Chelsea Swan

I have spoken before about how much I enjoy my body. My sexuality. Narcissistic I care not. I am not going to wait till old age to paint myself like Alice Neel. It’s a nice body and it does me well. I wont go back to hiding it or hating it because of anyone’s backwards brainwashed views. Seeing other womens bodies and sexuality freed me from the expectations of others that I was living by. The source of this was seeing the variety of shapes being celebrated in joyful ways in burlesque and in art. I am happy to add to that visibility and variety. There is power owning and accepting our bodies.

Having said that, Greek Adonis statues aside, where is the male nude. I am feel that men are missing out. That they do not get to be sexual, to see male bodies, there nude is not present in the history of painting to be ogled at. Being a man was all you had to be but also all you could be. If we are talking about gender expectations then the expectation for men is that they are not sexual objects.

Now I know you are thinking yes there is. That Thor is sexy. No he is sexy to men. Girls want Loki. There is a female gaze too and it is not your steroid fuelled, dehydrated war machine of a man (though maybe it is for some ). He has personality, intelligence, kindness, charm and confidence but his body is varied.

I believe the male gaze of attractive attributes in men is led by two factors. The first is queer male culture in the eighties and nineties and the advent of the AIDS crisis which resulted in men getting buff gym bodies as a signifier of health. The second is the idea of strenghth with relation to muscle. Big men can fight and so women must want them because what is more manly than a fight.

Do I want men to have the hang ups women have, no. I would like men to feel they can enjoy their bodies and feel sexually attractive without the negative consequences women have had to endure.

So what did I do. I told my partner to pose like one of those classic nudes, multiple times. In Blackpool I found a book on paintings from Milan and another from Venice. There were a lot of female nudes by male artists, but not a single male nude by a female artist. I am nothing if not able to entertain myself. My partner became the Haven Caravan nymphs. I figured he too could have the chance to be sexualised. To become the object, to have his body used for my artistic endeavours.

He loved being seen, posing, playing, moving his body, being seen. But I must insert here that my partner, due in large part to his Autism, has always felt other, outsider, misaligned with masculinity and male culture/ideas. I think we are still a long way off the average ma feeling he can inhabit his body in the same way.