She told her mother, I’m a model. She said nice. She told her mother, I’m a nude model.Her mother responded, why do you want to show off your body for people to see.

She told the friend she lifted weights with, I can’t spend too much time in the gym today. I have work later. He asked, which one. Leaning in closer, she told him.

He said, is that why you’re working out more?

Before she left her house for the studio, she stared at herself in the mirror. She turned sideways, sucked in her gut, looked herself in the eye, breathed, and let her body fall. She told herself, I look good. I am good.

She learned quickly artists didn’t care what you looked like. After clothing was stripped, and the model stepped onto the platform, your figure was worshipped by them. Artists were the ones who saw what you couldn’t see: a small muscle in your leg as more weight was put on one over the other. Many didn’t dare to put facial features in their work, they allowed you to be anonymous, though she knew which curved body belonged to her. Every shape, curve, angle, they drew, were good.

Unless they decided they were having a bad day and the angles, shadows, shading, thickness of the lines wasn’t what they wanted. Stepping down from her platform, she walked behind the easel; a place where she shouldn’t have been, and told them their work was really good. 

Secretly she asked, is that what I really look like to people?