The Secret

This one’s for Chris.

You all know Monsieur St. James of course. The author of the leading blog Univers d’Artistes, he is at the centre of our nude photographic community and inspires us on a daily basis with his tireless dedication to showing us the very best that the nude photographic world has to offer. By sharing with us fantastic interviews, articles and most importantly the work of different photographic artists, Chris has created something unique and wonderful. But the real reason I’m mentioning him here is because he is probably one of the wisest men you’ll ever come across. Why? Because he has realised something which not many folks figure out: just how effective art can be as a healing tool.

A recent study at the Università degli Studi di Bari in Italy showed that when a group of people were asked to contemplate a series of paintings, their pain was found to be a third less intense when they were looking at beautiful artistic imagery. This has actually been known in the UK for some time. In another study by Dr Lee Elliot Major, research director at the Sutton Trust, it was demonstrated that paintings in hospitals really do help patients, both in terms of longevity and recovery times. I guess we are lucky here in the UK that our National Health Service thought that this research was important enough to actually do something about it as part of its national healthcare policy.



When I visited St Bart’s Hospital in London earlier this year, I noticed William Hogarth’s painting Pool of Bethesda (above) still hanging on the grand staircase, and even my local hospital (a shining beacon in free local healthcare) has a whole section of the hospital dedicated to the best and the brightest in the art world. As well as having its own art gallery, the entire corridor (which runs the entire length of the hospital and is nearly half a mile end to end) is covered in beautiful paintings donated by both talented patients and well known artists. Like many others, I have spent hours there drinking in the fantastic art (O.K. I admit the coffee there is pretty good too!)

Such exhibitions never fail to lift patients, to inspire them, to give them hope. The opportunity to enjoy something creative offers not only a distraction from physical discomforts and endless medical procedures, but it also gives focus and the invitation to participate in something more fundamental, more important than these crappy bodies we are trapped in. Through studying art, patients get to engage in something outside themselves, something more spiritual, and through this participation, so begins the healing process. The body may remain broken and in pain, but the mind, the soul, is growing, expanding in the presence of beauty, reaching for the eternal.

When my body is giving me hell, when I’m feeling pretty darn awful, what do I do? I go look at the finest that the photographic art world has to offer, and that would of course be the work of all you photographers reading this. If I appear to be getting overly sentimental, then do excuse me. Maybe the healing power of art is something you have to experience on a personal level before you realise its potential. But Chris and I, and thousands more like us, we know The Secret:

Art heals the spirit, which in turn heals the body.

And that makes you, the photographers and artists out there reading this, more valuable to us than you could ever know.

IvoryFlame 822

Ivory Flame

Insomniacs Anonymous

“Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants”
Jessamyn West.

AlexisSummers 927

This is gonna be a long-assed day. Despite desperate efforts to get back to sleep, I’ve been up at 3.30 am for the last five nights in a row. Insomnia has made me her bitch…again.

Being a long term insomniac and uber-early riser, I haven't really found anything that really helps, other than sleeping pills which only knock me out until 5 a.m. and even then they doesn't always work. I don’t have a problem getting to sleep, but if I awake prematurely (each morning I wake with the dawn), I'm screwed and can’t get back to sleep until exhaustion takes over.

Sleep is as essential to humans as food, air and water. When we don’t get enough of it, our bodies malfunction. Insomnia can be caused by many things: stress, a change in diet, alcohol, smoking and various medical problems. It affects young and old people equally, and whereas it isn’t life threatening, insomnia can be upsetting, exhausting, depressing and if you have it for prolonged periods, it can make you feel like you’re going crazy. As Tom Wolfe rather gruesomely put it, “The feeling of no sleep starts turning the body and the skull into a dried-out husk inside with a sour grease smoke like a tenement fire curdling in the brain pan.” Yep, I know that feeling exactly. (BTW, nice image that quote conjures up, don’t you think?)

My own personal insomnia is caused by an over-sensitivity to circadian rhythms. Basically my incredibly efficient internal body clock automatically detects when it’s dawn and my brain switches into “must get up” mode, not unlike birds I suppose. My youngest son has it too, so presumably this early-rising thing is genetic. We’re often both up at the crack of dawn huddled round tea and hot chocolate, and are wasted and irritable by lunchtime. People in many other parts of the world operate these hours as a matter of course and wake with the sunrise and then go to sleep when it gets dark, but no, that doesn’t fit in with Western society’s habits I’m afraid (unless you’re a farmer) and try as I might, I just can’t seem to reprogram my body to more conventional hours. Of course sometimes what keeps me awake is simple frustration from not being able to fall back asleep, sort of a loop effect. Once you know you’ve got long term insomnia, it’s impossible to get back to sleep because you know you’re not going to.

