Moral dilemma

Nudity does us all good - Telegraph

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed," said William Blake. But the moral guardians of daytime TV take a different view. The Channel 4 programme Life Class caused conniptions last week by showing a woman sitting very still with no clothes on.

The point of the programme is to replicate a real life class, with the viewers at home encouraged to pick up a pencil. The camera stays fixed on the model from one angle, only occasionally cutting away to take a peek at what the "tutor" – one of a series of distinguished artists – has drawn.

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It is filmed in a determinedly untitillating way, more Open University than Nuts magazine, and in fact the first three episodes went out last week without any kerfuffle. It was only on Thursday – when Kirsten Varley, a fashion model of uncommon loveliness, dropped her silky dressing gown and stepped on to the dais – that the forces of puritanism pricked up their ears.

Channel 4 was said to have had dozens of complaints: one viewer, who watched the programme while ill in bed, croaked: "It nearly gave me a relapse. It was adult viewing, not for screening in the middle of the day." John Beyer, of the TV pressure group Mediawatch UK, said he had referred the matter to Ofcom after being contacted by scandalised parents. "Obviously, people feel this is not suitable for daytime TV when they have children at home," he opined. "It's a pity Channel 4 cannot revive its Watercolour Challenge show."

We all miss Watercolour Challenge, John, but there comes a time when you have to let go. As for the effect of Life Class on young minds: who are these children who have never seen a naked body before? And more importantly, why not?

Going naked in front of your offspring is one of the duties of parenthood. Studies show – and common sense suggests – that children from households where nudity is commonplace grow up to feel more comfortable in their own skin. We need the background scenery of other people's bodies – dumpy, scrawny, dimpled or lean – in order to be reassured that our own peculiarities are normal.

Especially now, when most public images of the human form are airbrushed into a preposterous lie, children ought to know what actual people look like under their clothes. Thanks to the internet, a generation of boys is growing up submerged in the fake aesthetic of pornography – as ignorant of real female beauty as the Victorian art critic John Ruskin, who discovered on his wedding night that women have pubic hair, and was so disgusted that he refused to consummate the marriage. Life classes, like naked parents, are a no-strings-attached opportunity to see what other people are really made of.

Some of my favourite memories of school feature middle-aged men and women disporting themselves in the buff. Our A-level teacher, like many artists, preferred her life models on the well-fed side, their rolls of fat allowing for plentiful chiaroscuro.

Often, when a new model first disrobed, the unfamiliar droops and bulges seemed indecently ugly. But you need a lot of confidence to strike a pose for two hours under the scrutiny of a classroom full of teenagers; and in the end, it was this that impressed itself on our tender psyches. The ease with which those models carried themselves was transformative: their imperfections ceased to look strange and became distinguished.

Although it is a long time since I picked up a sketchpad, those life classes, combined with the tireless domestic nudity of my parents, are proving more useful to me now than ever. Age and childbirth are taking their toll, but what I see in the mirror does not – yet – fill me with despair.

I know that you can find beauty in much more unruly landscapes, and that there is no point hankering after a template of perfection that does not exist. Or as the painter Maggie Hambling advises in Life Class: "Keep your eye on the model – on the truth."