Body of evidence

Recently I dreamt I was in a lovely garden, sitting at an easel, painting. An elderly couple came along and after a while I was suddenly, uncomfortably aware that I wasn’t dressed. I wore a sarong about my hips, but I was naked from the waist up. At this point I casually made an effort to position my arms so as to obscure my breasts from their view.

If the couple were aware of my semi-naked state they seemed unperturbed. I remember thinking “well, if they don’t care, why should I?” And I relaxed again. Then I woke up.

The most common interpretation of your average Naked Dream is that it’s a metaphor that exposes the dreamer’s perceived faults or feelings of vulnerability to some situation in their life. Normally this would be true, especially in my case - as I am literally plagued by recurring naked dreams, but I’m fairly certain that this time my subconscious was merely reflecting the fact that I had gone to bed the previous night, knowing I would start work on this very article the next morning.

The article being my candid documentation of my thought processes leading up to, during and after my appointment to pose nude for a professional photographer on the eve of my 49th birthday. Clearly, the writing of this piece has me a bit on edge. The peripheral fact that I’m about to get my kit off for posterity causes me nary a ripple of concern.

Gulp. Did I just use the word “ripple”? Oh my god, why did I want to do this again?

The desire to pose “artistically nude” for a talented photographer (and I don’t mean in one of those fuzzy, Vaseline-lens glamour shots they try to sell you in shopping malls, but for something that might actually end up in an exhibition) is something I’ve always wanted to do but somehow never had the opportunity.

Rose Cooper

Suddenly here I am, staring down the barrel at 50.

It’s now or never … isn’t it? After all, there’s this hideous beast following me, its ominous shadow looming over my shoulder, waiting to pounce. You may have heard of it - it goes by the rather serious handle of “gravity”. She’s really making her presence felt lately, and once this bitch takes hold completely, I’ll be forced to ditch any perception of myself as aesthetically-pleasing to the eye … won’t I? Computer says “yes”.

Denial notwithstanding, my decision was based on a determination to thumb my nose at society’s obsession with youth.

After all, I am not some pampered celebrity with my own stylist and personal trainer, am I? I don’t have a liposuction hose connected from my butt cheeks to my cheekbones, nor do I work out every day. I don’t even have fame or indeed infamy to add cache to my mystique.

I’m just an average, everyday 49-year-old mother-of-three who is fed up to the back teeth with not seeing her kind being realistically represented via the electronic or print media. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

A groundswell of collective shame accompanying ageing womanhood has built up in recent decades and I’ll be damned if I let it drag me under and force me to feel ugly, “less than” or irrelevant, merely because I’m no longer draped in the gleaming cloak of Youth (nor surgically altered to mimic it).

I’m sick of feeling bullied by what I am seeing in Hollywood movies and the media. What else can a girl do when she has run out of genuine role models? Become one, I guess. So I’m taking one for the team.

Instead of dragging my arse screaming and kicking into my 50th year on the planet I’m un-gritting my teeth, thrusting my chest out (literally) with pride and running joyfully, arms outstretched into the warm embrace of a life having been lived - with all the traces of that life, very evident on my flesh. Yes folks, this is a time to celebrate. Weeee! I feel great!

Well this was the theory anyway.

What remained to be seen was how it would pan out. First I needed a willing photographer.

As an actor, I mix in creative circles and while I’ve raised my hand a couple of times when photographer friends have put the call out for volunteer subjects, the phone never rang. Then Cait, a young actor friend of mine, posted some brilliant photographs of herself on Facebook. I connected with the images straight away and knew at once: I wanted to be shot by that guy.

Cait Shaw

The thing that impressed me most about the photos was his use of quirky angles and evocative lighting. If there were any “special effects” used, it was through the lens (e.g. in some cool, out of focus shots, she looked like a freaky alien).

I also noticed there was no post-production airbrushing of her skin (did I just hear a sharp, collective intake of breath?) Sure, the lighting enhanced the overall image and afterwards he did tweak the colour tones to ensure the subject didn’t (or did) blend into the background (depending on the look he was going for) but that’s neither here nor there. One particular image; a stunning, sharp black and white close-up shot of this girl’s slender torso, even revealed a tiny bit of dimpling on her tummy - thus bringing the surreal back to the realm of truth.

This was no smooth android version of “beauty”. Instead, our attention is drawn to the beauty of her healthy, human physique for what it was.

I wanted me some of that.

