If You Grow It Show It
My name is Jolene. Yeah, I know, the old Dolly Parton song. My folks loved it back in 1974. Now to the present. I was in college at Long Beach State when my roommate brought home a 3X5 card from the school bulletin board advertising for models for the art classes. The notice asked for nude models for figure drawing classes on campus and said no experience necessary, ten dollars per hour for nude models, inquire at art department office.
I have always been up to a challenge, so if you dare me, I am just apt to take the dare.
My roommate, Karen, tossed a card on the table in front of where I was eating and said, "You're always saying the body is so beautiful, so pure and not obscene, blah, blah, blah, so here's your chance to back that up with some action rather just big talk."
Karen and I were roommates, but we didn't agree on much. We were political opposites and on social issues we were even further apart. Karen was very religious and I didn't go anywhere near a church. Let's just say, we weren't sisters, but merely roommates who would not do things together or even call each other friends. We simply shared an apartment and slept in opposite bedrooms, just feet apart, but that was the extent of it. Karen's announcement about the modeling job was more a dare or a challenge than it was meant to be a helpful suggestion. It was meant as an "I bet you won't do this" kind of thing rather than informative and helpful. Like I said, we weren't friends.
I picked up the card and studied it, thinking it may just be what could help us earn the rent, which was a real struggle each month. Both of us seemed just able to earn barely enough each month to just make the rent payment and not much more. We were both full time students and it was all we could do to earn a little money, buy food, pay the rent, and still find time to study. We both worked part time at the college dorm cafeteria.
I absentmindedly put the card in my purse, not sure what I was going to do with it, but the challenge by Karen actually pissed me off just enough to motivate me to maybe do something with it. I did, after all, feel there was far too much hypocrisy concerning nakedness, art, and sex. I felt society was far too rigid regarding what was acceptable, considered obscene, or indecent. I did like to dress in sexy clothes, so it isn't a surprise that I probably am a bit of an exhibitionist.
I often went to the nude beach near Oceanside, so there was nothing about posing nude that I found inappropriate or unacceptable. Ten dollars an hour for just sitting, maybe reading as you did, sounded like easy money. Perhaps Karen, inadvertently actually just did us both a favor.
The next afternoon I called the office at the art department and asked for an application.  A pleasant voice on the phone told me to come by the office and I could fill out the paperwork and be interviewed at the same time. On Monday I went to school early and parked in the art department lot, then I went to the second floor, to the art department office and rang the bell.
A woman in her fifties with her glasses on a chain around her neck greeted me and asked if she could help me. "I called about the modeling job, for the figure drawing classes," I said. The woman who introduced herself as Helen and wore a dress right out of the 1960's took papers out of a cabinet and handed them to me with a pen.
"I am so happy you came in," Helen said. "We just lost one of our models and we need one for Dr. Craft's class this afternoon. Could you start today?" she asked me. I was completely caught off guard by the suddenness of it. I had planned to fill out the application, work up some nerve, then make a decision. Starting that day was a bit overwhelming. However, if I was serious, why not sooner than later. If I wasn't ready, wouldn't it just prove Karen was right, it was all talk?
"Okay," I said, stiffening my spine. "That would be fine."
Helen took the papers from me, showed me the classroom, and took me into the dressing room. "You leave your clothes in here," she said. "There are clean robes to put on for between poses. Thank you dear. If you sign these papers, we'll have your pay ready when you finish your day. Payroll will have everything ready for you after class. You'll be paid in cash, since it is out the department funds."
As we were walking out of the dressing room, she asked, "Have you ever done any posing, my dear?" I told her I hadn't, but that I'd taken some art classes so had an idea about what is needed. "That's wonderful, dear. I thought I may have to fill in today," she said smiling. "I used to model for Dr. Craft, but that was many wrinkles ago.
"Class starts at four," Helen said, "so you'll want to come in about 3:45 so you will be ready when Dr. Craft needs you. The poses will be for fifteen minutes, with a five minute break between each one. He may want you to hold one for a few sessions of the same pose. Of course, you know that if you had figure drawing classes."
I came back at 3:30, figuring I wanted to make sure I was on time. Even though I had been naked with others at the nude beach, and had been an art student in classes of my own, my heart was pounding like a snare drum in a parade as I put my clothes in the locker and readied to become a paid nude model for the sake of fine art and rent money.
True, I had argued with Karen and her best friend, Brenda, about nudity, saying the body was not obscene to expose to others, and when I tried to explain why I was going to a nude beach where everyone got naked and were not concerned about exposing the "lewd" parts of themselves, they just could not understand. "We just don't think the body is vulgar," I had asserted.
"But God gave us clothes," Karen said. "To cover ourselves."
