Great stuff. A refreshing change to all the usual angular male stuff that gets featured on this site.

Men are angular. Women are spherical. If you paint women, you paint the entire universe. Every woman is a particularization of the one thing - the "She", the universal power.
A woman's body rotating expresses the unity of existence. It is all just "She".
A room without furnishing, and women rotating within it - this is the principal subject of painting.

I love your article and photos Rose, they are beautiful.

Dating back to my primary school years I have always been attracted to people who have freckles, dimples, and smiles!

How can anyone ever say a person is ugly or unattractive when people all possess their own special and unique features! Ranging from our own eye shape and colour, eyebrows, high cheekbones, interesting teeth, a beauty spot on faces, life's wrinkles [you do not appear to have any Rose, what beautiful skin and face for 49yrs]!! Eyebrows and the different angles and arches, I love looking at every individual and seeing what God gave them.

For instance, your features [eyes, eyebrows, cheek bones and chin] in your first photograph tell me a little more about you personally although I may be wrong.

I see determination and success, practicality, firmness yet love and fairness, taking everything in your stride, a clever business side in recent years and involving some innovations and concepts to assist people, a great sense of humour when the going gets tough, a hint of sadness that you have come to terms with recently, and above all, a face of expressions that says "I intend powering through so many activities commencing 2011".

Enjoy every moment Rose, you deserve it.

I enjoyed the observations of 'ho hum' and 'unique' you have a unique ability to read faces! Or..you've been reading my mail. Scarily accurate.

Re: wrinkles...I have loads of them, but Jason's brilliant with lighting.

I completely concur with your appreciation of beauty in all it's forms and it's quite often that the very thing we find most unattractive about ourselves is the very thing that other's find interesting and unique. We could go on and on...but thanks for your comment.

Rose thanks, a beautiful telling of your experience.

R0bert

An uplifting article Rose, and I admire your guts!

Might I say however, that you seem to have a really nice figure in your 49th year of age, and that it may be just a little easier for someone as lovely as you to bare all!

I hope all 'mature' women feel beautiful in some way too, because many women of this age are often not really 'seen' in society anymore, like they were in their youth.

Women like Helen Mirren, Sophia Loren, Princess Caroline of Monaco, and Jane Fonda, to name a few, may help to change those views.

I feel annoyed at times that older men still seem to be utilised in roles on TV, theatre and films, while roles for most older women seem to disappear as they get older. :(

Personally, I think that our perception of what is beautiful,
changes over the years.

Yes, we have some inbuilt innate attractions for good evolutionary
reasons, to youth, perky breasts and healthy young skin, etc.

But we are also thinking individuals and we soon realise how
shallow this all is. I've met females, who on first appearance
seemed like little more then another plain Jane.

Yet on getting to know them, on learning what makes them tick,
on learning what they think and feel and why, I've discovered
one incredibly beautiful mind. At that moment, all the rest
becomes insignificant.

what a 'great' example (not) to young girls who need to know that being a woman is more than just sex appeal.

Runner 'art and photography' are many things, one of which, is for males and females [people] to feel comfortable with their body in its entirety and for art lovers to enjoy. Women have beautiful shapes, contours and expressions; these captured by artists for centuries as you would well know. Why is it any different to Rose being painted?

How fantastic for Rose's family and friends to be given these photographs for their homes and Rose's families for now and future years.

Positively inspiring and nothing short of beautiful!

See the funny thing is.....in our species......Males are the tops of the food chain, and females...as must as equal as we evolve, are a [part} of the whole that's not so understood. What! Are we to believe that females are to take over the earth....lol.....maybe some might want to take Bio-humans as a new understanding....come on. If females take over the world.....what would be the result.

I can think of one......Its called de-evolution......and you know what that means:)

I means females are and wanting/willing to take a risk.......with the DNA of life on this planet? Males have to be males......or you will kill what you love.

Not cool me thinks.

Man hunts.....and female loves.

And you want to up-set this.....

BLUE

Yabby <"Yet on getting to know them, on learning what makes them tick,
on learning what they think and feel and why, I've discovered
one incredibly beautiful mind. At that moment, all the rest
becomes insignificant."

