What struck me most is that the older paintings feel inhabited, while many modern images feel performed. One feels rooted in presence, the other in self-conscious observation. That difference changes everything.
Evangeline, I have been a model for drawing and painting classes for 41 years, and while the majority of what I do is for-credit undergraduate classes where students are just learning the basics of how to both see and render a human body, I have been the subject of a few pieces that have either been sold or made it into gallery shows. As a model and as a human, I’ve always been drawn to figurative art, especially nudes. It is us at our most basic.
I’m intrigued by your analysis of power dynamics. I’m male, of course, and when I’m posing in an art class, I am at the same time the most important and the least powerful person in the room. I’m the subject; all eyes are on me. But I am literally laid bare. I’m nude and locked into a pose. I can’t move. Technically, I can move, of course, but I don’t because it’s my job not to.
I am at the point in experience where I choose my own poses. I know what my body can do for the allotted time, and I have a good sense of what the artists/students like to draw. A lot of poses are triangular if I’m seated or reclining, and unless asked for symmetry, my poses are asymmetrical. My left side is doing something completely different from the right. My standing poses are almost always contraposto unless I’m doing an anatomy lesson.
We males are not normally the object of desire in art. We are the ones who desire. So there is still a general preference for female models. Most undergraduate classes I do, women outnumber men among the students. If I model for a community art center with older artists, that gender ratio is more even.
I was 18 when I started modeling, thin and lean. I’m 59 now and not so lean. I’ve always thought of pornography as a lie. People don’t look or act the way they are made to in media intended to be erotic. And I’ve always thought of the art done of me as honest and true. Those drawings and paintings are of me in my purest state. It has been a long time since I’ve seen a drawing or painting of me and thought, “wow, I look sexy there”. But it has been a long time since I’ve been directed into a pose. I usually take my own poses or work with an instructor collaboratively to come up with one.
Thanks for this article and for your presence here. I bought a subscription just to comment on this as my perspective on nudity in art might be a bit unusual.
I really appreciate you chiming in here, DH. You know, I was once a still model for the fashion department of my college and I blacked out. It certainly is a skill one must learn. Isn’t that interesting? That we must build the skill of sitting still. What I appreciate about listening to your experience is hearing how self-knowledge was the key to you developing that skill. You need to know and accept the limitations and strengths of your own body and psyche to sit still well and long. How beautiful.
I loved what you said about being the least powerful but most important person in the room as the subject. This is often how it feels to be an actress and you describe it so well. Especially a female actress. Usually you are paid less, consulted less and less respected than your male costar, director, producers, and other power players, but the whole thing hinges on your presence. Without you the male stories don’t sing.
I wonder how you feel about holding that position. You’ve done it for so long I assume you enjoy it. I wonder, as a man, if you enjoy that feeling because it’s novel. In the same way that a woman might enjoy having all the power for an afternoon here and there. Because, living it (being the subject), is a very intense burden. As I imagine shouldering all the power is. I think men can gloss-over the struggles of women and women can gloss over the struggles of men. Do you feel that this job has in any way given you a stronger empathy for the plight of women? Or has it made that plight seem easy to carry because you pick it up and put it down when you feel like it?
Lots to chew on. I really enjoyed what you came to share. Thank you for doing so! We have GREAT conversations here. You should check out some of the other comments and my responses. You might want to stick around. 😉🙏🏻✨
I plan to stick around (see my other comment about nudism). I love the job even after 41 years. I’m always amazed at what artists produce, how they see me and translate that into their art. I don’t know if the job of being an art model has made me more empathetic to the plight of women specifically or not. The job does come with an unusual dynamic, being nude while surrounded by clothed people. Over the years, I have grown more and more comfortable with it. Now it’s almost something I crave. During the early years, I would have been mortified if anyone had a camera in the room while I was in a pose. Nowadays, everyone has a camera on their person at all times (in the form of smart phones), and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Of course, I’m very open about being a nude model and a nudist. In 2001, I won $32,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire where host Regis Philbin seemed fascinated by my nude modeling job. And now I’m involved with a nudist organization; I’m the author of five novels featuring naturism and/or nudist characters; and I’m acting in nudist movies.
I’ve been nude at festivals and public events, and I sort of feel like I have a superpower of being comfortable in my own skin without shame. But it took awhile to get there.
Have you ever experienced being seen by a woman? I highly recommend it. Even in moments of intense desire, I’ve never felt invaded. I like the way her eyes move across my body with admiration rather than possession.
Hm. You know, I almost added something to that effect in the article - that, even between two women who are in lust for one another, they wouldn't strike these poses to please. That the natural flow of her lines would be the most sensual thing. But I didn't because I would be speaking out of turn. I can't say that because I don't know, I've never experienced it. Though have always wanted to. I have always wondered what that experience would be like.
I suspect it’s the kind of difference that’s difficult to fully explain until it’s experienced. But yes… that’s exactly why it feels so different. Desire is there, sometimes intensely so, but it doesn’t feel extractive. There’s less performance in it somehow. More curiosity. More witnessing.
The only experience I’ve had with a woman was with a close friend, and she is still my friend to this day. It never really felt like it was about sex. The intimacy itself felt deeper than that
I just returned from a trip to France and Paris, and from visiting the Musée d'Orsey.
What a coincidence to mention Impressionism, nothing happens by chance !
Painting isn't my favorite art form, but my wife dragged me by the hair, and I was diligent.
Now I'm talking to you about Impressionism and discovering details I'd never have thought of.
Yet I immediately distinguish sexy paintings from original natural ones, before you mentioned them.
Is it manipulation or seduction of ideas that I'm now more aware of what I'm looking at?
I think it's a question of knowledge. Years ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about pop music, which he loved. I've always preferred classical music. He didn't know it, but he was curious, and over the years, he became a Mozart fan, while I became a RHCP fan.
It's knowledge that guides what pleases. As Dante said: the higher you climb the mountain, the more the horizon opens up.
Perhaps, even in the sexual field, we should understand female sexuality better, and you're right when you say that female sexuality is born to please men.
It's been like this for so long that even ethology has adapted without us realizing it.
Why lipstick? Because it simulates sexual arousal.
Why high heels? Because they simulate an unsteady gait.
Why big boobs? Because we walk on two legs.
What man would ever undergo surgery to be more attractive?
Perhaps we men are afraid of being overwhelmed by feminine eroticism because we're afraid of confrontation, we're afraid of diversity, we prefer clichés that are boring.
