Tackling teens’ body issues with a pencil and paper
As campaigners say life drawing can counter harmful stereotypes, Laurel Ives takes her daughter to a session
It’s a rainy, stormy evening in January and Louisa, my 14-year-old daughter, is somewhat reluctantly accompanying me to a life drawing class. She’s a keen artist, who’s just started her GCSE art course, but her only experience of life drawing has been with a clothed male model. This evening the female model will be naked, and Louisa will get to draw her… warts and all.
“Eeeww,” is her initial reaction. “Why would I want to see some lady’s naked bits?”
This is precisely the sort of attitude campaigners such as Anne Noble-Partridge of London Drawing and Esther Bunting of Spirited Bodies are trying to counter.
They believe nude life drawing classes can be immensely helpful for today’s teens, under siege from the perfect bodies on shows such as Love Island and social media platforms. Some private and a few state schools offer nude life drawing, but the campaigning duo believe it should be an option for all secondary students. They will no doubt be glued to Mary Beard’s BBC1 two-parter on the history of the nude in Western art which starts on Feb 3, and is accompanied by BBC4’s Life Drawing Live! on Feb 4.
Maybe they’re right; I’m about to find out. On the way, I ask Louisa if she thinks that seeing normal bodies unfiltered and unedited could be helpful for today’s young people? “Dunno,” comes the reply. So far, so teen.
We arrive and the students, all adults, are filing in. Noble-Partridge doesn’t have an age restriction at her classes, but it’s mostly adults who come. She also holds special classes for secondary school art teachers and their pupils. My plan had been to watch, being hopeless at drawing myself, but she insists I join in.
Louisa and I set up our easels, and the life model, a young, trendy Aussie with blue hair, disrobes and takes up her first pose. Louisa is totally unfazed and begins to sketch. We start with a quick warm-up, then do several speed drawings. The model assumes different poses and Noble-Partridge has lots of useful tips for us along the way.
It’s a unique way to interact with a naked person. Since your focus is entirely on drawing, all judgment is dispensed with. Folds of flesh are only important in so much as whether you can capture them on the page. A breast is just a wobbly line or two on the paper. As it happens our model, a dancer, is toned and lithe, yet even her youthful body has its imperfections. And these are far more interesting to draw.
Really looking and drawing requires concentration, and after an hour we’re ready for tea and biscuits.
I tell Noble-Partridge how unusual the experience of drawing a naked body feels to a novice like me. She’s not surprised.
“Nudity has become very sexualised in our society, yet if you are drawing, it’s a safe space, and there is respect. When teens come there might be a bit of awkwardness or giggling at the beginning, but soon they are distracted. It’s very mindful, you can’t think about anything else.”
She also thinks it is useful for young people to see that it is acceptable to be all sorts of shapes and sizes.
“Through life drawing, teens get a more rounded view of bodies; they see older, younger, heavier and thinner people and there’s no judgment. It’s a neutral setting.”
Sophie Jimenez has seen first-hand how helpful life drawing classes can be. She is head of art at Edmonton County School, a state secondary in London.
“A lot of private schools have life drawing classes,” she says, “but we don’t have the resources, so I sometimes take groups to Anne’s classes. Most of our kids aren’t middle-class, and I want to give them some of the same opportunities. One time I asked Anne to book a heavier model. She was a really voluptuous woman, and they didn’t know where to look. There was giggling to begin with, but within five minutes they were as focused and matter-of-fact as if they were drawing a bowl of fruit.”
That sparked a conversation about the portrayal of women’s bodies in porn.
“One of the students drew the boobs really badly, and another one commented, ‘You should go on Pornhub a bit more!’” says Jimenez. “Another boy said: ‘Miss, they all have hair down there!’ If their only interaction with nakedness is on a website like Pornhub then they think that women are hairless. We don’t face up to it in this country, but they are looking at this stuff, so having these sorts of conversations is really important.”
Would Jimenez book a male model? “I suggested it, but some of the boys refused to come, saying their friends would accuse them of being gay. I know in some more ‘right-on’ schools this wouldn’t be an issue, but many of our kids come from religious families.”
Esther Bunting, of Spirited Bodies, who is a former life model herself, is campaigning alongside Noble-Partridge for more children to get the opportunity to do nude life drawing. She set up body positivity classes where she interviews the model as part of the drawing session. Bunting hopes one day to take her classes into schools to the less advantaged children who really need them.
“I talk to the models about how they got into modelling, how it’s changed the way they feel about themselves and their bodies – there is always an interesting story.”
One time she booked a plus-size model for a group of teens between the ages of 14 and 19. “She talked about what a tough time she had as a young woman. How she was teased, and she hated her body, and it wasn’t until she was in her mid-20s that she was able to cope with it.
“Well, the girls had so much admiration for this brave woman. They crowded around her, asking questions at the end of the session, because they saw her as a role model. A moment like that can make a profound impression.”
I ask our model, Alana, what drew her to life modelling. “I first started doing this when I was in college, to earn a bit of extra money. I’m a contemporary dancer and it’s a bit similar – I guess physicality and performance are in the job description.”
At the end of the class, Louisa and I collect our drawings and head home. I ask her if the nudity made a difference to her experience.
“It was fun, but no big deal. After all, she’s a woman, so it’s not exactly strange to me.”
One thing I took away from the class is that it’s not easy to get teenagers to talk about this stuff (“it’s embarrassing!”), which I suppose is the point of having the experience.
After some gentle nudging, Louisa finally concedes: “I can imagine it would be good for friends with body issues. We’re very kind to each other, but some of my friends judge themselves harshly. It’s hard not to compare yourself with what you see online. Seeing normal bodies could be helpful.”
To me, that sounds like a win. As a result of taking the class together, Louisa thought a bit more about body issues, and I realised that I can draw (a bit).
‘Seeing normal bodies could help girls stop judging themselves too harshly’
‘They see older, younger, heavier and thinner people and there’s no judgment’