nod eagerly. I nod-slash-spasm back. Naturally, I begin to blank on every pose I ever learned. I rake my mind for something. For a story to guide me. For anything. Nothing comes. So I decide I’ll sit there and stick with the original plan, pretending I’m deep in thought, pondering something profound—like what on earth will be my next pose.

Thirty seconds before disrobing

An internal pep talk:

No pressure. You’ll never have to see any of these people ever again. Just put on your brazen face and remember your hands and feet.

Five seconds before disrobing

“Alright, let’s get into it!” Bettie finds a seat in the back of the studio.

I let the robe fall. The artist looks up from behind their easels.

Two seconds into posing

Wearing nothing but a pair of red hoops, I walk to the stage at the front of the room. As though possessed by the naked model self-assured spirit, I show neither fear nor discomfort.

Standing in my most natural form, I feel kind of beautiful—and ironically, I feel really pure. No filter, no barrier, no cover up. Just me.

They call this “life” modeling. For the first time in all my figure drawing years, I understand why. On stage, I am existing and I am exposed. I sit down on the pedestal. I take a deep breath, lean my head into my left hand, and look towards the light.

Bettie, my cheerleader, hypes me up from the back, “Oh, that’s nice. Real nice.” She starts the timer. The artists hands start moving. I sink into the pose, alive and unafraid.

Ten minutes into posing

Maybe I spoke too soon. In pose two, I get a little ballsier and stay standing, pulling my hair into a ponytail—seemingly easy until my arms begin to burn. My knees start twitching. My left hand shakes. I totally forgot about my feet.

Perhaps the artists won’t notice, except they’re here to literally zero in on the details. But isn’t this what life is about? The imperfections? The twitches? The courage to keep trying anyway?

As I pose, I can’t control what I can’t control. I can’t stop my body’s involuntary movements. I can’t alter the way my bones look. But I can stand tall.

I straighten my spine as my knees twitch away.

Twenty minutes into posing

For my final pose, I sit down on the edge of the stage, as though ready to leap forward. My legs spread. My arms flex. I look directly at the artists and watch them watch me. There is no judgment. There is no sexual energy. I am just a life on stage and they are capturing it.

I wonder what nineteen-year-old me would think. I wonder if she’d envy me. I wonder how she’d sketch me. Would she see beauty? Bravery?

Would she believe that one day, she will?

Five seconds after posing

Bettie greets me with a grin as I jump off the stage. “I gotta say, of all the students in your class, you looked the most comfortable up there.” She turns to the faculty, “How about we give her some feedback?”

I stand there, still undressed, and receive my performance review.

“Do more poses that show off your length,” they say.

“We have no one that looks like you,” they add.

“Always remember your hands and feet,” Bettie throws in. “And follow the light!”

I nod along, smiling like a naked goof, wondering if they’ll invite me back to pose for a full class—and realizing I’m content even if they don’t. Of all the things I expected from exposing myself, confidence was not one of them. Yet I still feel it as I slide back into the robe and head back to real life.

Publishing a (very) personal essay: I’m not just talking about the piece above. Back in February, I finally wrote an essay I had been avoiding for months—one that details my breakup and my faith. In the spirit of brazenness, I challenged myself to not only grow the cojones to write it, but also pitch it to a publication. Last week, the essay got published. It was a mini milestone in my (non-copy) writing career, and I’d be honored if you checked it out here.
Advocating for myself: I do not like looking “weak”—especially at work. A year ago, I would never dare say, “I don’t have the bandwidth” if offered another project on top of my full load. I would have said “yes” to prove I can do it all. Two weeks ago, I communicated I was at capacity when I was almost brought onto another intense project. I stood up for what I could realistically take on. And it was so incredibly well received it felt the opposite of weak.

What’s your recent Brazenface breakthrough?

This is a moment where you felt fear and chose courage anyway. Where you put on your brazen face and did something different, something new, something scary. I’m planning a special newsletter, and would love to feature (and celebrate!) some reader breakthroughs. If you’d like to share one of yours, leave a comment or reply to this email.