A new study by the Anglia Ruskin University found a 25 percent increase in happiness among models who posed nude as well as the artists in life drawing classes. The explanation for it is that life drawing sessions give spaces for people to explore relationships with their bodies.

At the same time, the sessions allow them to “critically appraise media depictions of ‘idealised’ bodies,” says Professor Viren Swami of the university’s Psychology Department. In an article at The Telegraph, Nell Frizzell, a model for nude life-drawing classes, says that seeing the scars, bruises, stubble and freckles of another model presented not only an interesting artistic challenge but told her “something of the person I was looking at.”

She recalls her heart soaring at the sight of the folds, curves, blends and blemishes of another female. Frizzell says she also realised that looking at another body does not have to be critical, sexual or comparative.

The first study, held from January through May 2015, involved 138 men and women aged between 18 and 76 years old who regularly took part in the art classes. They estimated the number of such sessions they attended in their lifetime and filled up different assessments to measure their negative and positive body image scores.

Researchers found that among the women participants, higher attendance at art classes was linked with higher body appreciation and lower drive for thinness and social physique anxiety. Among men, greater attendance was associated with higher body appreciation.

Swami explains the stronger effect on women because of the view that drawing is a feminine activity or possibly because the men have higher chances of encountering female instead of male nude models. To address the possibility that the life drawing classes could attract individuals with positive body image, the researchers conducted a second study with 37 women who participated in a life drawing session for the first time.

The female respondents filled in questionnaires before and after the drawing sessions where there was a nude female model. The study, published in the Psychiatry Research journal, found an increase in both body image satisfaction and appearance satisfaction in the second study.

To measure the increase, the second study has six items with a 1-9 scale. The second study found an increase in body image satisfaction scores to 5.32 from 4.24. To measure appearance satisfaction, the second study used a 1-100 scale, and the result was a hike in average to 57.6 from 45.1 before the art session.

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