Reclaiming the Female Form

By Sydney Rousseau

Note: Names have been changed. 

“Can you try to block that painting for the photo?” My mom asks me as I respond with an eye roll. “Please, Sydney,” she implores. “I’m going to want to show people pictures of your dorm room. Do you think Memere really wants to see a painting of a naked woman plastered front and center above your bed?” 

I don’t comply with her pleading, and the three of us — my mom, dad, and I — stand in the center of my room with the naked woman peering from the background. The photos are posted on Facebook without a mention from anyone — Memere included. 

I’ve always had an affinity for paintings and sculptures of naked women. “You and your naked women” is a sentence that comes out of my mother’s mouth frequently; whether it’s following the purchase of a planner with a collage of abstract female forms, or slipping a copy of a Matisse painting of naked bodies into our gallery wall above the breakfast nook. Her observation is certainly an acute one. So when I walked into the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a brisk Sunday afternoon, I knew exactly what I wanted to see. “Show me the naked women!” I told one of the museum employees, with my eyes brimming with excitement. 

The Met is like a maze. It is full of interspersing hallways and rooms. Once you enter, you’re not entirely sure when, or how, you’ll leave. But when I stumble out of one of those hallways and into the American Wing, I know I’d never want to find an exit anyway. Surrounding me are around a dozen beautiful marble statues of women rising up toward the glass ceilings that gave way to blue skies and clouds above, providing a charmed backdrop for the nude female form. Though there are many statues that make me pause, there is one in particular that I can’t look away from: Frederick Wellington Ruckstull’s Evening. It is a marble statue of a relaxed woman standing slightly slouched, the soft flesh of her stomach perfectly accenting the stature of her pose with its rounded curvature. According to the Met’s description, the woman’s pose is supposed to evoke sleepiness. I like this interpretation. I like 

how a nude portrayal of women can have denotations other than 

sexualization. I like how it can be a display of feminine beauty 

without any strings attached. I don’t know if I necessarily agree with it — art is obviously subjective, so I think it can be interpreted in any way, though I do think the artist and their original intent holds importance. For Ruckstull, when asked about the piece after he carved it in 1891, he expressed that it was meant to convey an ideal, rather than a specific person:

“Everything in nature folds at evening, flowers, birds, and trees… This folding has been suggested by the movements and lines of this statue, in the face of which we see suggested the approach of sleep.” (Ruckstull)

That approach, one in which Ruckstell chose to use 

the nude female form to represent a plainly natural process, 

rather than as only an embodiment of sexuality, might help

construct a narrative of desexualization and comfortability. 

Though Ruckstell’s statue is no epitaph or renouncement of 

sexuality (maybe a sexual angle adds to it in a formative way?), 

it still allows me, and other viewers, to consider an actuality beyond women; our bodies no longer being mere sex symbols. The thought that a woman’s nakedness can represent something other than promiscuousness is not a universally accepted notion. When I was twelve, my aunt told me that the reason women face sexual violence can usually be traced back to what they were wearing. I remember exactly where I was when I was told this; she was driving up the winding driveway of my grandmother’s house as I sat in the passenger seat. I didn’t have the words at the time to articulate why I disagreed with her, but even at that age, I had enough past experiences with sexual harassment to know she was wrong. 

This nagging reality of the perception of nudity followed me throughout middle school and high school — not to mention what constituted that nudity in the first place; was a shoulder too much? What about a collarbone? It manifested in the middle school boy’s vile commentary, regardless of whether or not I was abiding by the strict dress code; it materialized in the sneer of the music teacher who clearly took extreme pleasure in telling me in front of my entire class that she could see a sliver of my stomach and it emerged in the eye line of the principal as she incessantly watched my legs as I walked by wearing a dress. The policing of girls’ bodies luckily went away when I got to high school, but even so, the feeling it left behind didn’t. The ways in which adults abused their authority to constrict girls and obstruct comfort in our skin made it feel like if those authority figures were the ones taking away our power to feel comfortable, then they were the only ones who could give it back. For me, that effort to repossess my autonomy epitomized itself in one of the most visceral ways; all starting at the very beginning of my freshman year in classroom 119. It was there, in my Spanish class, where I would become very close with the teacher, Mr. Fitzgerald. In addition to being my Spanish teacher, Mr. Fitzgerald was also my volleyball coach, so we had ample opportunities to become acquainted with one another. Throughout my freshman year, we were definitely on friendly terms, but it was at the beginning of my sophomore year that our bond began to grow.

That “bond” truly blossomed over text. 

Because he was my volleyball coach and the entire team was in a group chat for communication purposes, Mr. Fitzgerald had my number. What started off unassumingly — inquiries about a volleyball game, questions about a misplaced jersey, or the occasional “How are you?” — eventually deepened into something more. The once friendly, casual messages began to come across with urgency and persistence; if I didn’t answer, I would receive a sarcastic follow-up reply, accusing me of being too busy for him. Eventually, after about four months of consistent back-and-forth communication, both in person and over text messages, everything surmounted in one grand gesture on Mr. Fitzgerald’s part. 

