Renek Gaszewski [Blog]

A cruise company covered up naked models in its advertising to save the embarrassment of shy Britons.
The Ocean Village firm promoted its on-board sauna facilities in brochures for both the UK and German markets.
The photo was the same for both, except that for the UK market two black bras had been added and one of the men had been given a pair of swimming trunks.
A company spokeswoman said: “Britons are likely to feel uncomfortable naked. They are more reserved.”
‘Clothes on’
She said British people tended to keep their clothes on in saunas, so for that reason it was decided to reflect this in the brochure.
The picture in the German brochure showed all the characters enjoying a sauna naked, covered only by well-placed towels.
“Germans, on the other hand, seem quite happy to go naked in saunas,” she added.
The on-board sauna is available on the German-owned Aida Blu vessel. The Aida company and Ocean Village are both part of the giant US company Carnival.
Aida Blu will be joining Ocean Village next year and it will sail under the name Ocean Village Two.
The spokeswoman added: “We haven’t decided yet if people will go naked in Ocean Village Two’s sauna, but it seems unlikely.”

Fine-art nude photographers have historically desexualized their images as a means of distancing themselves from pornography. Classical poses and gauze veils were utilized to hide the genitals when photographing both women and men. Any visible pubic hair was removed by retouching. Victorian art critic John Ruskin had such difficulty reconciling the ideal vision of a woman with the real thing, his wife of six years was forced to have their marriage annulled on grounds of nonconsummation. In the 1930s, photographer Edward Weston examined any prints he was mailing with a magnifying glass for strands of pubic hair, worried he would be subject to postal service Bpornography offenses. As recently as 1990, the FBI seized the equipment and images of Jock Sturges, charging him with suspicion to produce and distribute child pornography. Following a yearlong lawsuit, the grand jury threw out the case after hearing the testimony of the subjects of his photographs. With its status as a contested genre, why would anyone want to photograph nudes?
Neil Coleman, who’s been orchestrating nude photography exhibitions for 13 years, has a ready answer: “You wouldn’t believe how many photographers that are really shooting pornography ask to be in these shows. They tell stories about sleeping with their models and so forth. That is disturbing to me because it makes being a fine-art nude photographer more difficult.”
Coleman has not totally avoided the sexual element in depicting the nude himself – the pubic mound is apparent in some of his photographs – but what draws the eye into his images is the comfort of the models with their own bodies – stretch marks, the soft slump of a breast – and their connection to Coleman, who shoots the female nude exclusively. The combined allure and androgyny of one model affirms her deep ability to enjoy the body while affirming its weighty theoretical associations.
Coleman takes great care to make his models comfortable by providing them with hot tea, ganache, and a bathrobe. He has them sign their release forms after they see the contact sheet. Showing them previous works often dispels anxiety because they see that he is interested in capturing the allure of the moment, the sensuality of the model and the setting. Coleman acknowledges that at 55 he is flattered that these women will pose for him, but says he doesn’t have time during a shoot to attend to any sexual energy. He is so focused on the considerations of composition, lighting, the models’ play with the geometry of space, and the immediacy of the framed image that if he were to respond to the attraction, he might miss a subtle distraction, like an electrical cord.
After a day’s shoot, what does he want his works to represent for himself and his model? Coleman shares this: “I want my works to tell my models, ‘Thank you for being intimate with me and for allowing me to photograph your sensuality.’” And that is what I consider a beautiful gesture.

