Grandma Naked

Grandma Naked
Is nakedness invisibility’s opposite? Maybe not, but, if it’s unapologetically displayed, it can be a kind of antidote to erasure.
“Bebe on Sand,” 2014. Photographs by Jocelyn Lee
“Deborah at Aquinnah Beach in September,” 2020.
“Nancy at 78, Maine at 18 (Aunt and Grandniece),” 2018.
“Nancy Floating at Quitsa Pond,” 2016.
“Judith at Home,” 2009. Photographs by Jocelyn Lee
“Bebe and Pagan in the Red Room,” 2004.
“Bebe and Pagan Pregnant with Twin Girls,” 2012.
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Some clichés about the cycle of life are true. When you are raising young children, the days are long and the years are short. And when you’re a woman, you will, at about age fifty, become invisible. All our lives, as girls and younger women, we prepare ourselves to be looked at. We grow accustomed to registering —to attracting, evading, or denouncing the male gaze. In “ Mrs. Dalloway ,” Clarissa, newly aware of herself as a woman of a certain age, walks down the street thinking, “This body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing—nothing at all.” The cultural critic Akiko Busch, quoting that line from “Mrs. Dalloway,” notes that “a reduced sense of visibility does not necessarily constrain experience.” True, but it takes some getting used to, and when it’s punctuated, as it often is, by condescension—when strangers are suddenly addressing you not even as “Ma’am” but, with a verbal wink, as “young lady”—you may not want to get used to it.
Is nakedness invisibility’s opposite? Maybe not, but, if it’s voluntarily, unapologetically displayed, it can be a kind of antidote to diminishment and erasure. A nude portrait of a woman older than, say, sixty is an unusual image—even a taboo one. To make such photographs, and, even more so, to pose for them, is an act of defiance. In the course of her career, the photographer Jocelyn Lee has been drawn to nude bodies of all shapes and ages. Her latest book, “Sovereign” (Minor Matters Books), features a selection of her photographs of women who range in age from their mid-fifties to their early nineties, posing naked, frequently outdoors and in natural settings.
Lee’s color images of older women are painterly, classical, but also frank. Skin puckers, crinkles, and sags. Bellies poof and pleat. A silver-haired woman stands knee-deep in a pond strewn with autumn leaves, looking directly at the camera, her elbows angled back like wings to reveal one intact breast and one mastectomy scar. A naked woman sits on a blanket of moss in the woods, her breasts and belly soft, so at ease she might be napping. In “Nancy at 78, Maine at 18,” a woman and her grandniece stand nude on a beach. Side by side, their long-legged, curly-headed bodies rhyme, but also remind us of the ways time will remake our familiar, corporeal selves. The image is not some grim memento mori, though. The women lean comfortably toward each other, touching shoulders; the younger woman’s arm loops through the elder woman’s. Behind them, the sea and sky are a light-suffused blue.
Lee, who is fifty-nine, lives part of the year on a lush, wooded property outside of Portland, Maine. She’s taken some of the portraits of older women at a pond near her house, and others on beaches at Martha’s Vineyard and elsewhere. The natural settings, devoid of sociological detail and inherently beautiful, tend to banish ironic readings and extend a certain benevolence to the naked subjects. We aren’t in paradise here—nobody in these photos looks that naïve—but we are not in any sort of judgment-laden social space, either. Lee told me that she hoped the locations implied the warmth of sun on the body—“that kind of comfort and love”—and communicated the idea that we are “all essentially sensual creatures.”
“The camera can be very cruel depending on how you use it,” she said. “There’s a whole tradition of photography that’s based on criticality and cruelty. Diane Arbus —whom I love, by the way—looked for unflattering moments to create a sense of drama. Sometimes that can be done with the juxtaposition of elements in a space, the exaggeration of the appearance of wealth or poverty, harsh lighting.”
Lee said that, by contrast, her work had sometimes been criticized for being “too earnest or romantic.” But she made her peace with that a long time ago. Through her photography, Lee has always tried to understand “what lay ahead.” When she was still in college, long before she had children herself, she photographed a pregnant friend in the nude as part of her thesis project. “This was before the Demi Moore Vanity Fair cover; people didn’t really know what a pregnant woman looked like,” she said. Through the years, she took many nude photographs of her mother, who, she says, had a remarkable ease in her own skin. Lee continued taking pictures of her as she was dying of cancer.
I’m about six months older than Lee, and, all in all, I consider aging to be far better than the alternative, as my own mother, who died at sixty, the age I am now, used to say. Still, I prefer the cloudy mirror in my bathroom to any in which I can see myself clearly. The older women who posed for Lee in the nude include professors, writers, artists, an astrologer, a hospice worker, and a small-town mayor. To me, they seem very brave, but it bothers me to say so. We all have bodies; if we’re lucky, we all get old, or at least older. Why not show what it looks like?
Two of Lee’s subjects, Judith and Nancy, have been posing for her for decades. Both told me that they don’t love how they look in some of the images, but that they treasured the experience of making them with Lee, whose process is creative and collaborative. Nancy, who is eighty, said, “I cringe when I look at the images, but I know that when I’m ninety I’m gonna say, ‘Ooh, look how great I looked!’ ” Her grandniece Maine, who posed with her, is a photography student. Maine told me that Lee’s image makes her happy because her grandaunt and she look so alike in it. “It’s like seeing myself in sixty years, and I sort of love that,” she said. “I think Nancy is beautiful.” Lee told me that she plans to photograph the pair every year.