On the bright side, at least it gives me quiet time to catch up with the blogs and read Susan Sontag (very difficult book, needs peace and quiet) and judging by the time I receive some of your comments at various ungodly hours of the morning, US time, many of you are incredibly early risers too.

I wish I had some sort of profound words to offer you, some scientific advice on how to help us all get some shut-eye, but alas I’ve tried it all, and none of it bloody works, trust me on this. Black-out curtains, warm baths, vitamins, melatonin, herbal tea, herbal tablets, soft music, milky drinks and hiding under a pillow don’t help. Meditation, counting sheep, reading, fantasizing about David Hewlett etc are supposed to help, according to sleep experts, but I find this actually just makes me more awake because it triggers the desire to write. For those that wonder how on earth I come up with blog posts, well now you know.

Anyway, in the interests of my long term sanity, if anyone out there has some foolproof solution to what is a very common problem, please do share…’cos I’m totally and utterly knackered, and I need some sort of solution before I go completely barmy and start tearing my hair out in frustration.

AlexisSummers 926

Alexis, clearly also an insomniac

TIA Everyone!

(Just so you know, that’s “thanks in advance” rather than other commonly used abbreviations “Terrorism Information Awareness,” “Tactical Interface Adapter,” “Tobacco Institute of Australia” or my personal favourite “Tortilla Industry Association.” Don’t say I never teach you anything.)

Mmm…tortillas…yumm…

Good Money For Good Teeth

Be nice to your kids...They pick your nursing home!
(Anonymous)

My oldest son admitted this week that he has a crush on a tall, willowy brunette in his class.

“Does she have nice teeth?” I asked.

“Oh Mum, give over about the damn teeth thing, will you?” He said, rolling his eyes in despair.

He’s right of course. I do have a thing about good teeth. Whatever else we economise on in our household budget (most things at the moment) teeth is not one of them. We have a really outstanding and expensive Egyptian dentist (who loves to be chased by raging bulls for fun and who is so incredibly posh that the plasma t.v. in his waiting room is bigger than my car), and my kids’ teeth are literally dazzling in their uniform shiny whiteness. So I expect nothing less from potential girlfriends (yes indeedy, I am going to be the mother-in-law from hell.)

Now it seems that my over-enthusiastic-orthodontic-obsession has been vindicated. Research by Glied and Neidell on The Economic Value of Teeth has found that the quality of your teeth affects how much you earn over your lifetime.

Looking at the earnings of people who grew up drinking different kinds of water, the researchers found that women who had better teeth because they grew up drinking floridated water, got paid 4% more than those with poor teeth. That doesn't sound like much, but over a lifetime, it really adds up.

This extends to other body parts too. Research from the University of Texas has shown that ugly people earn less than beautiful people (explains a lot in my case.) A London Guildhall University survey of 11,000 33-year-olds found that unattractive men earned 15 percent less than those deemed attractive, while plain women earned 11 percent less than their prettier counterparts. Looks triumph intelligence in the salary stakes. This may be morally wrong of course, but it still happens.

Luckily my kids are all very good-looking, so with any luck, by the time we’re old and doddery, they’ll all be earning so much because of their dazzling teeth and phenomenal good looks, that we’ll end up in a plush and opulent nursing home staffed by gorgeous young photogenic nekkid chix (oh and the occasional handsome young gigolo wouldn’t go amiss either.) Hey, I can dream.

Iveta 998

Iveta.

It's Friday, go get (moderately) plastered!

Long, torturous wine post. Not bad considering I know nothing about wine. Anyhoo, if you’re not a wine drinker, you’d best Skip to my Lou, my darlin'

Regular readers will know that I’m rather obsessed with health and living longer (of course I am. Death is a wonderful motivator.) Like all the long lived populations in the world, I’m a very healthy eater (lots of veggies and lean protein), plus I’m also rather fond of the odd tipple or three (I said tipple not nipple - do they have tipples in the States?) In fact it appears that most centenarian populations of the world do include a glass or two of a quality alcoholic beverage as part of their daily diet (Life extensionists look away now, I’m about to indulge in dodgy anecdotal evidence.)