Yabby, you sound like a wonderful human being :)

Runner...sounds like sour grapes to me :(

Congratulations, Rose. As a bloke approaching 50 I've no great desire to inflict my paunchy raunchiness on the world, but I do like people who are prepared to take on personal challenges.

Long may you continue to push your personal boundaries.

Beautiful photos Rose. A great testament to your photographability (is that a word?) and the photographer's artistic talents. The human form is a beautiful thing in all its variations of shape, size, colour and form.

As suzeonline said you look great. I am also heading in the 50 direction and your body has given me further incentive to lose some of the weight gained this year (sigh!) so I can enter my fifties in peak condition (well I will try). :)

I'm enjoying this discussion.

Runner, I totally respect your view. But my article was not an endorsement of the notion that sex appeal is the fullest indicator of a woman's worth. It was aimed at body image/self acceptance - in the context of a society obsessed by 'perfection'. Western culture is not highly evolved, but we're going backwards. I grew up wanting to be a mother - and the 'adverse affect' motherhood would have on my body, barely even entered my mind. Nowadays we have magazine headlines screaming "I hate my post baby body!". I can't begin to tell you how angry this makes me.

Team this up with the fact that women over 50 are supposed to 'disappear' according to Germaine Greer. While I appreciate the kind remarks regarding my being 'in good shape' - this was not the point. Have a really close look at the silhouette pic. You can still see the protruberant mole on my left breast and some patchiness on my skin. A different photographer friend liked the pictures, composition-wise, but winced at the lack of air-brushing. He thought it 'devalued' (as in dollar value) the photo. That's because he routinely air-brushes everything. He probably would have airbrushed Cait's tummy too! This was the point of my story.

I know I'm not particularly evolved because I still want to be seen as a woman, as well as human being. I rejoice in my value as a human being but I also love the feminine qualities that lay beneath my skin, and my biology. I truly feel that the fact that I'm nude in these pictures, tells more of a story about those qualities than of 'sex appeal'. We are hard-wired to factor 'sexual attractiveness' into our assessment of each other...but the definition of same, is being sullied by the media and a gazillion dollar 'beauty industry'.

And at the end of the day, I'm probably pissing in the wind, but it won't stop me from ranting and raving about how wrong I think it all is.

: )

*We are hard-wired to factor 'sexual attractiveness' into our assessment of each other...but the definition of same, is being sullied by the media and a gazillion dollar 'beauty industry'. *

You make a valid point there, Rose. We are Americanising the
whole thing and there are big bucks to me made. 300 million $
on Botox alone is being spent per year, just in Australia.

A Canadian nurse friend of mine, worked in a place
where they did nothing but facelifts and other similar
operations, on American women. When I asked her why so many were
getting it done, her response was that they were nervous that
their husbands might run off with a younger woman. My response
was that if a marriage depends on surgery for its survival,
surely its a pretty shallow one to start with.

Rose C

'Western culture is not highly evolved, but we're going backwards.'

You certainly gave me a laugh. This is the same logic warmist alarmist use to try and explain why half the planet is frozen at the moment. We certainly are regressing to the dark ages and you are doing your bit to help that.

Runner - If Climate change is the metaphor, then I think you just call me a chloroflurocarbon. : )

Good on you Rose. I've seen a lot of naked people of all ages, and I've found that just as a lot of our character is reflected in our faces, so more is reflected in our bodies. Seeing only faces seems like missing a lot of the person. And bodies of all ages have their beauty, of different kinds at different ages, but it's still beauty (though I don't find all bodies beautiful, just as I don't find all people attractive). Also, isn't it sad that we (males especially) are often so hung up on sexual responses that we can miss the delightfully-different humanity of half the human race.

I hope your adventure continues to bring you fun and gifts. You've given some of each to the world.

I'm trying to imagine an article like this, written by a bloke.

And finding myself unable to do so.

Is it just me?

Is there, for example, a male equivalent of this line of Rose's?

"Every woman needs to feel like a sex symbol at least once in her life"

It may just be a simple failure of my imagination - put it down to a sheltered upbringing - if so, perhaps someone out there could help by conjuring up a sample extract from such a piece.