In any case, beyond clichés, it's our mind that decides. No one will ever convince me that Coke is better than Chianti, even though I've never seen a wine commercial.
I always love reading your musings. They put a smile on my face. I love the impressionism/painting synchronicity. I loved hearing about the exchange between you and your friend - that he did not just adopt classical music, but the you also adopted something pop. I loved the Dante quote and agree. I think sometimes I just put thoughts out in the world to see who else is standing on the ledge with me...who sees what I'm looking at. I agree with the idea that men simplify women because otherwise they are too overwhelmed by our complication...like putting a sheet over a spirit so you can see it. If you can not walk in spirit, how else are you going to touch that entity? And I love the point that you love Chianti without the advertising. That, my friend, is what I want to invite people into through this post: noticing that the Chianti still tastes better, even if they've been sold the Coke. 😉🩵
It’s interesting you say the women in the first painting look almost cartoonish; I actually thought about Betty and Veronica from the Archies when I first looked at it and before reading your analysis. The Archies, though, don’t masquerade as high art. They are cartoons.
One painting I’ve always loved is Picasso’s Blue Nude. It’s not a happy painting, but it’s powerful. He captured beautifully that sense of inward retreat, despair, and isolation that most have felt at points in our lives.
I feel the same while looking at these paintings you are talking about and at many other contemporary paintings of women.
My body reacts with relaxation and safety when I look at these old paintings. And I feel stress in my body with these two modern paintings. I believe that the body never lies, if only we listen to it more often. I don’t want to be looked at and seen like that.
In all these paintings I see the contrast between a woman as just mere flesh and a woman as a whole person with all her inner world included and portrayed here. Portrayed with respect and admiration, not with the desire to exploit.
I too see the impact of pornography in modern art. Fortunately, such paintings are still considered salon art. Which means they'll most likely end up in someone's living room rather than in a museum. At least, that's what I hope. 🙂
I think that while men are attracted to natural beauty, they also like these types of images. Otherwise, they wouldn't be the main consumers of porn. And women start playing this game out of fear of not getting attention and love, of not being chosen.
Choosing art over pornography means, to some extent, giving up easy and quick pleasures. This requires at least a bit of asceticism. And I'm a bit pessimistic about the future, as I rarely see people wanting to develop this quality these days. What do you think?
Luckily, I, as a woman, have the freedom to choose to stop playing these “striking poses” games myself. ✨
Hmmmm. I hear you completely and agree on all fronts and counts. I know you and I have experienced a lot of similar traumas and have clear reactions to even the smell of sexual objectification.
I love that you pointed out that men are, in fact, attracted to these more "fake" images of women because when I wrote that part about men actually finding natural women sexy, I hesitated, due to what you point out here. What I see happening with men is corporations preying on men's susceptibility to the simplification of the woman and that has been going on for centuries...so long that it has actually reshaped men's desire.
It is true that desire, beauty and what we find attractive is not fixed. When I started working in Rwanda twenty years ago, fat women were the most desirable. Then "development" happened and now that's no longer the case. And yet, I still think that, under it all, what men are desirous of is access to women. So whatever is depicted as more accessible to them (more inviting, more outwardly evident and overtly focused on him) the more aroused they become. But, have an ordinary woman with no make-up, naked, open her whole heart, mind, body and soul to a man in a healthy way...I think that might be the sexiest thing.
What I suspect men (rightly) see in the more "natural" images that are less attractive is a woman saying "I don't care what you think of me". This puts them at a disadvantage and that feels unsexy to them. Whereas a woman who has gone to great lengths to send the message that "I want you to find me sexy"...well now, that is an open door that they want to run through.
I could probably write a 3000 page thesis on the dynamics of sex relations, but here I'm just shooting the shit. I don't even know what I just wrote, but maybe there's something interesting in there. ☺️
I like your thoughts. I've never really considered why a man might find a more natural woman less attractive. And your assumption seems fair to me. (It would be interesting to read men's opinions here, if they'd like to share, of course. Although it might be too delicate. 🙃)
I'd like to expand on your thought: in my opinion, it's because, deep down, a man is vulnerable to rejection, while a woman who already invites his attention and depends on his approval seems safer to him in this regard. And he gains that very power you mentioned at the beginning of your essay.
As for your idea about reshaping men's desire, I remembered recently stumbling across a video that talked about exactly this. In one African tribe, boys and girls grow up together, and the girls go topless. These boys don't stare at breasts; they look into the eyes while talking to girls. So, it's all simply the influence of the culture and environment in which we grow up.
"I could probably write a 3,000-page thesis on the dynamics of sexual relations."
Oh, actually that would be great 😊🤩😄
You seem to have a deep understanding of this topic. It would be interesting to read.
I’m a nudist. Actually I’m a regional president of the American Association for Nude Recreation, the oldest and largest nudist organization in North America. Your comment about the African tribe hit home. I’ve seen the same thing in the nudist community, especially among people who grew up in it. Eye contact is especially important when talking to anyone. And the exposure of the body serves to desexualize it. Very few people look like the bodies presented to us in porn. Even the bodies in porn don’t look like that for long if they ever really did. A lot is done with camera angles and rather unnatural positioning of the body. When you see people being naturally themselves, a lot of things happen. Porn loses its appeal. And you see people as persons instead of objects.
I’m VERY interested in the psychology and dynamics of nudist communities. I would love to be able to get in touch with you in the future to interview you about it. Can I find you here on Substack? Would an Insta DM be better? If so, what’s your insta handle? I’m working on a project at the moment that really delves into the psychology around sex and nudity and your insights could be really useful.
Absolutely I’m available for an interview. I’m @dhjonathan1 on Instagram. You and I have met before, at the DFW Writers Conference in 2023. You signed copies of your books for my granddaughter (who is 8 now, which I find unbelievable).
A movie I am in was just released on Prime and on DVD and Blu-ray. It is a Christian faith-based nudist movie. We shot it in the LA area in January 2025 with a tiny budget. And then two days into the shoot, we were evacuated because of the fires. So we had to overcome a lot just to get the movie made. All of us acting in the movie are from the nudist community. It’s called “Naked As Created: The Pastor Jim Moore Story”. I play one of the main antagonists, the editor D.H. (They named the character after the pen name I use for the novels I write.)