Simply put, moderate amounts of alcohol can be good for you, wine in particular. The long-lived Hunzas of the Afghanistan border are rather partial to Hunza Water, which is a potent wine made from the area’s local grapes, mulberries and apricots. The old people of Sunchang in South Korea swear by their soju, which is a fiery rice spirit. Okinawans (some of the longest lived people on the planet) are devoted to awamori, another potent spirit again made from rice.

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Of course I am unable to get regular supplies of these potentially life-extending beverages, although I do feel it is my duty to sample them whenever possible (I recommend you avoid awamori - it smells a bit like kerosene and tastes like it too.) But I can purchase bottles of healthy red wine which will imbibe me with life-extending nutrients and make me feel warm and fuzzy too.

The bad news is that not all red wine is good for you. In fact, only a very small number of wines will do anything positive for your health. New York Pinot Noir is one of the best because it is high in resveratrol and is supposed to prevent cancer and heart attacks. However, the trouble is you’d have to drink a heck of a lot of it for the resveratrol to do any good, by which time your liver would almost certainly be pickled.

However the latest red wine I’m into is Madiran, which may well prove to be the healthiest wine in the world because it is made with tannat grapes which are high in procyanadins, which improve the lining of your blood vessels and stop your arteries furring up. Real Madiran is made in the Gers region of south-west France, close to the Pyrénées, which has one of the highest proportions of centenarians in Europe, courtesy of a good Mediterranean diet and loadsa wine. Happily, Madiran is fairly inexpensive and tastes pretty yummy, although occasionally (depending on the year) it does have a kick like a mule! Warning: It is also really important to pick a Madiran which is traditionally made. In most wines, modern processing methods remove all health benefits from the grapes and you’re left with cheap plonk which will hasten your heart attack, not prevent it. So choose wisely.

And if you want to know more about the world’s best wines, seek detailed advice from the nude blogging world’s resident wine connoisseur (plus you’ll find a gorgeous nude at the bottom of each and every bottle.)

LouLou 660

Talking of tipples and nipples, here's Lou-Lou.

Neurogenesis

This is a mind-expanding post. Literally.

I’ve been feeling a bit blue recently, I admit. However I’m not one to pop happy-pills at the first sign of trouble, largely because in every single person I’ve known who has taken them, even after a couple of weeks, they still don’t seem to do any good.

Anti-depressants have become increasingly popular in the west in recent years. Prozac is one of the most popular of the new drugs and is estimated to be used by one million people in the UK alone. It is perceived to be a miracle cure for depression, but it has also been heavily criticised as being ineffective.

ClaireLouisa 275

Depression has always been thought to be due to a lack of the brain chemical serotonin. Up until recently, I also thought this was the case. Anti-depressants are supposed to work because they flood the brain with serotonin, and yet doctors will readily admit that often nothing happens and the patient remains depressed. Weeks pass by drearily, the patient remains miserable, and eventually, after several months, the Prozac finally works and he starts to feel better.

What I haven’t been able to understand is: Why the delay? Why don’t you feel instantly better when you take happy pills? It’s what they’re supposed to do, after all. So depression can’t be caused by something as simple as a serotonin imbalance can it?

Well after many of my scientific-reading sessions in various scented bubble-baths, it turns out that my instincts were right. It’s not as simple as that.

Ronald Duman, a leading Yale psychiatrist, has discovered that antidepressants work not because of the serotonin (which has nothing to do with it) but instead because Prozac triggers an increase in production of a class of proteins known as trophic factors. These trophic factors make your brain neurons grow. Depression, on the other hand, is like a drought for neurons. In short, if you suffer from clinical depression, your brain neurons have probably stopped growing. Duman found that prolonged bouts of stress, or damage like radiation (yay! That’s me!) caused neurons to stop reproducing. After many years of research, he also discovered that Prozac (and other similar anti-depressants) increased neurogenesis over time in the hippocampus by up to 75%.

The truly interesting thing about this new field of neurogenesis is that finally there is hope for people suffering from brain disorders caused by the death of dopamine-producing neurons such as Parkinson’s disease. Early-stage research in this area has produced spectacular results, although it will doubtless be many years before diseases such as Parkinson’s and dementia actually have a cure. But it’s a start.

