Photographer: Fal-name. Model unknown
I found it very moving.
I will not repeat here her words, do read it for yourselves, it is worth doing so.
I just want to add that it is all about acceptance of oneself as being an embodied being and being beautiful. Not in ways that conform to a stereotype, but beautiful because we have a body, the body is a wonderful thing and we are that body, it is not separate from 'us'.
It has become almost commonplace now to proclaim beauty in diversity and to extoll the beauty of older women, and I do find this very positive. But I also find that for many women going beyond stereotypes of what is seen to be beautiful is hard.
Through my membership of groups meant to encourage older women to get in front of the camera and celebrate their beauty I am often bombarded with shabby images showing them in sexy kitten poses which I would find ugly even if the women in the pictures were much younger. By doing this they become grotesque, unwittingly so, reconfirming the stereotype of the older female body as abject and grotesque.
Growing old is about structure/agency and the subject/object divide and how one as a woman can attempt to transcend those binaries and work towards integration and constant transformation, which does not stop with age but, on the contrary, is part of ourselves as 'ageing process' rather than ourselves as finished products that work to combat the effects of time.
I have found art modelling empowering precisely because it has allowed me to go beyond preconceived ideas of beauty. The beauty is to be found in the pose, in the exploration of space, in stillness, in looking into the camera and drawing on one's emotions.
I still model for life drawing classes and I find it most rewarding when I am booked by schools. The girls and boys who are drawing are not famous artists and make lots of mistakes but through drawing the human figure, and an older person at that, they learn all about the body and how beautiful it is.
Photographer: D. Keith Furon. Models: myself, Cheryl and Rose
Through my membership of groups meant to encourage older women to get in front of the camera and celebrate their beauty I am often bombarded with shabby images showing them in sexy kitten poses which I would find ugly even if the women in the pictures were much younger. By doing this they become grotesque, unwittingly so, reconfirming the stereotype of the older female body as abject and grotesque.
Growing old is about structure/agency and the subject/object divide and how one as a woman can attempt to transcend those binaries and work towards integration and constant transformation, which does not stop with age but, on the contrary, is part of ourselves as 'ageing process' rather than ourselves as finished products that work to combat the effects of time.
I have found art modelling empowering precisely because it has allowed me to go beyond preconceived ideas of beauty. The beauty is to be found in the pose, in the exploration of space, in stillness, in looking into the camera and drawing on one's emotions.
I still model for life drawing classes and I find it most rewarding when I am booked by schools. The girls and boys who are drawing are not famous artists and make lots of mistakes but through drawing the human figure, and an older person at that, they learn all about the body and how beautiful it is.
Photographer: Jan Murphy. Model: myself
It saddens me to know that in many schools life drawing has been dispensed with.
Thanks for this post Alex. I really do enjoy reading your blog on this topic.
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