This article provided a new point of view for me to look through, and I wanted to say thank you for that. I have been exploring the feeling of sexiness/being sexy this year and trying to figure out what my truth is in that. I’m on a fitness journey (competing in my first body building competition this month) and in this body transformation I’m realizing how little the look of my body translates to sexiness. I always thought visible abs was one of the keys… but it’s not. Or at least it’s not a guarantee everyday. And there is absolutely nothing about the strict posing and routine that feels sexy. However, during this training process I accomplished a long standing goal of doing a chin up, and that was sexy as hell!
Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts on the comfort and natural state vs posed as being a marker. Over the last few years there have been candid and posed photos of myself taken during special events. I was surprised that I loved the candid photos that captured the experience and feeling vs the posed that felt forced in every way: say cheese, only don’t smile too big, tuck your tummy, have hubby stand closer to the camera so you don’t look bigger than him, etc etc!!
Thank you for being bold and sharing yourself through your writing, it means a lot!
I wish I had more time today to respond more fully this this comment. But what I will briefly say is: I used to be extremely fit in my twenties. I felt "hot", attractive, desirable, even sexy. But what I didn't feel until my forties when I permitted myself to get softer...was sensual. And that feeling of sensuality only comes when we take the rules and expectations off of our body and start to honor it just as it is.
Mmm, I never noticed how sexualized some old paintings looked… but all my life I’ve wondered, why woman specifically were targets for men in this type of way (still confuses me) how normalized it is, like why are our boobs to "show" off/cover when being around men to gain something in life. It’s actually absurd.
This piece moved me because it refuses to flatten the conversation into mere morality, prudishness, or permissiveness. What I see here is something far more phenomenological…a reflection on what happens to eros when presence becomes performance and when embodiment becomes shaped around the gaze of power.
Your line:
“Pornography, to me, is not about nudity or sex, it’s about the distortion of the erotic energy.”
feels like the true center of the piece.
That distinction matters deeply because once the conversation becomes only “who is the villain?” we inevitably collapse into accusation and reduction:
the immodest woman,
the perverted man,
the manipulative seductress,
the oppressive patriarchy.
And historically, women have often carried the burden of that framework in profoundly damaging ways.
But what you are describing feels deeper and tragically more human than simple villainy. Much of this is conditioned into us through the milieu we inhabit. We inherit ways of seeing, desiring, performing, and relating long before we consciously examine them. That does not remove responsibility… but it does invite understanding.
What struck me most in your observations about the paintings was the distinction between bodies at rest in themselves versus bodies consciously arranged around the anticipation of the gaze. One feels inhabited. The other feels performed.
And perhaps that is part of the ache beneath the modern pornography explosion as well. Not simply “too much sex,” but the increasing collapse of relational presence into commodification, performance, optimization, and power dynamics. A world where people increasingly learn how to market desirability but rarely how to be known.
Your reflections made me think that the opposite of pornography may not simply be modesty… but communion. Presence. Mutuality. Embodiment without manipulation.
A deeply provocative and thoughtful piece. Thank you for wrestling with something so difficult without collapsing it into easy binaries.
OK, put your seat-belt on and stay with me, because I want to offer a different view.
Your article gives us something of a paradox, especially when you compare modern images with those from the 1800s. I think it is a beautiful comparison, but it also leaves me with a puzzle, or at least a question.
The modern images are clearly lined up with lust and dopamine. The gentler pictures seem to show a time of natural beauty, where women could be seen as they really were, not simply as objects of lust.
But is that really true?
Is looking through the lens of those 1800s pictures a real canvas of how women were once seen, and of how something has now been lost?
Let’s imagine the women from those 1800s pictures, and let’s consider the US in the late 1800s. Once married, many women would lose control of their land and inheritance, with much of it going to their husband. They were often not allowed to sign contracts or wills without their husband’s consent. Domestic violence was largely considered a private household matter, unless it was extreme, and was often tolerated by the law. Women were largely barred from higher education and professions such as law and medicine. The 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote nationwide in the US, was not ratified until 1920. Then there was the very real stigma of children born out of wedlock, which often resulted in economic destitution as well as social outcasting.
So here is the paradox.
Those 1800s paintings seem to offer a romantic, innocent view of women and their bodies, especially when compared with the clearly pornographic nature of many modern images.
But to move this into the 21st century, I was recently in a business workshop for two days. There were five directors in that workshop, and three of them were women.
So I would say that, in some ways, both pictures are a lie. Would you agree?
The question, then, is this: how much is the sexualisation of women affecting their ability to be seen as equals?
How much does art reflect reality?
Yes, there has been some slippage in women’s rights in the US, and this should be noted. Are these images a representation of a possible backsliding in rights? I don’t know. We also see men’s movements that treat women simply as objects, reducing them to body counts and physical appearance.
You also make an important point about the real risk of manipulation. I do worry about young people, especially around eating disorders and body dysmorphia and the stress of the camera being everywhere now and the like button being the judge of out soul?
You highlight a real issue: how can women move back to the glorious and gorgeous experience of being female, rather than the experience of being sexualised objects?
But in the time of those paintings, were women far more objects in almost every practical sense than they are in modern Western society.
So your post leaves me with questions. I do not have the answers, but it is, as always, a wonderful and thoughtful post.
I am struck, in your comment and those of many people on social media, by the fact that it seems very hard to comment on anything regarding sex and women without it being driven back to the same discussion of equality. But, this article is not addressing issues of equality, nor women's rights. It is relegated to the topic of what we find sexy in women - naturalness or artificiality. I think it's fundamental to talk about the patriarchy when addressing many, many issues we face today, and not wrong to bring it up here, but I think it's also important to be able to discuss isolated issues without calling into the forum the whole kit'n'caboodle.
Nonetheless, I will engage the discussion you're inviting.
I had this same dilemma with my experience visiting Qatar vs living in the US. I find in Qatar, where women are not afforded the same rights and freedoms that I have in the US and are socially chastised for showing their skin and bodies, that I experience a different kind of freedom I've never known in "the West" - one where I don't feel that I NEED to display my body and skin to increase my social currency. I couldn't believe what a relief it felt like to put on my abaya in Qatar and be considered as beautiful as can be. Here in the US, most men would feel more like, "Why are you wearing that potato sack?" That said, I am WELL AWARE that if I HAD to wear it and could not CHOOSE to wear something else more revealing without being judged or worse, that would not make me feel happy or free.
While I appreciate the consideration of what the reality of the women in Sir William's paintings might have been, I was not trying to imply in this post AT ALL that women have less rights now or are treated more as objects today than we were in the past (PS - the older paintings were European, not American). In fact, as I wrote I kept thinking, "Sir William's paintings were the "porn" back then". But that is exactly what I was trying to point out! Look how NATURAL their porn was. It represents "real" women, not comic book fantasies. I am VERY aware of and grateful for all of the rights, freedoms and privileges that I enjoy today but that doesn't change the fact that since the advent of mass advertising the image of a "sexy woman" has become more and more distorted.