If I sound slightly obsessed with this subject, it’s because neurogenesis is fascinating. It explains who we are, and why we act and think the way we do. Our life character, our personalities are directly determined by the number of neurons we had as kids, and our long-term ability to create new ones.

Professor Elizabeth Gould has found that our brain structure is directly influenced by our surroundings. If you expose an animal (or person) to stressful conditions or a deprived environment, then the brain stops producing new neurons and begins to starve. If a child was exposed to stressful situations when he was in the womb, or even as a baby (such as poverty, deprivation, being apart from his mother) then this early trauma has life-long implications. When he grows up he will produce less new brain neurons because his brain is trained to concentrate on survival, rather than creating new cells for the future. He never had a chance. Because of his rough life when he was a kid, his brain will literally be limited for the rest of his life.

As Gould says, “Poverty and stress aren’t just a sociological idea. They are an anatomy.” She concludes that despair is caused by the early loss of the brain’s plasticity and it’s inability to constantly repair itself.

The good news for me is that it’s not going to be too hard for me to kick-start my poor little radiated neurons into action again. If you think about it, the brain is just a muscle. The more you feed and exercise it, the more it grows. Gould’s work has demonstrated just how easy it is to train the brain to heal itself, to get those stressed-out neurons stimulated again. You can grow new brain cells, but you need to work at it in the same way as when you go down the gym. If you give your brain good nutrition, vitamins, an enriched environment, puzzles, intellectual stimulation, studying and learning, then those little neurons will be kick-started into repairing themselves in no time.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to suck some algae and pump some logic puzzles.

ClaireLouisa 278

If you're still awake after all of this, then congrats! You are the proud owner of one shiny new neuron. Now who says that cruising nekkid chix online isn't good for you?!

All images are of Claire-Louisa.

(R7) Food Matters

Q: What Do Models Eat?

A: They don’t :-)



I often get asked this question, not by models of course, but by the general public who see my images and say “Wow, how do you stay so thin and look so good at your age, and after three kids too? What’s your secret?” Well, let’s leave aside the fact that this makes me feel like a geriatric (having children and being over forty does NOT mean you’re about to die of old age) and instead let’s look at the subject of food.

Now this discussion shouldn’t be about size, or weight, which are IMO both irrelevant. It should be about health and nourishment. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that. O.K. So here we go again:

With all the modern rumpus about size zero models and the media’s obsession with skinny A-list stars like Victoria Beckham, there is an unnatural preoccupation nowadays with exactly what models shove in their gob. You can’t open a newspaper or magazine without reading about the latest top 10 diet tips, lose 20 lbs in two weeks, look like an A-lister, be a size zero for ultimate happiness, lose fifty pounds on the lemonade diet, lose a hundred pounds on the cardboard diet, get thin with the sex diet (this one actually works incidentally, if you do it enough), you name it and it’s been shoved in women’s faces on a daily basis for the last fifteen years or so. The situation is getting worse. Bulimia and anorexia are on the increase. Women in the UK have even taken to having stomach stapling operations, in a desperate effort to look skinny like their fave celeb. Aargh!!!

I could write extensively about this for magazines. I’ve come across practically every diet and nutrition programme on the planet over the years, so it’s a fair bet I could make a very (financially) healthy living writing articles about how to lose weight, telling women how to get thin by feeding their Western weight obsessions. It’s trivial to write about this sort of thing. Any of you could do it. All you need is imagination. It’s easy to make loadsa money from other people’s insecurities and miseries. (I used to be a lawyer. Trust me on this – I know.)

So why don’t I? Well, I don’t have many principles, but I WILL NOT knowingly contribute to someone else’s eating disorder. I’m happy to talk about photography until the cows come home, I will gladly encourage you to model (regardless of your body size or shape) but teaching people how to look like a skinny supermodel? Pah, count me out!

On the other hand, if you want to know how to extend your life by eating the right foods, if you are interested in mood food, preventing cancer or heart disease, feeling better about yourself, being the best woman (and model) you can ever be, regardless of how much you weigh, then I’m happy to discuss. I am passionate and evangelistic about your health. I am a life-extending zealot. By all means talk to me about how you can use food to extend your lifespan (yes, even by eating chocolate cake), but trust me, you won’t improve it one bit by trying to look like a supermodel. Wanting to be like anyone else does not equal happiness. In fact, it will make you miserable. As I have often said before, the only way you are EVER going to be happy is to accept yourself for who you are, and love your body as well as your personality.