Some of us got to talking about privacy the other day, wondering how much of it we have today compared to a half century or more ago, and whether privacy is as valued today as it used to be. When you hear about kids sending nude photos of themselves to their friends on cell phones, you have to wonder whether they have any concept at all of discretion, let alone privacy. And it does seem that some people are willing to put all kinds of videos of themselves on an Internet site called YouTube.
A cautionary tale of one unintended consequence of all this was reported on Yahoo News recently. An American visitor to Prague in the Czech Republic passed a store window and was surprised to see a huge photo of a family he knew in Missouri. What was their photo doing there? He took a photo of the photo and sent it to the people back home. It turns out that this was the Christmas photo the family sent out last year and they also put it on their blog and on a few “social networking sites.”
Once something gets on the Internet, I guess, you never know where it will end up or what use someone will make of it. The storeowner in Prague said he thought it was just a computer generated image when he took it off of the Internet and had no idea it was an image of a real family. Meanwhile the Missouri folks said next time they post a photo online, they’ll do something to make it hard to reproduce the image.
Obviously, technology has moved faster than our ability to adapt to it. Our former habits of mind just don’t always take into account all of the possibilities that exist these days.
Even those of us who do think about protecting our privacy may not realize how quickly we agree to give it up.
For instance, when I shop at a supermarket and use that “club member” discount card, a computer is keeping track of what I buy and how often I come to the store. The store owners probably use such information for their own marketing purposes. The receipt prints out my name so the cashier can use it in wishing me a nice day, so if I happen to lose the receipt in the parking lot, somebody finding it will know what food and beverages I buy, what ailments I may be trying to cure with over the counter medicines, and how many more sandwiches I have to buy to get a free one.
The concern about identity theft and invasion of privacy can lead some enterprising people to capitalize on this worry. Last week I got some mail from a catalog I’ve ordered things from occasionally. The mail was a check for $7.75. A refund? Did I overpay for an order? I was curious so I looked at it carefully. I saw the statement, “By cashing or depositing this check you are purchasing a membership in ‘PrivacyGuard.’ Read important details on reverse.” On the reverse was a notice that by endorsing the check I would be signing up for this service, whatever it is, and that my credit card would be charged $159.99 for the first year’s service unless I called to cancel it. I decided to guard my privacy by tearing up the check.
When it comes to balancing privacy and technology, I guess it all comes down to using common sense and being aware of the age we live in, an age when an image or statement you think was uttered in privacy can circle the globe in moments. I don’t want to be paranoid about it, but I want to be sensible. Personally, I like privacy. Sometimes I keep my thoughts private. And sometimes I don’t. Like today.

They start as young cherubs, their round faces full of smiles and innocence. They play, and delve into anything cute and sweet. A few years pass and the Barbies are given up for boys. Life is still childlike, even with the first hints of attraction. But the good gets tired, and in a blink, it’s given up for stripper poles, prostitution, degradation, and a feverish desperation to be seen as an adult — mentally and physically.
Yes, the above path is a bit exaggerated. Young actresses often mix a little thrilling fare in with the sweetness. Nevertheless, there is almost always a swift and destructive crashing of the gate between adolescence and adulthood. One minute, the young actress is all song, dance, and smiling love, and the next, they’re fighting for their own spot in the world of Mr. Skin.
We can’t exactly blame them. We live in a world rife with contradictions about growing up and being taken seriously. The world of The Breakfast Club and slightly tougher teen fare was replaced with tween limbo and an elongation of sweet teen life. But at the same time, we chide those that take part in Disney’s tween world, publish countdown clocks marking the days left until some young actress is legal, and as much as we might complain about them stripping for cred, our complaints fade if the project turns out to be good.
But what does it mean for actresses now and tomorrow? The path is murky.
Shirley Temple never diverged from her sweet routes and remains the sugary sweetheart. Trying to drop her sweet image, twenty-year-old Hayley Mills bared all for The Family Way, while having an affair with director Ray Boulting — 33 years her senior. (But that only led her to Saved by the Bell. She played Miss Carrie Bliss in the then-titled Good Morning, Miss Bliss.) Tatum O’Neal disrobed for Circle of Two at seventeen, but her later career never matched her Oscar win for Paper Moon. And then there’s Jodie Foster. She didn’t bare all at age fourteen, but she did enter the world of prostitution for Taxi Driver, immediately wrenching herself out of her iconic family film image.
But even if there weren’t examples like Jodie Foster, Hollywood endlessly links coming-of-age, maturity, and success with skin. As Rebecca Walker pointed out for the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, the link between the Oscars and prostitution/stripping is as tight as can be — Marisa Tomei, Natalie Portman, Charlize Theron, Elisabeth Shue, Julia Roberts, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda… Hell, the first actress to win an Oscar, Janet Gaynor, got it for playing a prostitute in Street Angel.
With that track record, it’s no wonder that so many of today’s stars are doing their part. Just like the countdowns to legality, one could make bets on when today’s youth will step up to the nude plate. Some have expressed their willingness in advance, like Vanessa Hudgens and Emma Watson. Some jump into the idea haphazardly like Lindsay Lohan and I Know Who Killed Me. Some try to wipe away their goodie-goodie roles with nude pictorials like Jessica Biel. Ironically, Anne Hathaway followed the same path with the risque Havoc, only to have it ignored in favor of her dramatic and comedic work — a welcome exception in the bunch.
Then there’s Dakota Fanning. Never one to shy away from challenging, disturbing, and controversial fare well before legality, she started an uproar with Hounddog, and always presented herself as a mature adult trapped in a tyke’s body. Now, according to some sources, she’s set for a steamy lesbian scene in the upcoming Runaways film with Kristen Stewart.
This all brings up a big question: What will happen in a decade or two? As we’ve all learned over the years, each new generation does what it can to out-do, and often out-sex the last. Will actresses just skip the teen years altogether like Fanning? Perhaps not, since the revolving door of T & A has always opened to the younger actresses now and then.
An interesting twist to the equation: Rather than following their own path, actors are hopping onto the skin bandwagon too. Daniel Radcliffe bared all publicly for Equus and Robert Pattinson did a little Silence of the Lambs-esque tucking for Little Ashes. I don’t know what this means for coming-of-age in Hollywood — whether actors are just joining in on the fun, or could take the skin-heavy shelf that girls have held for all these years.
Either way, I can only hope we take a cue from examples like the ones above: Sex might sell, but it is no sure-fire way to be taken seriously. Sexuality might be part of growing up, but it doesn’t hold the key to maturation, success, and respect.
Maybe if we showed adolescence as a little more Degrassi and a little less Disney, and studios stopped throwing so much money at films with strippers and prostitution, times could change. Young actors wouldn’t feel as desperate to be taken seriously, and egads, more dramatic roles for women could actually reflect our life rather than just sexualizing it.