The thing I am expressing in this article is about how the painting makes me FEEL. How it feels to see women with natural bodies and in postures be regarded as sensual objects of beauty. THAT feels amazing in my body. My body responds to that. Sings to that! I want MORE of that. And, I was noting how the other, more modern images make me FEEL - vulnerable, objectified and manipulated. That is important to listen to. How we respond in our somatic being to what we are seeing, hearing or experiencing is a fundamental skill/tool in navigating the next chapter of humanity. If we can't feel these deep responses anymore, we are completely at the mercy of the manipulations of those in charge of the messaging. And...make no mistake, every image is a message.
As always, a pleasure to break things down with you! Thank you for chiming in!
It's true that perception is tied to the historical period, it's like pretending to know what Latin pronunciation was like, we'll never know, we have the written text but not the audio.
Ha! I love that you say this. As a French speaker, I have always bulked at the ways I am told by Americans that Latin is to be pronounced. It does not add up with the LIVING Latin languages. I suspect we're getting it all wrong.
I have never heard your voice in French 😍, speaking of language my mother taught Latin and always said that despite the in-depth metrics we do not know how they pronounced the words
I have always found it difficult to discern the mind of a painter. The times I have gone to the Picasso museum, I have seen his art and read the title of the work, I have never been able to find what he was trying to express. But it is true, with your explanations, that the purpose of each painting is completely clear, in the more modern paintings it is clear where the man would be, in this case, the place that the painter himself would occupy, and it is true that you come to see them as offensive, you see yourself as an object, you lose the innocence and beauty that represents being a woman. I have always thought that there are two mirrors, one in which you see your own reflection and the other from which others see us, and sometimes, it can be scary. Well seen!
Thank you for your share, Mary. What I find scariest is considering if I am even capable of seeing myself through any lens other than my conditioning. Are any of us capable of that?
I think we are all conditioned by something, education, religion, fame, survival, etc; but I suppose that each one should look in the way that best makes them feel.
There are so many thoughts in your reflections on power, influence, and sexuality, Evangeline. What struck me most was the tension underneath it all: whether we are ever truly seeing ourselves clearly, or only through the layers of conditioning we inherited. I keep returning to one conviction of my own: power was never meant for indulgence or self-aggrandizement. At its best, power exists to provide and protect. To create opportunities for those who would not otherwise have access to them. To stand guard against harms others cannot yet see from where they stand. Real power bends downward in service. And perhaps that same principle applies inwardly as well. We use our growing awareness not to condemn ourselves, but to care for ourselves more honestly.
You asked in a response to a post, “Am I even capable of seeing myself through any lens other than my conditioning?” I believe there is hope. I think of a sock that develops a hole. We stitch it up with new yarn. Then another hole appears and we mend that too, maybe this time with different yarn. Years pass and the sock has been repaired over and over again. At what point is it no longer the same sock? And yet we still think of it as the same. I suspect identity works much the same way. We continue to call ourselves by the same name, tell the same stories, carry the same assumptions, even while profound change has been happening all along beneath the surface.
I felt this deeply at a class reunion once. People talked with me sharing old stories, old jokes, old versions of who they remembered me to be. And strangely, they were not wrong. That person existed. But standing there, I also realized how much of me they could not possibly know. The decades between then and now had rewritten me in a thousand unseen ways: grief, love, responsibility, work, failure, meaning, sacrifice, hope. What moved me most was not that they remembered who I had been, but that there was still room at the table for who I had become. It reminded me that conditioning may shape us, but its influence is not final.
If you're up for an experiment, try this with me. Most of us tell the stories of our lives in remarkably fixed ways. The same words. The same emotional emphasis. The same conclusions. Often the story we tell today is nearly identical to the one we told immediately after the event itself. And with each retelling, not only does the memory become cemented, but so does the meaning of it, the size of it in our hearts, and our identity in relationship to it. By retelling the story, we reinforce the self who lived inside that story. But here is the twist: retell it differently. Think of the event again, but this time do not narrate it as the younger version of yourself. Tell it from where you stand today. From your age now. Your wisdom now. Your home, your losses, your growth, your tenderness now. Suddenly context appears. Compassion appears. You begin to see not simply what happened, but the conditions surrounding the younger you who was .going through the event
And perhaps that is how we slowly outgrow conditioning: not by waging war against our former selves, but by learning to see them with maturity, kindness, empathy, and context. We discover that we are not trapped inside the original story. We are allowed to become the person who revisits it with gentler eyes. And with a new story told about the very same event, identity itself begins to shift. Not because the past changed, but because we did. And we get to leave our conditioning behind. What do you think?
I think this is all very true and beautifully said. I am sure you must be a very good therapist and recognize my process in all that you describe. ☺️🙏🏻
I had a similar experience on a trip home to visit my family of origin recently. I've not been immersed with them much in the past year and I was struck by how foreign their rhythms felt to me. They felt urgent, rushed, harried, anxious for no reason and overly driven to productivity for productivity's sake. It was striking because I knew that the very thing that was feeling alien to me used to be how I functioned also. It was so loud how much I'd changed.
I have no doubt that people can change, and I have been on an active journey of undoing programming and rewriting my script for a long time now. And still...I suspect that there will always be part of the old messaging that I fight, that slips back in, that haunts the new life I grow. I guess you'll have to check in with me at 80 and find out if I'm right. 😉
You’re very kind. I apologize for letting the counselor in me show up. I just enjoy these topics so much. It’s how hearts heal, how souls find their depth and how spirits find freedom. It’s as much art as it is science and the conversations we share between the spaces of our individuality are some of the best moments in life.
Thank you for sharing about time with your family. I feel the same way with I’m back with mine. While we’ve certainly grown and, I hope, improved in how we relate together, the familiar pull to old patterns creeps in the longer we’re together. I wonder if that’s good. Maybe, as you’ve said, the familiar sticks around to show us how far we’ve grown. I love that idea.
Thank you for the post of my words. It’s a privilege to think something I’ve said has connected.
What struck me most is that the older paintings feel inhabited, while many modern images feel performed. One feels rooted in presence, the other in self-conscious observation. That difference changes everything.
Truly. And noticing the difference feels like an important thing. Once it is noticed, the magic is sucked out of the manipulation.