Cait assured me that Jason the photographer was always on the look out for “interesting” subjects, so I chased him up. And indeed, without even seeing me, he was very keen to get me naked. My reasons for wanting to do it reflected his reasons for wanting to take me up on it. The project was marinating with all the best possible intentions.

A few chatty emails later and we set a date a few weeks hence. Plenty of time to psyche myself up, or freak myself out. After all, I was basing my desire to do this, upon seeing nude images of an 18-year-old. There was always the danger that this might end up feeling a bit like, you know - seeing a dress on the store dummy and then trying it on under the fluorescent light of the dressing rooms and finding that it looks ridiculous on me.

When I realised how conflicted I felt about the reality of doing it, I knew I had to write about it.

So, before a picture was taken, and knowing that my “flaws” would not be digitally erased, I was committed to trying to find a public forum to display the images. If “beauty is truth” then I had to bite the bullet to allow the truth the chance to be perceived as beauty.

Slightly anxious that my wayward ego was leading me astray yet again, but determined that the fates had decided it was the right thing to do, I set about cementing my resolve. First, I told my friends what I was planning (it’s certainly harder to back out when you have witnesses).

The response was overwhelmingly positive. Some thought it sounded like fun … but most insisted they would never do it. Jason told me he had shot several women my age and older, in various stages of undress, but always under the condition that no one else in the world was to see the pictures. The air around me suddenly filled with the intoxicating scent of rebellion.

I guess I should put this “sacrifice” into proper perspective. Right off the bat I’m willing to concede that I’ve always been reasonably comfortable with my body.

Rose Cooper

As a young adult in the 1980’s, I seldom wore a bikini top at the beach. My first husband took a lot of nude photographs of me back then.

During my periods of singledom before and between husbands, I had numerous lovers and I was never one of those “walk-around-the-house-wrapped-in-a-sheet-like-they-do-in-the-movies” kinds of women. I figured that if we just had sex then walking around naked was no big deal.

Then there’s motherhood, which involves a lot of exposure, prodding, poking and feelings of vulnerability which I also took in my stride. I’m the proud mother of three strapping lads aged 22, 20 and 12. I unselfconsciously breastfed all three of my babies in public (and was thankfully never asked to refrain, or I certainly would have created a scene).

But, all of the above nudity was always in some sort of context.

As an actor, I seek to represent truth (which is kind of ironic when you consider how scalpel-happy they are in Hollywood) and I’ve also always had a pet hate for “gratuitous” nudity, but in the same breath I also despise “gratuitous covering up” (like that ridiculous aforementioned “sheet” thing).

I wanted photos that told a story about me; about my life as a woman, and about being “older”. Jason and I tossed some theme ideas around based on all of that and I started to think of my body as a canvas. This notion served to set my mind more at ease.

With that in mind I consulted Jason’s web page which is devoted to “Tips for Models”. It sets out quite bluntly the dos and don’ts for the aspiring nude subjects.

He recommends not wearing underwear to the shoot, to avoid marks. This was all very well and good but when it comes to older skin - everything leaves a mark. I donned a T-shirt and loosely wrapped a sarong about my waist and hoped for the best, but by the time I got to his place there were still marks around my belly, caused by the pressure of my seatbelt.

Jason’s “day job” is working in one of those aforementioned retail outlets on the weekends, but he packs his free time with as many diverse shooting opportunities as he can muster, building his oeuvre and reputation. He has more than 1000 Facebook friends, many of whom are of an exhibitionistic bent. All he has to do is put a call out for subjects willing to pose for his latest idea and he’s knocked over in the rush.

He hesitates to call himself an artist - because he feels it restricts his scope. “I got into photography because I get to do what I want and I’m not patient enough to paint,” he says, “I do what I do because I think it might look good and I want to find out. I shoot naked people because I just don't think boring clothes are interesting enough to warrant spending my free time on.”

Rose Cooper

He started out shooting musicians and concerts, which lead to him exploring some of the more alternative lifestyles connected with that. “And I did perhaps consider that occasionally (the majority of my shoots) would involve naked people.”

I found his candour refreshing. When I told him I was writing a story about this experience his response was, “Make sure you misquote the shit out of me, and make me out to be a complete psychopath”. We were clearly destined to be friends.