A love song. Written and recorded by him. Sent over a text with a disclaimer not to share it with anyone; it was only meant for me. 

The following days were spent spiraling, convincing myself that the slightly cryptic song full of metaphors was actually some sort of declaration of platonic companionship, and not the fifty-year-old man I’d thought was my mentor proclaiming his love for my fifteen-year-old self. Eventually, this mirage of a remotely acceptable scenario was wiped away as he noted my lack of comfort around him in school; a few days after he had sent the song, he followed up with an explanation: the way I smiled at him, the way I looked at him, our connection, merely everything I had done in his presence was proof of an intrinsic linkage and understanding between us. I was twelve again sitting in my aunt’s car; it was my fault — the young girl’s fault — it would always be our fault. He even further explained his and mine’s natural bond, citing a dream he had where I had fallen on top of him and kissed him. These were all things I was told over a series of text messages — one following after another in quick succession. I never responded.

Two days later the superintendent was knocking at his front door asking for his school-issued computer and the keys that accessed the building. 

In the months following his resignation, I was forced to contend with the betrayal of a man who I had trusted, the violation of my misconstrued actions, and feeling disgusted existing in my own body. The more I picked apart our interactions, the more I noticed the lines he had increasingly crossed; I had been groomed. As someone who had always considered herself staunchly independent in an almost untouchable way, it took me more time than I would like to admit to come to terms with this reality. It was as if admitting that I had “succumbed” to his grooming meant I wasn’t actually as capable or mature as the girl who had always forged her own path and never let herself be impacted by surrounding circumstances. Not to mention what had built that self-perception of being “mature for my age” — a common phrase conveyed to young girls everywhere — a message that is often used by groomers to validate girls’ beliefs that they are grown enough to have the emotional capacity of the adult they are “relating” to, but that the groomer deems young and “girlish” enough to be wanted. No matter how I managed to spin it, it was clear that I had now entered the pool of the nearly ten percent of public school students from grades eight through eleven that had sexual behavior directed toward them by a school employee (“Perpetrated Student Abuse”). I was not alone. But I did find any comfort in knowing others went through similarly damaging interactions when none of us should’ve in the first place. 

Although this experience of grooming had never happened to me so vehemently before this situation, it was a byproduct of the systems other girls and I had been growing up in our entire lives. In the same way that adults had deemed objectively unsexual body parts of young girls as sexual, and consequently taken away autonomy, I had tried to reclaim that control by asserting a sense of maturity — only to have it all crumble into a heap of bodily violation and

emotional betrayal. Now, I’m not saying that had that middle school music teacher not embarrassed me in front of my entire class, or had those strict dress codes policing adolescent girls’ bodies not been enforced, I would never have looked for companionship in an older mentor. However, I do feel that the regulation of girls’ bodies does lead to violated young girls looking to reclaim autonomy from the same spheres of adults who took it away. If one year you’re being told by a condescending teacher that the very space you take up is sexual, and then the next year a teacher is treating you like an adult and talking about “adult topics,” you just might feel “special” without noticing how inappropriate those topics are. 

These experiences I have shouldered throughout my life surface when I look around at the paintings of naked women that I have hanging on my walls or the statue of Frederick Wellington Ruckstull’s Evening. And for them all, I feel a sense of devotion to the female form. Not necessarily a need to protect it, but a need to guard its sanctity as an entity that can both own its sexuality and stand for something separate. Maybe that’s why I was so drawn to Evening in particular; a nude statue of a woman representing the approach of sleep, rather than the sexualization of her unclothed breasts or thighs. However, even in acknowledging and appreciating Ruckstell’s intentions with Evening, I think there’s overwhelming power in our own interpretations. For me, that was seeing myself and my experiences in the statue; maybe that’s the strength of all art: our ability to find ourselves within the pieces we interpret. And if that means my mom can look at my various displays of female nudity with discomfort, then I can look at them with a sense of pride and reclamation of myself, my body, and my autonomy.

Works Cited 

“Evening.” The Met, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11968. Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. 

“RUCKSTULL, OR RUCKSTUHL, FREDERICK WELLINGTON.” French Sculpture’s Census, 

frenchsculpture.org/index.php/Detail/objects/32602. Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. 

Shakeshaft, Charol. “K–12 School Employee Perpetrated Student Sexual Abuse, Misconduct, and Exploitation.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia, 26 May 2021, oxfordre.com/education/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/ 

acrefore-9780190264093-e-1006;jsessionid=7D035EF4984A2BCF72B46738DB183562?rskey= avjUCr&result=1. Accessed 8 Apr. 2023.