Current mood:

sad

Mom Buys a Naked Book
I didn't buy the Naked Book on purpose. When we got home from our Thanksgiving weekend trip, my daughter told me I had received a hardcover book in the mail. I was very excited as I had purchased this book from Half.com for a low price and was going to be using it to further my education in the world of human animation. I had been figuring out how to pose and animate figures for Second Life by using myself, sitting in the computer chair but now I would have photos of real people in action, photographed every 10th of a minute, to have for reference.

The description of the book had read as follows: "196 Plates, containing over 4,700 individual photographs from the famous Muybridge collection, chosen for their value to Artists, Doctors and Researchers (and hopefully Second Life animation students) by Eadweard Muybridge".

It seemed to be just what I needed. Photos of people doing normal things: sitting, climbing and running with views taken from the back, sides and front every few seconds of the movement. The price was right and I knew it would help me immensely as I tried to work out animations for the furniture I was making.

I opened the package expectantly and there was this excellent-looking book, written in the late 1890's
by Mr. Muybridge who had moved to San Francisco from the UK where he had developed an interest in motion photography, going so far as to invent a technique that would eventually become the forerunner for motion pictures.

What I didn't realize is that almost every picture in the book is of a stark-raving nude person which was immensely amusing to my daughters. I guess it was smart of Mr. Muybridge to photograph people in the nude so that every muscle, sinew and ligament could be seen but for the lay person just thumbing through the book, it was very hard to keep from laughing. There were men in the nude fencing, boxing, jumping, running and smoking, along with other things which made for a very comical group of pictures. I tried so hard not to be juvenile about the whole thing, after all, models have been posing nude for artists for decades and I was really doing ok until I reached the page with a very hairy man in a Fez hat, totally naked as well, running along at a brisk pace. I could just imagine the conversation that took place back then,

Muybridge: "Well done, Charles, are you getting cold? No? Excellent! Now we need to illustrate a naked man running. You'll be running to the end of the room for this one."

Charles: (as he hops from foot to foot to warm up), "Ok, I'm good to go, but can I leave my hat on?"

Muybridge: "yes, of course. We don't want you to catch cold."

Another thing surprising to me is that the many of the male models in the book were instructors at that time for the University of Philadelphia where this whole photography thing was taking place. Most of the naked women were paid models, not teachers. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this. Apparently they had to pay the women to be naked but the males were more than eager to show off their shortcomings. I believe they mentioned in the Introduction that the men who were illustrating the fencing poses were the real fencing instructors there at that college. I'm not sure if things were more free in the 1890's but I don't think there was a single professor I ever had at college that I would want to see naked in a book. In fact, I'm quite sure of the fact now that I think about it some more.

One interesting thing I noted is that all of the female models were rather plump, with imperfect features and disproportionate attributes. It was quite reassuring to know that there was a time in our society when looking normal was perfectly acceptable, even considered beautiful. It also made me reflect sadly on the state our society is in now with so much emphasis placed on trying to "look" a certain way in order to be considered beautiful especially with our increased ability to change what God gave us with surgery. It would be an interesting study to find out when things began to change since that day over 100 years ago when Mr. Muybridge told a woman model to hop over a hurdle naked.

While I was at my brother's house, my sister had brought over a stack of magazines for us to read, mostly People Magazine. In one of the recent issues, it showed a picture of The Reunion of Charlie's Angels. There were Kate, Farah and Jaclyn with their arms entwined, posing for pictures at one of the recent award shows. They had mostly the same shapes, ultra slim and clothed in sparkling gowns. My eyes were drawn there first, then I looked at their faces and was shocked. I guess I expected to see gracefully-aged beauties but what I found were three women who had obviously had extreme face lifts. Their eyes were drawn up like cats, their cheekbones so taught you could bounce a quarter off them and an odd stretched look about the mouth so that their chins looked pointy. Jaclyn looked the more normal of the three. I remember sighing sadly. If these three very successful, famous and gorgeous women have to succumb to doing such drastic measures in order to feel good about themselves and have society still think they're beautiful, what chance do we mere mortals have?