Any takers?

RoseC

'Runner - If Climate change is the metaphor, then I think you just call me a chloroflurocarbon. : )'

I will pay that one Rose.

We are unique

You are the life of the party! I would love to hear your personality analysis of the beauties in the “Zoo” magazine. I think women are much more evocative when clad; take Di Vinci’s Mona Lisa as an example.

here you go pericles...it's by AP,so I can't be sure if it was written by male or female but it claims to site actual stats relating to male self image (and for more of the same, you probably only need to google those words)
cheers

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15160230/ns/health-mens_health/

*"Every woman needs to feel like a sex symbol at least once in her life"*

Well Pericles, you are free to get your gear off and post your
naked photos out there, then see if you have any takers :)

Rose, that link described a survey of college students. I was more interested in a male parallel to your focus on the changing attitudes to body image, "over time", as it were.

I suspect that the chances of a man being motivated to do what you have done, and for the reasons that you state, are somewhere between Buckleys and Nunn.

But on the off-chance that one exists on this thread, I thought it would be interesting to explore the sort of language he would adopt when writing the equivalent piece.

And I appreciate the offer, Yabby.

>>Well Pericles, you are free to get your gear off and post your naked photos out there, then see if you have any takers<<

Unfortunately, George Clooney has already asked, very nicely, if I would refrain from doing just that.

It's not that he's exactly afraid of the competition, he explained to me, but he simply cannot afford to take the chance.

And I can relate to that.

Curious then Pericles

which of 'my reasons' don't you feel would come from a bloke. The ones stemming from the altruistic side or the ones stemming from egotistic side, or both?

Pretty much all of them, Rose.

>>...which of 'my reasons' don't you feel would come from a bloke<<

This one:

"The desire to pose “artistically nude” for a talented photographer... is something I’ve always wanted to do but somehow never had the opportunity."

...and this

"...there’s this hideous beast following me... it goes by the rather serious handle of “gravity”... once this bitch takes hold completely, I’ll be forced to ditch any perception of myself as aesthetically-pleasing to the eye … won’t I?"

...this

"...my decision was based on a determination to thumb my nose at society’s obsession with youth."

...and (even re-sexed) this one

"I’m just an average, everyday 49-year-old mother-of-three who is fed up to the back teeth with not seeing her kind being realistically represented via the electronic or print media."

...definitely this

"A groundswell of collective shame accompanying ageing womanhood has built up in recent decades and I’ll be damned if I let it drag me under and force me to feel ugly"

...and of course

"I’m sick of feeling bullied by what I am seeing in Hollywood movies and the media. What else can a girl do when she has run out of genuine role models?"

...and my favourite

"Instead of dragging my arse screaming and kicking into my 50th year on the planet I’m un-gritting my teeth, thrusting my chest out (literally) with pride and running joyfully, arms outstretched into the warm embrace of a life having been lived - with all the traces of that life, very evident on my flesh."

They are all perfectly valid reasons, completely understandable, and I'm massively impressed with your ability to act upon them.

All I am saying - all I am saying, nothing more - is that none of the above would be heard from the lips of a guy.

But I did add the caveat that if I am wrong, I'd love to hear how it might be bloke-ily expressed.

Rose, you are a character, I am enjoying your responses immensely!

Diver Dan, I relate to your viewpoint, for instance, without de-railing Rose's photography and thread, I wish to add some strange attraction for years I've had, to males of any age wearing a black beanie with dark or grey hair, a balaclava and black track suit, and wait for it, black diving suits with males or females swimming under the sea. Have no idea why I enjoy and find these clothing items on a bloke sensual and attractive.

Pericles, would you consider doing so for a charity such as the Blind Society and Epilepsy - it was the first thought that popped into my head after I'd decided to raise funds for both the Blind Society and the Epilepsy Association assisting more directly during 2011. In an artistic and clinical way of course.

*In an artistic and clinical way of course.*

Sheesh, I love the concept. The OLO Calender for charity of course!

