When Your Body Is the Lesson: On Art Modeling
In practice, this gig is easier than expected. It’s my mind that throws me off.
The most awkward part is that I don’t begin naked. At first, the students think I’m maybe a new classmate, the result of an add/drop, maybe a new teaching assistant. They look at me the way you look at new classmates, disinterested or dismissive—or sometimes hopeful, like maybe they imagine we’ll be friends, lovers, more. It’s how I look at them, too, despite knowing that I’m here to make money.
stand on a table, be naked, pose
Rachel Charlene Lewis is a queer writer of color based in North Carolina. Her essays have been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Normal School, Teen Vogue, The Frisky, Fusion, and elsewhere. She is an MFA dropout.
Enter your email address to receive notifications for author Rachel Charlene Lewis
Success!
Confirmation link sent to your email to add you to notification list for author Rachel Charlene Lewis
More in this series
Horse Experience: Notes on Recovery from the Louisiana Floods
“Some of these horses have also been rescued from floodwaters. They too are in a strange place, and deeply alone.”
Working on ‘The Post’ Helped Me Pay Tribute to My Father the Newspaperman
I wish I could tell my dad that I worked to recreate the newsroom. That people still think newspaper stories—and stories about newspapers—are worth telling.
Leaving the Sisterhood of Women Writers
The more I wrote about women, the more distanced I felt from the figure I saw in the mirror.