Evangeline, I have been a model for drawing and painting classes for 41 years, and while the majority of what I do is for-credit undergraduate classes where students are just learning the basics of how to both see and render a human body, I have been the subject of a few pieces that have either been sold or made it into gallery shows. As a model and as a human, I’ve always been drawn to figurative art, especially nudes. It is us at our most basic.
I’m intrigued by your analysis of power dynamics. I’m male, of course, and when I’m posing in an art class, I am at the same time the most important and the least powerful person in the room. I’m the subject; all eyes are on me. But I am literally laid bare. I’m nude and locked into a pose. I can’t move. Technically, I can move, of course, but I don’t because it’s my job not to.
I am at the point in experience where I choose my own poses. I know what my body can do for the allotted time, and I have a good sense of what the artists/students like to draw. A lot of poses are triangular if I’m seated or reclining, and unless asked for symmetry, my poses are asymmetrical. My left side is doing something completely different from the right. My standing poses are almost always contraposto unless I’m doing an anatomy lesson.
We males are not normally the object of desire in art. We are the ones who desire. So there is still a general preference for female models. Most undergraduate classes I do, women outnumber men among the students. If I model for a community art center with older artists, that gender ratio is more even.
I was 18 when I started modeling, thin and lean. I’m 59 now and not so lean. I’ve always thought of pornography as a lie. People don’t look or act the way they are made to in media intended to be erotic. And I’ve always thought of the art done of me as honest and true. Those drawings and paintings are of me in my purest state. It has been a long time since I’ve seen a drawing or painting of me and thought, “wow, I look sexy there”. But it has been a long time since I’ve been directed into a pose. I usually take my own poses or work with an instructor collaboratively to come up with one.
Thanks for this article and for your presence here. I bought a subscription just to comment on this as my perspective on nudity in art might be a bit unusual.
I really appreciate you chiming in here, DH. You know, I was once a still model for the fashion department of my college and I blacked out. It certainly is a skill one must learn. Isn’t that interesting? That we must build the skill of sitting still. What I appreciate about listening to your experience is hearing how self-knowledge was the key to you developing that skill. You need to know and accept the limitations and strengths of your own body and psyche to sit still well and long. How beautiful.
I loved what you said about being the least powerful but most important person in the room as the subject. This is often how it feels to be an actress and you describe it so well. Especially a female actress. Usually you are paid less, consulted less and less respected than your male costar, director, producers, and other power players, but the whole thing hinges on your presence. Without you the male stories don’t sing.
I wonder how you feel about holding that position. You’ve done it for so long I assume you enjoy it. I wonder, as a man, if you enjoy that feeling because it’s novel. In the same way that a woman might enjoy having all the power for an afternoon here and there. Because, living it (being the subject), is a very intense burden. As I imagine shouldering all the power is. I think men can gloss-over the struggles of women and women can gloss over the struggles of men. Do you feel that this job has in any way given you a stronger empathy for the plight of women? Or has it made that plight seem easy to carry because you pick it up and put it down when you feel like it?
Lots to chew on. I really enjoyed what you came to share. Thank you for doing so! We have GREAT conversations here. You should check out some of the other comments and my responses. You might want to stick around. 😉🙏🏻✨
I plan to stick around (see my other comment about nudism). I love the job even after 41 years. I’m always amazed at what artists produce, how they see me and translate that into their art. I don’t know if the job of being an art model has made me more empathetic to the plight of women specifically or not. The job does come with an unusual dynamic, being nude while surrounded by clothed people. Over the years, I have grown more and more comfortable with it. Now it’s almost something I crave. During the early years, I would have been mortified if anyone had a camera in the room while I was in a pose. Nowadays, everyone has a camera on their person at all times (in the form of smart phones), and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Of course, I’m very open about being a nude model and a nudist. In 2001, I won $32,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire where host Regis Philbin seemed fascinated by my nude modeling job. And now I’m involved with a nudist organization; I’m the author of five novels featuring naturism and/or nudist characters; and I’m acting in nudist movies.
I’ve been nude at festivals and public events, and I sort of feel like I have a superpower of being comfortable in my own skin without shame. But it took awhile to get there.
Have you ever experienced being seen by a woman? I highly recommend it. Even in moments of intense desire, I’ve never felt invaded. I like the way her eyes move across my body with admiration rather than possession.
Hm. You know, I almost added something to that effect in the article - that, even between two women who are in lust for one another, they wouldn't strike these poses to please. That the natural flow of her lines would be the most sensual thing. But I didn't because I would be speaking out of turn. I can't say that because I don't know, I've never experienced it. Though have always wanted to. I have always wondered what that experience would be like.
I suspect it’s the kind of difference that’s difficult to fully explain until it’s experienced. But yes… that’s exactly why it feels so different. Desire is there, sometimes intensely so, but it doesn’t feel extractive. There’s less performance in it somehow. More curiosity. More witnessing.
The only experience I’ve had with a woman was with a close friend, and she is still my friend to this day. It never really felt like it was about sex. The intimacy itself felt deeper than that
I just returned from a trip to France and Paris, and from visiting the Musée d'Orsey.
What a coincidence to mention Impressionism, nothing happens by chance !
Painting isn't my favorite art form, but my wife dragged me by the hair, and I was diligent.
Now I'm talking to you about Impressionism and discovering details I'd never have thought of.
Yet I immediately distinguish sexy paintings from original natural ones, before you mentioned them.
Is it manipulation or seduction of ideas that I'm now more aware of what I'm looking at?
I think it's a question of knowledge. Years ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about pop music, which he loved. I've always preferred classical music. He didn't know it, but he was curious, and over the years, he became a Mozart fan, while I became a RHCP fan.
It's knowledge that guides what pleases. As Dante said: the higher you climb the mountain, the more the horizon opens up.
Perhaps, even in the sexual field, we should understand female sexuality better, and you're right when you say that female sexuality is born to please men.
It's been like this for so long that even ethology has adapted without us realizing it.
Why lipstick? Because it simulates sexual arousal.
Why high heels? Because they simulate an unsteady gait.
Why big boobs? Because we walk on two legs.
What man would ever undergo surgery to be more attractive?
Perhaps we men are afraid of being overwhelmed by feminine eroticism because we're afraid of confrontation, we're afraid of diversity, we prefer clichés that are boring.
In any case, beyond clichés, it's our mind that decides. No one will ever convince me that Coke is better than Chianti, even though I've never seen a wine commercial.
