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Live Nude Girl Bares All
Rooney also uses supporting passages from papers on nudity, art, and culture that occasionally bog down the narrative with scholarly jargon, but for the most part demonstrate the intellectual rigor with which she has approached her subject.
During the first three years of her seven-year modeling career, Rooney simply told her very Catholic parents that she worked as a “classroom aide.” When she finally decided to tell her mother, she called a gay friend to ask for tips because “It was like coming out, in a way,” she said. On his advice, she took her mother out for lunch in a public place and told her at the end of the meal.
Rooney’s mother took it well, but made it clear that if Rooney needed money there were other ways to get it. By then, Rooney was in it for more than the money. She modeled because she liked the rush of modeling, because she has always loved art, because she grew up nerdy and skinny and mocked for her skinniness and posing nude in some way validated the aesthetics of her body.
Don’t look for her on the cover of her book, though. She nixed going public in a nude portrait. As she put it, “I felt like that might be a little vain…plus my mom would freak out.” There are limits, even for live nude girls.
Lizzie Stark is a freelance journalist who has written for the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily Beast. She also edits the lit-mag Fringe and is at work on a narrative nonfiction book about Live Action Role Play.
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Lizzie Stark is a freelance journalist who has written for the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily Beast. She also edits the lit-mag Fringe and is at work on a narrative nonfiction book about Live Action Role Play, or LARP.
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Lizzie Stark is a freelance journalist who has written for the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily Beast. She also edits the lit-mag Fringe and is at work on a narrative nonfiction book about Live Action Role Play, or LARP.
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Lizzie Stark is a freelance journalist who has written for the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily Beast. She also edits the lit-mag Fringe and is at work on a narrative nonfiction book about Live Action Role Play, or LARP.
Servius
"Rooney insofar as it works against the traditional conception of women's bodies as sinful."
There may be traditions with this conception but I challenge anyone to read Song of Solomon and come away believing that the Bible teaches this conception.
wiitester
My God, those days. Been there, and can relate to the bizarre quality of being objectified, on purpose, per hour. Back in my misspent youth I was caught out between-homes, as it were, and got some gigs doing 'art school modeling' in NY and Philadelphia. Better than bussing tables or day-work in construction. And as a guy, oddly, there was almost zero competition back then for the work. I can't remember a single unattractive body or male model under 60--perhaps the studios were a touch chilly.
Rooney is dead on about the weirdness factor, too, but for me it wasn't so much the public nudity or sometimes private scrutiny (prodding, posing, being asked for coffee or whatall on the job) that felt most unnerving. (Anyone can get used to walking around in the buff at a beach.) What was truly bizarre was seeing yourself, your body, your face, an expression--something only your own--a smile, your lips, the way your elbow met your hip--mirrored. Portrait after portrait after portrait, mostly on canvass, paper, sometimes in clay, but unmistakably you. After a few years you start to think of all the mini-me statues and emotionally-revealing psychological portraits ending up in someone's hall, the trash, or cast in bronze in some attic or barn, like a golem, spookily you, uncanny.
...And yes, we models got around, but not with the teachers or middle-aged, 'evening class' husbands and wives who hit on us the most. Non, je ne regrette.
funkychicken
"Live Nude Girl Bares All." Wonderfully redundant.
Vlasta
I don`t really get this. A whole book about being an artist`s model? I am an artist and deeply appreciate those who have modeled for me. There is nothing faintly salacious or erotic about a figure-drawing class. The feeling, rather, is more one of awe at the body`s beauty, and gratitude for having the opportunity to draw or paint it.
Allan264
I agree with Servius. Why in the hell is it so damned difficult for people, especially women, to admit they like looking sexy because it makes them feel sexy by stimulating sexy responses in others? If you cannot believe that you need to take a remedial course in Sociobiology 101 in a hurry. Regarding women's bodies as sinful is itself sinful if anything is.
Siouxie921
Truly great art is a marriage of subject and painter/photographer. And the more the artist connects w/ the model, the deeper and more resonant his/her art will be.
Our society tends to discredit all models of all kinds. In fact, the model plays an important role in the creative process.
jackdwyer
Best take on this book I've seen is Ron Slate's at his lit site On the Seawall.
Thank you.
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