Let’s start by saying this: I’m a 47-year-old single parent to two young children and I am in the midst of getting divorced. In the summer of 2020, I left the security of a much-loved family home for a rental property that was in such a state of disrepair I couldn’t use the oven, shut the windows properly or escape the smell of rat droppings. I tried desperately to hold on to a corporate job that was paying the rent, but life was a blur, and I was drowning. Trudging through the tunnel of gloom, no glimmer of light ahead, I yearned to crawl back to my old life where I felt safe. But it was too late. I’d left my marriage. There was no turning back.
I spent the year that followed putting one foot in front of the other, until small flickers of light began to appear in the distance. I moved to a nicer rental. The children began to settle into a new world order. I became used to the loneliness of the house when they weren’t with me. I remember draping fairy lights around my new bed headboard, finally allowing myself the mental space to luxuriate in a sweet-smelling bedroom that was all mine. With a renewed sense of self, I started online dating and met all kinds of interesting (and not so interesting) men.
And that is how one evening, lit by that row of yellow fairy lights, nestled between soft pink sheets, I took my first ever nude selfie. The gauzy glow of decorative lighting, it turns out, is astonishingly flattering.
Without hesitation, I sent my debut nude to a much younger lover for his delectation, because that’s what one does in this new age of dating I find myself in. Well, sometimes. From my experience, dates tend to fall into two camps (broadly speaking). There are men with whom I wouldn’t hesitate to talk dirty, and there are those I meet for civilised daytime lunches. I have several apps on my phone that organise this black-and-white approach ever so succinctly: Feeld for f*cks and threesomes, Hinge and Bumble for potential relationships that might last, a flick through Tinder for all of the above. As for Killing Kittens, I haven’t yet managed to muster the courage to go beyond just messaging. Am I a dom or a sub? That’s a whole other article.
Being single dating in the digital era at this age is not for the faint-hearted. I garner more interest from much younger men than men in their 40s. And younger men tend to be less sexually inhibited. They ask probing questions, confident that a woman like me isn’t looking to start a family or seeking girlfriend status. I was wary at first of sending a nude shot to a man born the year after the Spice Girls’ first single. I did question my motives. Am I out of control? Should I up my HRT? Have I finally lost the plot? And yet, not for a moment did I consider sending a nude to be a non-feminist act – my body, my choice. I was fully in control and felt sexy and strong.
It’s a fraught word in a post-#MeToo era, but I’m reclaiming how I feel about ‘sexy’. When I lived with my ex-husband, I barely looked at my body in the mirror. With my identity fully wrapped up in motherhood, the way I’d once viewed myself as a sexual being was long forgotten. In my new life, in my new home, I felt released from societal and self- imposed expectations of what is considered appropriate for a woman of my age. My debut nude was fully controlled by me, which turned me on in ways I hadn’t quite anticipated. My body my gaze – soft breasts an angular hip a neatly trimmed pussy, as opposed to the 1970s bush I’ve been ‘working’ since having kids – I felt powerful and beautiful. Also, it’s time to get a grip and stop being so self-critical. I won’t look like this at 70.
I met the recipient, my now ex-lover, a man 13 years my junior, on a website called Toy Boy Warehouse. Sounds like Toys R Us or Pets at Home, but the only toys and pets available are young men with a penchant for older women. I only stayed on the website for a hot minute – I couldn’t cope with the ‘cub looking for a cougar’ type messages – but found my lover within that window. As far as I was concerned, I’d set out my stall as an older woman looking for no-strings attached, uncomplicated sex. His response to my first nude encouraged me to shoot more and more. I wouldn’t say the floodgates are open, but this brief encounter provided five months of excitement and experimentation, not to mention dick pics, tit pics, shot from behind pics (me, that is). Astonishing what nude artistry can be achieved with an iPhone self-timer. Looking at the images, I wondered why, aged 47, I was so late to the party.
I’m not alone in embracing the nude – and it’s not always down to a mid-life renaissance, either. I spoke to a colleague 20 years younger than me, who said: ‘Throughout my teens and early twenties, I felt very reserved in sex, from initiating it to showing any kind of sexual agency. I’d usually just follow the man’s lead. Nudes have helped me relax into being a more comfortably sexual person with partners and be more confident in expressing sexual desire.’ Aged 26, she’s also a dick pic convert. ‘The first moment I received a (consensual) dick pic, I shrieked with laughter and surprise. But once I overcame the initial giggly shock, it felt empowering, rather than arousing. Swapping nudes creates a reciprocal bond in our shared vulnerability.’