I always love reading your musings. They put a smile on my face. I love the impressionism/painting synchronicity. I loved hearing about the exchange between you and your friend - that he did not just adopt classical music, but the you also adopted something pop. I loved the Dante quote and agree. I think sometimes I just put thoughts out in the world to see who else is standing on the ledge with me...who sees what I'm looking at. I agree with the idea that men simplify women because otherwise they are too overwhelmed by our complication...like putting a sheet over a spirit so you can see it. If you can not walk in spirit, how else are you going to touch that entity? And I love the point that you love Chianti without the advertising. That, my friend, is what I want to invite people into through this post: noticing that the Chianti still tastes better, even if they've been sold the Coke. 😉🩵
I agree with you.
It’s interesting you say the women in the first painting look almost cartoonish; I actually thought about Betty and Veronica from the Archies when I first looked at it and before reading your analysis. The Archies, though, don’t masquerade as high art. They are cartoons.
One painting I’ve always loved is Picasso’s Blue Nude. It’s not a happy painting, but it’s powerful. He captured beautifully that sense of inward retreat, despair, and isolation that most have felt at points in our lives.
I love that you saw that before I pointed it out. It gives me reassurance to know that other people are sensitive to these subtleties, also.
I feel the same while looking at these paintings you are talking about and at many other contemporary paintings of women.
My body reacts with relaxation and safety when I look at these old paintings. And I feel stress in my body with these two modern paintings. I believe that the body never lies, if only we listen to it more often. I don’t want to be looked at and seen like that.
In all these paintings I see the contrast between a woman as just mere flesh and a woman as a whole person with all her inner world included and portrayed here. Portrayed with respect and admiration, not with the desire to exploit.
I too see the impact of pornography in modern art. Fortunately, such paintings are still considered salon art. Which means they'll most likely end up in someone's living room rather than in a museum. At least, that's what I hope. 🙂
I think that while men are attracted to natural beauty, they also like these types of images. Otherwise, they wouldn't be the main consumers of porn. And women start playing this game out of fear of not getting attention and love, of not being chosen.
Choosing art over pornography means, to some extent, giving up easy and quick pleasures. This requires at least a bit of asceticism. And I'm a bit pessimistic about the future, as I rarely see people wanting to develop this quality these days. What do you think?
Luckily, I, as a woman, have the freedom to choose to stop playing these “striking poses” games myself. ✨
Hmmmm. I hear you completely and agree on all fronts and counts. I know you and I have experienced a lot of similar traumas and have clear reactions to even the smell of sexual objectification.
I love that you pointed out that men are, in fact, attracted to these more "fake" images of women because when I wrote that part about men actually finding natural women sexy, I hesitated, due to what you point out here. What I see happening with men is corporations preying on men's susceptibility to the simplification of the woman and that has been going on for centuries...so long that it has actually reshaped men's desire.
It is true that desire, beauty and what we find attractive is not fixed. When I started working in Rwanda twenty years ago, fat women were the most desirable. Then "development" happened and now that's no longer the case. And yet, I still think that, under it all, what men are desirous of is access to women. So whatever is depicted as more accessible to them (more inviting, more outwardly evident and overtly focused on him) the more aroused they become. But, have an ordinary woman with no make-up, naked, open her whole heart, mind, body and soul to a man in a healthy way...I think that might be the sexiest thing.
What I suspect men (rightly) see in the more "natural" images that are less attractive is a woman saying "I don't care what you think of me". This puts them at a disadvantage and that feels unsexy to them. Whereas a woman who has gone to great lengths to send the message that "I want you to find me sexy"...well now, that is an open door that they want to run through.
I could probably write a 3000 page thesis on the dynamics of sex relations, but here I'm just shooting the shit. I don't even know what I just wrote, but maybe there's something interesting in there. ☺️
I like your thoughts. I've never really considered why a man might find a more natural woman less attractive. And your assumption seems fair to me. (It would be interesting to read men's opinions here, if they'd like to share, of course. Although it might be too delicate. 🙃)
I'd like to expand on your thought: in my opinion, it's because, deep down, a man is vulnerable to rejection, while a woman who already invites his attention and depends on his approval seems safer to him in this regard. And he gains that very power you mentioned at the beginning of your essay.
As for your idea about reshaping men's desire, I remembered recently stumbling across a video that talked about exactly this. In one African tribe, boys and girls grow up together, and the girls go topless. These boys don't stare at breasts; they look into the eyes while talking to girls. So, it's all simply the influence of the culture and environment in which we grow up.
"I could probably write a 3,000-page thesis on the dynamics of sexual relations."
Oh, actually that would be great 😊🤩😄
You seem to have a deep understanding of this topic. It would be interesting to read.
I’m a nudist. Actually I’m a regional president of the American Association for Nude Recreation, the oldest and largest nudist organization in North America. Your comment about the African tribe hit home. I’ve seen the same thing in the nudist community, especially among people who grew up in it. Eye contact is especially important when talking to anyone. And the exposure of the body serves to desexualize it. Very few people look like the bodies presented to us in porn. Even the bodies in porn don’t look like that for long if they ever really did. A lot is done with camera angles and rather unnatural positioning of the body. When you see people being naturally themselves, a lot of things happen. Porn loses its appeal. And you see people as persons instead of objects.
I’m VERY interested in the psychology and dynamics of nudist communities. I would love to be able to get in touch with you in the future to interview you about it. Can I find you here on Substack? Would an Insta DM be better? If so, what’s your insta handle? I’m working on a project at the moment that really delves into the psychology around sex and nudity and your insights could be really useful.
Absolutely I’m available for an interview. I’m @dhjonathan1 on Instagram. You and I have met before, at the DFW Writers Conference in 2023. You signed copies of your books for my granddaughter (who is 8 now, which I find unbelievable).
A movie I am in was just released on Prime and on DVD and Blu-ray. It is a Christian faith-based nudist movie. We shot it in the LA area in January 2025 with a tiny budget. And then two days into the shoot, we were evacuated because of the fires. So we had to overcome a lot just to get the movie made. All of us acting in the movie are from the nudist community. It’s called “Naked As Created: The Pastor Jim Moore Story”. I play one of the main antagonists, the editor D.H. (They named the character after the pen name I use for the novels I write.)