"No," I said. "Clothes became necessary when people lived in cold climates. The Church taught that parts of the body were obscene to keep people from reproducing nonbelievers. They needed subjects so it was a matter of control," I said. "They didn't want heathens reproducing."
Neither of them would ever consider going to anyplace as heinous as a beach where people all got naked, showed off their evil parts, and cavorted bare on the beach, since they had been raised in a religious environment and considered nakedness to be the work of the devil. Â I was never going to convince them, so I stopped even trying.
As I undressed for the figure drawing class, I was probably more nervous than I had ever been. Â It was not that I was afraid of being nude in front of strangers, I had done that at the beach, but I guess the newness of the experience had me shaking in my lack of boots.
When the green light went on in the dressing room, the time had come to put up or shut up, and I put on the robe and walked to the back door of the art classroom and went inside. Dr. Craft was a kindly looking man of close to sixty I'd guess, and he seemed more like a grandfather rather than an art teacher.
In a very grandfatherly voice he welcomed me, introduced himself, and made me feel important and special, like he was so very grateful that I was willing to help him out in his personal problem of finding a model for his art class.
He led me to the platform, helped me up, asked if I wanted anything to drink, then brought me water when I asked for it. I took off the robe, he took it, and hung it on a peg next to the platform. He described the pose that he wanted to start off with, then watched me try a few poses. When he found one he liked, he asked me if I could hold it for fifteen minutes.
"If you need a break before then, just stand up and we'll take a break whenever you need to," he said. "Otherwise it will be every fifteen minutes. Okay?" he said as if I was the one in total control.
After I started the first pose, I looked around the room and studied the students sitting behind their easels, surveying me like I was a work of art, not a naked person doing anything inappropriate or indecent. It made me feel very relaxed and confident of what I was doing. I felt very special. I had no doubts about what I had agreed to.
My mind wandered over many things as time went by, actually faster than I expected. I thought about how scandalized Karen and Brenda would be if they saw me sitting naked in front of twenty-five strangers, although two of the artists were people I knew from my other classes.  Amazingly, the longer I posed, the more relaxed and comfortable I felt. So much so, that when the first pose was over, I chose not to put on the robe, but walked around looking at the drawings naked, feeling as comfortable as I did without clothes at the beach.
I believe my being naked and at ease made the student artists feel more comfortable with a naked young woman than they usually did. One woman even said so. "You being so at ease about strolling around without clothes makes me more relaxed and feeling like it's more natural and normal. I just wanted to thank you," she said.
It made me feel good to have her say that, and they're being more comfortable made me be. Sitting naked in front of them was far easier than I thought it would be.  Was there some excitement at being naked in front of people with their clothes on? Absolutely. So I guess there was an element of exhibitionist in me.
Before I left the studio, some put money in a hat for me. There was twenty dollars from the college, for two hours of posing, and forty-seven more in the hat from the students.  "The students don't always give the models tips," Dr. Craft said. "So that is a compliment to you," he said.  "You seemed to make feel more at ease."
When I got home that night I laid the money on the table in front of Karen.  "There is a good part of the rent," I said. "Thanks for the tip," I added. "This is compliments of the Long Beach State art department."
I had begun a job that I liked, was not being on my feet all day, like my waitress job or at the college cafeteria, and the people were pleasant and Dr. Craft and Helen were sweethearts.
My second class went as well as the first, but at the break one of the male students came up to me and asked if I ever did private projects. I must have looked confused, because he said his camera club has nude photo shoots and they were looking for a new female model. "It is just standard glamor photography," he said, "and it can be a few hundred dollars depending on how many show up."
He said sometimes they get twenty photographers, a few of them are women, and that can be $600 or so for the night. "They are on the weekends, but five or six hundred for a few hours work is not bad," he said. I couldn't argue with that.
The photography club held their photo shoots in a photo studio just off Wilshire, in a business owned by one of the members. It had a front sitting area, a dressing room with bathrooms, and the photography studio that had a stage-type platform, a large area for the photographers, lighting set up that focussed on the stage and a changeable backdrop that covered the back wall.
I was introduced to the group by the man who invited me, Brent, and there were three women present. For some reason I felt better having the women there and I was asked if I minded looking at some of the costumes I may be asked to wear and take off in the course of the poses. I began with a few standard nude sets: front, sitting, on my stomach legs up, and some typical glamour poses that are pretty standard.
Brent came and sat down next to me at one of the breaks.  "The club wanted me to tell you, and there is no pressure, but depending on how comfortable you are with your sexuality, the more sexual the poses the higher the sitting fee," he said. "A model can make up to $12,500 per night. For sex shots the photogs pay up to five hundred dollars apiece. Twenty-five members is $12,500.
"Do the women here do the sex shoots?" I asked.