I share the same view. When my lover chose to send nude pics of himself, I can’t deny that, although he is very handsome, his nude pics just weren’t that beautiful to look at. For me, looking at nude pics of myself is a much bigger turn on.
Change is afoot. Women are reclaiming their portrayal of nudity via TikTok and Instagram, posting cheerful videos of themselves demonstrating how to take the perfect nude or how to look awesome when riding the reverse cowgirl. WhatsApp has introduced a Snapchat-esque new feature where an image disappears once viewed, to cater for the demand for nudes – and the inherent risks of sending such personal images out into the digital ether. Because even as (some of us) embrace the nudes, we still know they’re dangerous in the wrong hands. I’ll talk to my daughter about nudity and online safety as soon as she is old enough – as friends who are mothers to teenagers all tell me, nude pics sent in ‘confidence’ to a boyfriend invariably end up doing the rounds on hundreds of WhatsApp groups until the entire school has seen the intimate shot.
And we have to grapple with the question of how our own delight in documenting and sharing our naked body relates to the daily bombardment of unrealistic images and constant objectification of women by, well, everyone, including women, that fills our social-media feeds on a daily basis. But is this a new problem – a product of the digital era – or is it the age-old issue of seeking validation?
Throughout history, nudity in art, photography and film has been a reflection of culture, a social signifier of the times. Titian painted plump rosy boobs, creamy skin and soft bellies. Botticelli’s Venus is quite small-breasted, with big thighs and slim ankles – an ‘imperfect’ body shape, not in any way similar to the Kim Kardashian-style curves that we idolise now. She looks intellectual in her womanly beauty.
Nowadays, the unapologetic baring of body parts by celebrities (and unknowns) feels like a fairly new phenomenon, but Liz Hurley wearing that Versace safety-pin dress to the premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral back in 1994 was the first time I witnessed a body on display at a widely publicised event. Hurley’s dress is practically modest in comparison to the totally see-through net dress Lizzo wore to Cardi B’s birthday in October 2021, however. That same night, Winnie Harlow wore a see-through crochet dress with matching knickers on full display. This party was the ultimate display of ‘f*ck you’ femininity, and I very much doubt that the attendees were barely dressed for anyone else but each other. Perhaps this is the impact of the proliferation of nudes in our private lives? They cross over into our public ones, too.
Historically – and even presently – most women in art have been the subjects of the male gaze, but not always. I met Jenny Saville briefly, in a bar in 1992, the year she composed Propped: a nude of a woman perched on a tiny stool, paint smeared across canvas, an uncompromising portrayal of female power and fragility. Saville’s female gaze challenges both society’s perception of women’s bodies and the historical portrayal of the female form in art history (she cites Manet’s Olympia as a reference point). For me, experiencing Saville’s visceral paintings is so much more than just observation. They stir within me wide-ranging emotions, by tapping into how I feel when looking in the mirror at my own body of flesh. But when I take a nude, whose gaze am I serving? Is it possible it could be both?
The night I took my debut nude was all about finding the right angle. Laying down flat, I held the camera above my head and to the right as a way of guaranteeing the Saville-esque rolls around my middle, thanks in part to birthing two huge babies back-to-back, remained flattened. (I’m not up for a tummy roll blending into a mono-boob). And like that, I found the perfect angle for elongating the appearance of legs. As for cropping and adding filters before pressing send on the nude pic I never thought I’d take, just call me Vain Vera. At a business event, upon receipt of said nude, my ex-lover wrote that he was going to have to excuse himself for a while. I’d driven a much younger man to masturbation during a meeting. My work here was done.
Looking towards the future, I now realise that nude pics could remain part of healthy relationship. Not just reserved for lovers with no longevity, but long-term relationships with suitable men. I realise holding any kind of black-and-white approach when it comes to dating only fuels the notion that women are either sluts or princesses. I’m neither a slut nor a princess. I’m a woman expressing a newfound love for her body. I just may not upload it to TikTok.
This article appeared in the February 2022 issue of ELLE UK.