Stripped naked and scrutinised for hours by a room full of strangers. Welcome to the world of the life model…
For anybody suffering from a poor body image the idea of standing naked and being scrutinised by a classroom full of school boys would be the ultimate in harrowing nightmares.
But for Rosemarie Orwin this extreme form of therapy has not only proved to be a confidence booster but has turned out to be a nice little earner as well.
Rosemarie, a former manager at WH Smith in Swindon, found she just couldn’t bear office work anymore and decided it was time to bare all instead.
So, a year ago, she decided to become a life model:
“I had a friend who used to model at Newbury College,” says Rosemarie, “and she said she really enjoyed it and said it was easy.
“I’ve never had any confidence in my body and thought well it’s a bit extreme but I’ll give it a go.”
Rosemarie’s debut class in the buff turned out to be a group of 40 year old art buffs from Oxford:
“It was very nerve racking because I’d never been in front of a group of strangers with my clothes off before. And of course they’re standing behind their easels measuring you and pencils are coming out at you.”
“But literally after I’d finished I came out and punched the air with complete euphoria saying ‘I did it, I did it’.”
Despite not being the quintessential voluptuous, big breasted muse, since taking her clothes off Rosemarie’s career has quite literally taken off.
She now poses for art classes, sketching groups, sculptors and photographers all over the south of England. But even as a seasoned model some classes can still prove to be a bit of a challenge:
“The first boy’s school I went to, I didn’t realise it was a boy’s school and I actually did blush. I went into the room and the first boy came in and than another, and than another and I thought this is obviously a boy’s school.
“I thought ‘Calm down, just control yourself, you’re old enough to be their mother’. Anyway I just calmed myself down and it was fine but I could feel the beads of sweat coming up and it was quite nerve racking.”
For life models, stripping off and posing for anything from a few minutes up to an hour without a break, it pays not to get too artistic with your poses:
“You don’t know if it’s going to be comfortable after 20 minutes and even now I’ll choose a pose quite often that I’ll think after 20 minutes ‘I really shouldn’t have done this one’.
“When I first started I was obviously very keen to please everybody and do what they wanted and I would sit in a lot of pain without saying anything and I’ve almost literally crawled out of the door I’ve been in so much pain.”
And as for trying to keep still, no matter what, for Rosemarie it’s all a question of mind over matter:
“Sometimes when you have a really desperate itch and you have to scratch it, you can make yourself believe that it’s not itching and it does go away. It’s amazing what your mind can do to stop certain bodily functions… shall we say.”
But pain, tedium, boredom and chilly drafts aside are the final artistic results flattering?
“Facially, I would say most of the time, it’s not flattering. I look quite gruesome, body wise that varies, but I don’t take that as a personal thing.”
And you can see why…
Rosemarie’s diary is filled to the end of May, she has body painting bookings for a corporate event in Reading, is being turned into a range of ornaments for an international ceramics company and is even perhaps to become a model for a mannequin sculptor.
And just in case there’s a chance of Rosemarie having to spend too much time with her clothes on she’s organised a series of life drawing workshops in Swindon the first of which, on March 20th, is already booked out…
Rosemarie is sitting pretty in every sense of the word…
“It sounds odd, I know, but I do feel a lot more confident. I don’t know why it’s just the way that’s happened.”
Rosemarie will be the life model for New College Swindon’s first ever Life Drawing course. The classes kick-off on Monday 19th September and run for ten weeks between 6.30 and 8.30pm at New College’s Queen’s Drive campus.