Pericles as Mr January
Unique as Ms February
Pelican as Ms March sounds like a good idea, I am sure she'll
volunteer :)

Lol guys!
I can see us all treating each other a little differently if we were all to post 'artistic' nudes of ourselves on this site!

After posting one of myself, I can just see all the male posters begging Graham for my email address... well, maybe not :)

I, for one, believe that it is only fair that we have a male OLO poster now volunteer to have some professional 'tasteful' nude photos of themselves posted on this site too.

What do you say girls?

Happy New Year to all :)
Cheers,
Suze xxx

A heartfelt Happy New Year to you Suze - relax and enjoy your break from patients, put your feet up, ask one of your daughters to mix you a Daquiri? cocktail, your hubby to massage your feet and back, while the sun sets and evening cools! You are a compassionate giver in life Suze.

Happy New Year to you to suze and one and all.

Reading the responses reminded me of the movie 'Calendar Girls' where a group of over 50s and 60s posed partially nude for a charity calendar on behalf of the Women's Institute. Some of those photos were beautiful, certainly better than any nudie calendar out there, but maybe some men will disagree.

I do think the obsession with youth denies us the opportunity (but only if we let it) to enjoy the glorious facets of our bodies as we age. That is for men and women alike.

Perhaps as Pericles suggests the feelings of ageing are more heightened in women. Maybe because we have traditionally been the 'attractant' while men are usually the 'approacher', so our worth has been to some extent wrapped up in our beauty. Men and women have different views on what constitutes beauty (in each other) so it is just as well we are not all the same.

Heh heh Yabby. Ms March... maybe after I lose this next 8 kilos. :)

I have posed for an artist but it was fully clothed in a costume piece and I have also drawn a nude. I am probably a bit shy for a nude photo shoot but admire people who have the courage to get 'out there'.

What about you Yabby. Mr April perhaps?

Thanks for the article, Rose.

Pelican,

Definitely Yabby for Mr April.
I think you're onto something about the female usually being the attractant. And I like your term, "the glorious facets of our bodies as we age". I turned fifty this year, and have been quite interested in the psychological significance of that milestone...haven't noticed anything I would consider particularly glorious happening so far - but I'll keep you posted.
My own experience so far is that I feel okay - my body has changed to some degree over the years, but it's holding it's own I think. And, although one of my chiildren is in her late twenties, I also have a nine year-old son who's a ball of energy and enlightenment..so I suppose he'll either keep me young or wear me out.

We are unique

I have an answer; You have developed a Freudian fantasy exposing a subliminal attachment to James Bond. The answer could be less movies and more life; maybe a touch more of the unfettered abandonment in the name of art displayed by Rosie: Avoid people in wet suits and balaclavas with greying hair and beards, they tend to be dangerous; fortunately, mostly to themselves.
Happy and safe new year (You too Runner)

Heh the 'four post in 24 hour limit' kept me at bay but I was keen to respond to Pericles, meanwhile there's been a veritable chatty cocktail soiree happening in my absence. It's nice that you are all so familiar with each other.

Peri - men who write, do write about everything. Men are just as - sometimes more vain than women ('comb-over' anyone?) and I'm tall, so I've suffered the indignity of being made to feel 'too tall' by some insecure short men. We're all the sum of our parts, just some more than others - and those parts also include intellect and heart.

My dear friend and mentor, who 'checked out' last year in his early 50s, wrote an agonised piece in Penthouse Magazine in the late 1980s - about turning 30! He lamented the sporting achievements he'd never make, the women he'd never bed...among other things. He was a tortured soul for much of his life, but the 'claws' of aging stabbed him deeply.

We all share our humanity pericles, just some of us are more keen to share it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! x

I have two friends whose husbands are both around fifty - one just over, one just under. Although they are not acquainted and move in different circles, both of these men have recently felt the need to purchase their first big motorcycles. One of them has shaved off the moustache that he has worn for the last thirty years, informing his wife that all his male work colleagues have told him how much better and younger he looks without it. (she begs to differ - not being accustomed to being confronted by his top lip).
So I agree with Rose. No matter which gender we are, we all have our ways of dealing with aging.

Happy New Year everyone from me too.