This article provided a new point of view for me to look through, and I wanted to say thank you for that. I have been exploring the feeling of sexiness/being sexy this year and trying to figure out what my truth is in that. I’m on a fitness journey (competing in my first body building competition this month) and in this body transformation I’m realizing how little the look of my body translates to sexiness. I always thought visible abs was one of the keys… but it’s not. Or at least it’s not a guarantee everyday. And there is absolutely nothing about the strict posing and routine that feels sexy. However, during this training process I accomplished a long standing goal of doing a chin up, and that was sexy as hell!
Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts on the comfort and natural state vs posed as being a marker. Over the last few years there have been candid and posed photos of myself taken during special events. I was surprised that I loved the candid photos that captured the experience and feeling vs the posed that felt forced in every way: say cheese, only don’t smile too big, tuck your tummy, have hubby stand closer to the camera so you don’t look bigger than him, etc etc!!
Thank you for being bold and sharing yourself through your writing, it means a lot!
I wish I had more time today to respond more fully this this comment. But what I will briefly say is: I used to be extremely fit in my twenties. I felt "hot", attractive, desirable, even sexy. But what I didn't feel until my forties when I permitted myself to get softer...was sensual. And that feeling of sensuality only comes when we take the rules and expectations off of our body and start to honor it just as it is.
Lots of love.
Mmm, I never noticed how sexualized some old paintings looked… but all my life I’ve wondered, why woman specifically were targets for men in this type of way (still confuses me) how normalized it is, like why are our boobs to "show" off/cover when being around men to gain something in life. It’s actually absurd.
This piece moved me because it refuses to flatten the conversation into mere morality, prudishness, or permissiveness. What I see here is something far more phenomenological…a reflection on what happens to eros when presence becomes performance and when embodiment becomes shaped around the gaze of power.
Your line:
“Pornography, to me, is not about nudity or sex, it’s about the distortion of the erotic energy.”
feels like the true center of the piece.
That distinction matters deeply because once the conversation becomes only “who is the villain?” we inevitably collapse into accusation and reduction:
the immodest woman,
the perverted man,
the manipulative seductress,
the oppressive patriarchy.
And historically, women have often carried the burden of that framework in profoundly damaging ways.
But what you are describing feels deeper and tragically more human than simple villainy. Much of this is conditioned into us through the milieu we inhabit. We inherit ways of seeing, desiring, performing, and relating long before we consciously examine them. That does not remove responsibility… but it does invite understanding.
What struck me most in your observations about the paintings was the distinction between bodies at rest in themselves versus bodies consciously arranged around the anticipation of the gaze. One feels inhabited. The other feels performed.
And perhaps that is part of the ache beneath the modern pornography explosion as well. Not simply “too much sex,” but the increasing collapse of relational presence into commodification, performance, optimization, and power dynamics. A world where people increasingly learn how to market desirability but rarely how to be known.
Your reflections made me think that the opposite of pornography may not simply be modesty… but communion. Presence. Mutuality. Embodiment without manipulation.
A deeply provocative and thoughtful piece. Thank you for wrestling with something so difficult without collapsing it into easy binaries.
OK, put your seat-belt on and stay with me, because I want to offer a different view.
Your article gives us something of a paradox, especially when you compare modern images with those from the 1800s. I think it is a beautiful comparison, but it also leaves me with a puzzle, or at least a question.
The modern images are clearly lined up with lust and dopamine. The gentler pictures seem to show a time of natural beauty, where women could be seen as they really were, not simply as objects of lust.
But is that really true?
Is looking through the lens of those 1800s pictures a real canvas of how women were once seen, and of how something has now been lost?
Let’s imagine the women from those 1800s pictures, and let’s consider the US in the late 1800s. Once married, many women would lose control of their land and inheritance, with much of it going to their husband. They were often not allowed to sign contracts or wills without their husband’s consent. Domestic violence was largely considered a private household matter, unless it was extreme, and was often tolerated by the law. Women were largely barred from higher education and professions such as law and medicine. The 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote nationwide in the US, was not ratified until 1920. Then there was the very real stigma of children born out of wedlock, which often resulted in economic destitution as well as social outcasting.
So here is the paradox.
Those 1800s paintings seem to offer a romantic, innocent view of women and their bodies, especially when compared with the clearly pornographic nature of many modern images.
But to move this into the 21st century, I was recently in a business workshop for two days. There were five directors in that workshop, and three of them were women.
So I would say that, in some ways, both pictures are a lie. Would you agree?
The question, then, is this: how much is the sexualisation of women affecting their ability to be seen as equals?
How much does art reflect reality?
Yes, there has been some slippage in women’s rights in the US, and this should be noted. Are these images a representation of a possible backsliding in rights? I don’t know. We also see men’s movements that treat women simply as objects, reducing them to body counts and physical appearance.
You also make an important point about the real risk of manipulation. I do worry about young people, especially around eating disorders and body dysmorphia and the stress of the camera being everywhere now and the like button being the judge of out soul?
You highlight a real issue: how can women move back to the glorious and gorgeous experience of being female, rather than the experience of being sexualised objects?
But in the time of those paintings, were women far more objects in almost every practical sense than they are in modern Western society.
So your post leaves me with questions. I do not have the answers, but it is, as always, a wonderful and thoughtful post.
So for me are both pictures a lie on reality?
How much of that lie do we tell ourselves?
Hi ☺️
I am struck, in your comment and those of many people on social media, by the fact that it seems very hard to comment on anything regarding sex and women without it being driven back to the same discussion of equality. But, this article is not addressing issues of equality, nor women's rights. It is relegated to the topic of what we find sexy in women - naturalness or artificiality. I think it's fundamental to talk about the patriarchy when addressing many, many issues we face today, and not wrong to bring it up here, but I think it's also important to be able to discuss isolated issues without calling into the forum the whole kit'n'caboodle.
Nonetheless, I will engage the discussion you're inviting.
I had this same dilemma with my experience visiting Qatar vs living in the US. I find in Qatar, where women are not afforded the same rights and freedoms that I have in the US and are socially chastised for showing their skin and bodies, that I experience a different kind of freedom I've never known in "the West" - one where I don't feel that I NEED to display my body and skin to increase my social currency. I couldn't believe what a relief it felt like to put on my abaya in Qatar and be considered as beautiful as can be. Here in the US, most men would feel more like, "Why are you wearing that potato sack?" That said, I am WELL AWARE that if I HAD to wear it and could not CHOOSE to wear something else more revealing without being judged or worse, that would not make me feel happy or free.