Now if you’re still patiently reading this, let’s go back to the original practical question. What do models eat? Well whereas many models do actually eat proper food because they believe in nourishing their bodies, in my experience there are far too many professional models who either yo-yo diet, where their weight fluctuates wildly over time, or often they don’t eat at all. They should but they don’t. Many will nibble at a little gak (garbage and crap) now and again, but many of the ones I have known simply adopt the nil-by-mouth philosophy if a shoot is coming up, and then binge at McDonalds afterwards. (No I’m not exaggerating – this is based on specific examples.) Unfortunately this practice of starve, shoot ‘n’ binge just feeds the problem (pun intended!)

So maybe women should be asking different questions: How do we improve our physical and mental health? How do we cease our female obsession with size? How do we stop hating and being afraid of food? (Especially those of us who are models, because we act as examples for others to follow.) How do we stop this madness of emotional dependency on what we shove in our mouths?

As for what I eat? Well, let me say that I am passionate about my food. I love to cook my body the proper fuel that it needs to sustain it. Mainly I follow Michael Pollan's advice: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." And I make a point to teach my kids that too. I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to let my daughter grow up with an eating disorder because she’s obsessed with looking like Kate Moss.

She’s worth more than that.

And so are you.



All images are of Lilmummy.

Cigarettes: Death-Sticks or Creative Tools?

“There are two kinds of people - smokers and non-smokers. Decide which one you are, and be that.”
Robin Williams, Dead Again

I have never smoked a cigarette. No, not once, in all my forty-one years. Smoking related ills killed both my parents and I am married to a passionate anti-smoking campaigner. I have experienced the harm nicotine can do. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s a killer. Nevertheless, I can fully understand why folks smoke, and I am pro-choice. Unlike Rich (who thinks that the smoking ban in public places is the best thing ever to happen in the UK) I actually believe that the ability to choose one’s own fate is a fundamental human right.

My mother-in-law (a breast cancer survivor) has smoked like a chimney all her life. She will never give up. “If you take away my right to smoke, then you might as well shoot me,” she says. A passionate advocate of the right to choose, she is married to a very talented painter who has produced some of his finest work with cigarette in one hand and paintbrush in the other. He is the typical stereotypical rebel artist – he rises at the crack of dawn to smoke and paint, in the silence and stillness of the early morning. It is his favourite time of day.

I know many artists who can’t do without nicotine. They use smoking as a muse to create. It relaxes them as a glass of good Pinot Noir might do to me. Contemplating life, grazing on different ideas, the artist uses the ritual of smoking to explore his imagination, as a tool to enhance his creativity.

The journalist Jonathan Jones observed that the more disreputable smoking has become, the more artists are drawn to it. Smokers have a certain “devil may care” attitude about them, a disregard for consequence. Even though they are of course aware that heavy smoking may well kill them one day, they deride scientific evidence and make light of the distant possibility of death. They believe in living for the moment and ignore the physical consequences (although they are certainly aware of them.) Stubborn libertarians to the last, they want to decide their own fate. Death under their own terms. Under these circumstances the cigarette is more than nicotine addiction, it is an emblem of mortality. A symbol of freedom. An act of defiance.

I can’t help but admire that in some way. Although the glamorous image of the cultured sophisticated smoker has long gone, the rebellious image of the lone smoking artist remains. What Rich perceives as incomprehensible defiance of scientific evidence, I see as spirited rebellion against the do-gooders, against those that dictate how people should live their lives. Do-gooders will never be associated with artistic creativity. Artists and photographers who smoke are the very essence of the James Dean rebel. They go their own way. They are attracted to smoking precisely because they are celebrating their individuality, their creativity and their culture.

To the artist who has smoked all his life, the cigarette is as essential equipment as his paintbrush or camera to his creative process. Take away his equipment, and you maim not only his ability to produce art, but part of the person within. It’s not that nicotine is essential to produce great photographs or paintings, but smoking is so much more than just a drug or an addiction. The smoking ritual is a fundamental part of the person. Ban the freedom to choose, and you lose something from both the individual and his culture.

As my mother-in-law says, “So what if it kills me? It’s who I am. It’s my choice.”



Rich would never photograph someone smoking (and he really disapproves of this blog post) so I’ve featured instead the infamous and haunting photograph of Violetta by Helmut Newton.