The day of reckoning arrived. I rocked up to Jason’s home in Sydney’s west and he came out to greet me. I hadn’t known his age then, but from his articulate emails and his demeanour I figured he was in his late 20s. A stocky fellow with long, flaming-red hair, pulled back into a ponytail and the area under his lower lip pierced - his smile oozed warmth. Inside the house I was greeted by his lovely friend Tracy, who is also his make-up artist.

We sat in the lounge while he took time to explain his method - first he’d take some headshots to ascertain my comfort level. Tracy applied some subtle make up and we slipped out to his carport-cum-studio to get to work. He flitted about, continually moving the lights and started snapping away, chatting amiably the whole time.

After about 20 minutes we went back inside to check the images on his laptop. I liked them immediately - and I usually hate my headshots. As far as I’m concerned, my face is my most aged feature, but he managed to find something beyond that. He remarked that I was “very self aware” and that he was confident this would go well. So now it was time to get down to business.

We had our “theme” in mind (which would involve paint) but he wanted to take a few glamour shots first. At his suggestion I brought props. A pair of black gloves, a hat and bowtie (for want of something less cliché to wear) and he set up a black backdrop with a box for me to sit on. Then, in one delightfully carefree motion, I untied my sarong and literally threw it aside.

There I was, nude, at 49, in front of someone young enough to be my son, and he was neither my lover nor my gynaecologist.

IT … FELT … GREAT!

Jason’s charming tripod-side manner put me at ease. He gave my physique the thumbs up. “Oh it’s so nice to photograph curves! I’m so sick of those stick insects with fake tits.” It was at this point that he revealed he’d shot for magazines like Ralph. Had he told me that earlier, I may have baulked, but to quote the wonderful Patrick Stewart: “It was too late, he’d already seen everything”.

I hadn’t really thought much about the “glamour” part of the shoot, but it was fun. Every woman needs to feel like a sex symbol at least once in her life (and the success of those aforementioned retail outlets would attest to this fact) but it wasn’t really why I was there. We went back to his lap-top and had a quick peek at those images - and I steeled myself for the inevitable feeling of confrontation. I was determined to suck it up and not cast too critical an eye over them. I did wince a bit though.

But now the real fun was about to start. Our theme idea was to cover me in foot prints and hand prints … to illustrate my journey on the planet. We then perused the net for landscape photos for inspiration (I really dug this way of working) and armed with ideas, we returned to the carport.

Clever Tracy had fashioned a mould of a small foot - and it was her job to first draw and then stamp little foot prints all over me. I won’t lie, I really enjoyed this part, it felt rather bohemian. I was really excited about becoming a human canvas. This wasn’t about my ego; this was about Jason’s art.

Rose Cooper

In fact, my ego really had to take a back seat. Jason would now be zooming his high powered lens directly onto my sun-damaged skin, the stretchmarks on my butt, my rather worn-out looking nipples (which had nourished my babies for a combined total of four and a half years) not to mention my pot belly and my hysterectomy scar. All of this would serve to add texture to the hills, and valleys.

When I rolled from my front to my back, there were sheet imprints on one of my breasts. The image that depicts this accidental marking of my skin, ended up being my favourite image. The marks conjure tyre tracks.

After the footprint shots, I showered and then I applied hand prints to my body with some bright blue house paint (as you do). This created a tribal vibe. After that particular set up I had to do a nudie run through his house, to get to the shower - without getting paint on anything. No biggie.

All told, I was there for about six hours. It was surreal, but I left feeling lighter than air. I don’t know if I’ve served my original purpose - to prove to other women my vintage that they should feel OK about their bodies, but I certainly proved it to myself. When Jason sent me his “best of” selection from the shoot, I resisted the urge to concentrate on my perceived flaws, and instead, I quite like most of them and even love a few of them - the “body-scape” pix, especially.

I’m keen to do more now. I mean really, who wouldn’t want to be a mountain range? I’m even willing to veer further into more risqué imagery if I get the opportunity. I don’t feel old anymore. I suddenly feel ripe and Rubenesque. Mine is the kind of body that inspired Norman Lindsay (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). Oh, and I also later found out that Jason’s only 23. This just makes him even more amazing to me.

If a 23-year-old boy can view my natural, un-botoxed, un-taut and un-airbrushed state and seek to preserve (rather than obscure) the truth of its appearance, in his art, then maybe a bit of sanity prevails after all.

So here I am, world. I’m turning 49, this is my unfashionably-mature “post-baby body” and I love it. I really love it … do you hear me? Roll on, 50.

My god, I think I’m actually buying it.