While I appreciate the consideration of what the reality of the women in Sir William's paintings might have been, I was not trying to imply in this post AT ALL that women have less rights now or are treated more as objects today than we were in the past (PS - the older paintings were European, not American). In fact, as I wrote I kept thinking, "Sir William's paintings were the "porn" back then". But that is exactly what I was trying to point out! Look how NATURAL their porn was. It represents "real" women, not comic book fantasies. I am VERY aware of and grateful for all of the rights, freedoms and privileges that I enjoy today but that doesn't change the fact that since the advent of mass advertising the image of a "sexy woman" has become more and more distorted.
The thing I am expressing in this article is about how the painting makes me FEEL. How it feels to see women with natural bodies and in postures be regarded as sensual objects of beauty. THAT feels amazing in my body. My body responds to that. Sings to that! I want MORE of that. And, I was noting how the other, more modern images make me FEEL - vulnerable, objectified and manipulated. That is important to listen to. How we respond in our somatic being to what we are seeing, hearing or experiencing is a fundamental skill/tool in navigating the next chapter of humanity. If we can't feel these deep responses anymore, we are completely at the mercy of the manipulations of those in charge of the messaging. And...make no mistake, every image is a message.
As always, a pleasure to break things down with you! Thank you for chiming in!
Cheers!
It's true that perception is tied to the historical period, it's like pretending to know what Latin pronunciation was like, we'll never know, we have the written text but not the audio.
Ha! I love that you say this. As a French speaker, I have always bulked at the ways I am told by Americans that Latin is to be pronounced. It does not add up with the LIVING Latin languages. I suspect we're getting it all wrong.
I have never heard your voice in French 😍, speaking of language my mother taught Latin and always said that despite the in-depth metrics we do not know how they pronounced the words
Actually, you might find it interesting to know that Sir Russel William Flint was Scottish. ☺️
I have always found it difficult to discern the mind of a painter. The times I have gone to the Picasso museum, I have seen his art and read the title of the work, I have never been able to find what he was trying to express. But it is true, with your explanations, that the purpose of each painting is completely clear, in the more modern paintings it is clear where the man would be, in this case, the place that the painter himself would occupy, and it is true that you come to see them as offensive, you see yourself as an object, you lose the innocence and beauty that represents being a woman. I have always thought that there are two mirrors, one in which you see your own reflection and the other from which others see us, and sometimes, it can be scary. Well seen!
Thank you for your share, Mary. What I find scariest is considering if I am even capable of seeing myself through any lens other than my conditioning. Are any of us capable of that?
I think we are all conditioned by something, education, religion, fame, survival, etc; but I suppose that each one should look in the way that best makes them feel.
There are so many thoughts in your reflections on power, influence, and sexuality, Evangeline. What struck me most was the tension underneath it all: whether we are ever truly seeing ourselves clearly, or only through the layers of conditioning we inherited. I keep returning to one conviction of my own: power was never meant for indulgence or self-aggrandizement. At its best, power exists to provide and protect. To create opportunities for those who would not otherwise have access to them. To stand guard against harms others cannot yet see from where they stand. Real power bends downward in service. And perhaps that same principle applies inwardly as well. We use our growing awareness not to condemn ourselves, but to care for ourselves more honestly.
You asked in a response to a post, “Am I even capable of seeing myself through any lens other than my conditioning?” I believe there is hope. I think of a sock that develops a hole. We stitch it up with new yarn. Then another hole appears and we mend that too, maybe this time with different yarn. Years pass and the sock has been repaired over and over again. At what point is it no longer the same sock? And yet we still think of it as the same. I suspect identity works much the same way. We continue to call ourselves by the same name, tell the same stories, carry the same assumptions, even while profound change has been happening all along beneath the surface.
I felt this deeply at a class reunion once. People talked with me sharing old stories, old jokes, old versions of who they remembered me to be. And strangely, they were not wrong. That person existed. But standing there, I also realized how much of me they could not possibly know. The decades between then and now had rewritten me in a thousand unseen ways: grief, love, responsibility, work, failure, meaning, sacrifice, hope. What moved me most was not that they remembered who I had been, but that there was still room at the table for who I had become. It reminded me that conditioning may shape us, but its influence is not final.
If you're up for an experiment, try this with me. Most of us tell the stories of our lives in remarkably fixed ways. The same words. The same emotional emphasis. The same conclusions. Often the story we tell today is nearly identical to the one we told immediately after the event itself. And with each retelling, not only does the memory become cemented, but so does the meaning of it, the size of it in our hearts, and our identity in relationship to it. By retelling the story, we reinforce the self who lived inside that story. But here is the twist: retell it differently. Think of the event again, but this time do not narrate it as the younger version of yourself. Tell it from where you stand today. From your age now. Your wisdom now. Your home, your losses, your growth, your tenderness now. Suddenly context appears. Compassion appears. You begin to see not simply what happened, but the conditions surrounding the younger you who was .going through the event
And perhaps that is how we slowly outgrow conditioning: not by waging war against our former selves, but by learning to see them with maturity, kindness, empathy, and context. We discover that we are not trapped inside the original story. We are allowed to become the person who revisits it with gentler eyes. And with a new story told about the very same event, identity itself begins to shift. Not because the past changed, but because we did. And we get to leave our conditioning behind. What do you think?
I think this is all very true and beautifully said. I am sure you must be a very good therapist and recognize my process in all that you describe. ☺️🙏🏻
I had a similar experience on a trip home to visit my family of origin recently. I've not been immersed with them much in the past year and I was struck by how foreign their rhythms felt to me. They felt urgent, rushed, harried, anxious for no reason and overly driven to productivity for productivity's sake. It was striking because I knew that the very thing that was feeling alien to me used to be how I functioned also. It was so loud how much I'd changed.
I have no doubt that people can change, and I have been on an active journey of undoing programming and rewriting my script for a long time now. And still...I suspect that there will always be part of the old messaging that I fight, that slips back in, that haunts the new life I grow. I guess you'll have to check in with me at 80 and find out if I'm right. 😉
You’re very kind. I apologize for letting the counselor in me show up. I just enjoy these topics so much. It’s how hearts heal, how souls find their depth and how spirits find freedom. It’s as much art as it is science and the conversations we share between the spaces of our individuality are some of the best moments in life.
Thank you for sharing about time with your family. I feel the same way with I’m back with mine. While we’ve certainly grown and, I hope, improved in how we relate together, the familiar pull to old patterns creeps in the longer we’re together. I wonder if that’s good. Maybe, as you’ve said, the familiar sticks around to show us how far we’ve grown. I love that idea.
Thank you for the post of my words. It’s a privilege to think something I’ve said has connected.