While reading Guy Trebay's latest over at the NYT, Backstage, It's Down to Bare Essentials, and while watching the season finale of Project Runway, I was reminded again of the very different way you come to see people After Art Classes*.

Trebay writes,

What is strangest, perhaps, ... is that being around rooms filled with unclad women and men is anything but stimulating. At least this is true for people in the fashion business, who are either puritanically decorous about nudity or so involved with clothes that often they can barely see the naked limbs for all the glorious weeds. And it is true for me.

And me.

Living here in Utah, and having many friends that go to BYU, I cannot count the number of times I have had to field questions regarding the nude figure drawing classes held regularly at UVU or at the Springville Art Museum.

For those of you who aren't aware, it is still 1825 in my neck of the woods, and the sight of the milky mile above the knee is still cause for some alarm in certain circles. Cover your shame! Hue, and also cry.

Can we just get something straight? Figure drawing classes are the most un-erotic places on the whole earth. For all the nudity, the models' curvaceous forms and wiggly bits may as well be built out of legos. Because that is exactly what nude models are: building blocks. When you are looking at a nude, charcoal in hand, newsprint at the ready, all you are doing is trying to figure out how they are put together so you can reconstruct them on the page.

Figure drawing classes are like being at the doctor's office for a physical, and while the nurse might be hot, there is really nothing exciting about having a gloved finger jammed up your inguinal canal.

"Um... I felt like a table lamp."

So says my friend Amy who has modeled for the past two semesters. Her roommate, Megan, concurs. "You don't even feel like a person. You're like... a statue -- no, you're like a cow skull with an old tin pitcher. You're a still life -- except, after you're done you get to walk around and see the people who really botched it, or who really nailed your likeness, right down to your weird, saggy, left boob."

And can I just say, from the business side of the art-board, that your saggy left boob is really all we're looking at. And actually, less the boob, and more the sag. How will I draw your sag? How does it compare to your perk? How will I contrast the two? Chalk on tone? Or erase out the highlights? Scumble or Smudge? Your boob, real and spectacular as you may think, is hardly ever entering into the picture. And that goes for you, Mr. Prince-Albert-sans-can, too. Keep your pants on, for all I care, just show me your core shadows.


*I get the feeling that this could be a regular topic here. "After Art Classes: a look at the way art education forever warps your world view."