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Artfully Undressed

The nightmare goes something like this: You walk into class late, or you raise your hand to say something, and all of a sudden you realize 30 pairs of eyes are on you. And it's not because you interrupted a key moment in today's lecture or because everyone is expecting a soundbite of brilliant commentary from you. It's because you're naked.

But on any given day in Brooks Hall, the University building where studio art classes are held, this is no nightmare. It's the day job of student models who have chosen to part with their clothes for two and a half hours and pose au natural for an art class.

For the mere sacrifice of checking self-consciousness and fear of recognition at the door ("Hey, aren't you in my psych discussion?") these nude models rack up $16 an hour for their services. But their job is no day-on-the-beach swimsuit calendar photo shoot or cakewalk down Versace's star-studded runway.

These models must remain perfectly still for hours and then recreate the same pose after a break - right down to the minutia of tendons and muscles tensing into perfect position. They also face the possibility of running into the artists anywhere on Grounds.

"It's really painful if you don't know what you're doing," said second-year College student and model Suzanne Platt. "People don't understand how much pain you can put yourself through if you mess up a pose."

Sipping an Alderman Cafe concoction, complete with a whipped cream crown, Platt has as few inhibitions about displaying her body as she does about what she puts into it.

"I drink whole milk, I eat fatty foods, I don't exercise," she concedes with a sigh. "I should exercise, just in general."

Still, none of this gives Platt a moment's pause when it comes to disrobing in front of a University drawing class or one of the three local artists' groups she poses for regularly. She has reached a state of Lady Godiva-like self-consciousless.

"When I first started modeling, I would make sure I had my robe within two feet," said Platt, who would quickly cover herself at the end of a pose. "But now I'll take five minute breaks, and I won't even bother with the robe."

Though Platt says she always has been this comfortable with her body, for others, the idea of posing nude represents one of the last stumbling blocks on the road to unabashed liberty.

"I'd been painfully modest for most of my childhood," fourth-year College student Terri Dannsaid. Baring all the first time was no easy task for her, but she soon was able to rationalize her clothes-less status. "After the first 30 seconds, they've already seen you naked," she said.

Third-year Engineering student Kurt Ponsor was able to allay his initial inhibitions after he spoke to a friend in the class he posed for.

"I realized I wasn't the most self-conscious person in the room," he said. "they are just as worried about their artwork."

Art Prof. Elizabeth Schoyer noted that the shock value of students who sign up to pose can leave her class without a model when those Venus or David would-bes pull out at the last minute.

"When it really gets down to doing it, they get nervous about it," Schoyer said.

Fourth-year College student Alex Toma almost was one of those students who backed out at the last second, but ultimately she found the experience to be less exhilarating than expected.

"I thought it'd be a more personal experience," Toma said. "I felt almost like a bunch of shapes and circles and lines and curves. It didn't ever feel like they were looking at me as a naked woman."

The idea of being objectified raises questions for several models, and not necessarily in the sexually connoted sense of the word.

Toma's boyfriend of a year and a half, a studio art major, was less worried that artists would see his girlfriend nude than he was that they would only see her as a female body.

"He sees Alex - he really knows who I am," she said. "You can actually see my personality in his drawings."

Though Toma and her boyfriend normally don't discuss her modeling, he agreed to pose with her - clothed - for a session in Schoyer's class.

"He wanted to do it to see why I do it," she said. "He said it was boring. I think it was also because he was in the same room with me and he had to see what I do."

Schoyer says she has been apprehensive about using female models in class. She traces the concern back to an incident when a model of hers was laughed and pointed at on a bus by male students who had drawn her in an earlier class.

Ever since the incident, Schoyer now prefaces a nude model's appearance by emphasizing the value of having a real life subject to work from.

"It's to get them to realize that this is something some people are willing to do and others are not, and to realize that they should respect the students who go up and do this," she said.

As an added plan of attack, Schoyer advises her first-time models to stare the artists down. The method has worked for many models, including Dann, who used the eye-contact weapon during her first assignment.

"I winked at one of the guys below me, and he dropped his chalk," she said, still smiling over the incident.

That reaction is also typical of reception outside the classroom, Platt said. She has found that the reaction to spotting her in other settings is generally split between people who are comfortable approaching her and those who pretend she doesn't exist.

"The first time I did a nude session, I walked in and I realized there was a girl from my German class," Platt said. "It was awkward not as much during the session, but during class simply because I didn't know how to react."

On the dating scene, however, the odds are tipped slightly in favor of the nude models.

"There is no better way to start a conversation in a bar or a coffee house - especially because [guys] get to tell all their friends that they're dating a nude model," Platt said.

"It's so much fun to tell people," Dann said. "It's kind of like an added ego stroke."

It may be fun to tell some people, but as far as Dann and Platt are concerned, their parents don't fall on that list. "My parents think I only do clothed modeling, and it needs to stay that way," Platt said.

The idea that these students have to conform to a traditional stereotype of airbrushed perfection is far from the reality of posing in the art studio.

"The beautiful thing about the artists is that you are beautiful regardless," Platt said. "They're not looking for a 6-foot, blonde, blue-eyed anorexic."

"The whole range of types is an interesting subject for" the students, said Art Prof. Phil Geiger. "It doesn't relate too much if you think of a Vogue magazine model."

Although both Platt and Toma have seen student-models who they say don't conform to a "typical" societal standard of the waif body type, Schoyer says most of the female students who model for her classes are very thin.

But whatever the models' body type may be, viewing the transformation of their figure into a work of art - via charcoal, pencil, paint or bronze - is one of the sweetest rewards.

"I did it to be immortalized on a canvas," Toma said. "It's neat to see yourself through other people's eyes"

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