The Naked Truth About Being a 73-Year-Old Nude Model

You know that dream people sometimes have of standing naked in front of a room with everyone staring at them? That dream is a reality for me every time I go to work. I’m in my 70s, and I’m a nude figure model at the colleges and community art centers near where I live.

Why would anyone want to put themself through what for many is a common nightmare? For me, it’s actually fun. I enjoy posing for people who want to practice drawing the human figure.

I’m also an artist. When I was an art student more than 40 years ago, I took life drawing classes like the ones I model for now. At that time, I would have been too embarrassed and self-conscious to expose myself to my peers and worried about how people would judge me and my body.

One of the wonderful things about growing older is you realize that most of the things you worried about when you were younger were of absolutely no consequence at all. The fact that I’ve lived on this planet longer than most people I encounter these days has given me more self-assurance than I’ve ever had.

I also realized there’s nothing I’ve got that people haven’t seen before. They certainly got to see it the very first time I had to disrobe in class. I can’t forget the moment it hit me: Oh, there’s a breeze down there!

Kahn says he might have to hold a pose for up to 20 minutes so an artist can capture sketches like these.

Harold Kahn

I’m not at all worried that everyone is looking at my private parts. I can assure you they’re not. They’re more concerned with my limbs, trying to get the shape and proportions correct. The times when I do walk around and look at the drawings the students or artists have done, I often think, Is my nose really that big?

When drawing my figure, they regard me as an object, similar to a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers. I don’t obsess that they may be making judgments about me while doing so. At my age, I don’t care, and more importantly, I know it doesn’t matter.

What do I think about when I’m standing there in the nude, surrounded by a circle of 20-somethings looking at me intensely from behind their easels? Sometimes I’m contemplating the meaning of life. More likely, I’m wondering what I’m going to have for dinner. If I’m in a reclining pose, I close my eyes and try not to fall asleep, as some models do.

During a drawing session, the students or artists sometimes ask me to turn or gesture in a certain way. In one college class, a student told me to slouch so my stomach would protrude as it did in his drawing. I don’t have a protruding stomach, so I shot back, “No, I won’t. You gave me a belly, and I don’t have one!” After the roar of laughter from the class subsided, the instructor came over and asked him to look carefully to see if I was right. He agreed that I was. Score one for the model.

I modeled quite often for that college drawing class. At the end of the last meeting of the term, I actually got a round of applause from the students. I was quite touched. After all, how many of us ever get applause, at any age, after taking our clothes off?