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'Change the message': the exhibition celebrating mature women's bodies
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More stories to check out before you go
A 60-year-old grandma has detailed life with her 21-year-old fiance, saying while the bedroom action is great it has cost her in other ways.
A grandmother whose fiance is 39 years her junior has revealed she’s lost friends as a result of her relationship with a younger man.
Pam Shasteen, 60, was devastated when her best friends labelled Jonathan Langevin, 21, “young enough to be her grandson” and told her she “needed therapy”.
Since then, the loved-up US couple, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, have refused to let cruel comments affect them and insist age is just a number, while revealing the sex is “mind-blowing”.
“I still can’t believe my friends of over 30 years couldn’t be happy for me just because Jonathan is 21,” Pam said.
“Jonathan is the love of my life and I don’t care what anyone thinks.”
In February 2018, Pam, a counsellor, received a message from Jonathan, a computer engineering student, on dating app, Badoo.
Despite his bio saying he was 21, Jonathan later admitted to being just 19 years old when the pair started dating.
“I stressed that I was too old for him as I had two daughters in their 30s and I was a grandmother,” Pam said.
“But thankfully, Jonathan admitted he’d always wanted to be with an older woman.”
A week later, Jonathan who lived 1400km away in Minnesota, travelled across the country to meet Pam.
“When I spotted him, he was even more handsome in real life,” she said.
“We ran towards each other and kissed passionately. It was love at first sight.”
That day, while the pair were out sightseeing, they received dirty looks from strangers.
“I heard one woman tell her friend that we looked disgusting and we shouldn’t be together,” Pam said.
“Every person we walked past gave us a horrible look.”
‘WE MADE LOVE AND IT WAS WONDERFUL’
The following night, the pair spent the night together for the first time with Pam describing it as “wonderful”.
“There was very little sleeping done that night,” she said, adding that while Jonathan may have been decades younger, “he wasn’t inexperienced”.
“He knew exactly what he was doing,” she said.
“During the next few nights, we were all over each other. Jonathan was amazing.”
“I felt myself falling for him already.”
The following week after finished packing to head home, Pam admitted she loved him and begged him not to go.
“Jonathan told me he loved me too and agreed to stay,” she said.
“As Jonathan had been living on his friend’s sofa back in Minnesota, he didn’t need to make any arrangements and moved in.”
PAM’S DAUGHTERS MEET HER YOUNGER MAN
The following day, Pam invited her daughters over to meet her new boyfriend.
“Before they arrived I texted them, ‘Just a heads up, he’s 19 and he’s moved in with me.’
“When they arrived, they looked so shocked when they saw Jonathan’s baby-face.
“Jonathan said he hoped they could be friends and hugged them.
“As my daughters and I watched Jonathan play around the house with my six-year-old granddaughter, they admitted they liked him.
“I was relieved to have their blessing.”
Soon after, Jonathan broke the news to his parents, who are both in their 60s.
“They replied saying they knew Jonathan always had a thing for older women so they weren’t surprised,” Pam said.
“They even looked forward to meeting me. I was so relieved.”
Unfortunately for Ms Shasteen, her long-time friends didn’t have the same reaction when they met Jonathan, forcing the 60-year-old to cut them from her life.
“I hoped they’d be happy for me, but instead, they sat in silence and were cold towards Jonathan,” she said.
“A few days later they told me Jonathan was using me.
“Another said he was young enough to be my grandson and that I needed therapy.”
Jonathan proposed in May 2018, after three months of dating.
“I knew it was fast, but I was turning 60 soon and I knew life was for living,” Pam said.
“I’d been waiting all my life to meet my soulmate and he was right in front of me.”
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An infamous British traveller, whose family made headlines for causing havoc while on holiday in New Zealand, has been found dead.
Disgraced influencer Andrew Tate has announced that he is setting up a charity to help women and men after his ban on several social media platforms.
A mum has opened up about how she managed to prepare enough meals to feed her family for the next eight months.

A NOTE ABOUT RELEVANT ADVERTISING: We collect information about the content (including ads) you use across this site and use it to make both advertising and content more relevant to you on our network and other sites. Find out more about our policy and your choices, including how to opt-out. Sometimes our articles will try to help you find the right product at the right price. We may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for publishing this content or when you make a purchase.
Nationwide News Pty Ltd © 2022. All times AEST (GMT +10). Powered by WordPress.com VIP
More stories to check out before you go
A 60-year-old grandma has detailed life with her 21-year-old fiance, saying while the bedroom action is great it has cost her in other ways.
A grandmother whose fiance is 39 years her junior has revealed she’s lost friends as a result of her relationship with a younger man.
Pam Shasteen, 60, was devastated when her best friends labelled Jonathan Langevin, 21, “young enough to be her grandson” and told her she “needed therapy”.
Since then, the loved-up US couple, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, have refused to let cruel comments affect them and insist age is just a number, while revealing the sex is “mind-blowing”.
“I still can’t believe my friends of over 30 years couldn’t be happy for me just because Jonathan is 21,” Pam said.
“Jonathan is the love of my life and I don’t care what anyone thinks.”
In February 2018, Pam, a counsellor, received a message from Jonathan, a computer engineering student, on dating app, Badoo.
Despite his bio saying he was 21, Jonathan later admitted to being just 19 years old when the pair started dating.
“I stressed that I was too old for him as I had two daughters in their 30s and I was a grandmother,” Pam said.
“But thankfully, Jonathan admitted he’d always wanted to be with an older woman.”
A week later, Jonathan who lived 1400km away in Minnesota, travelled across the country to meet Pam.
“When I spotted him, he was even more handsome in real life,” she said.
“We ran towards each other and kissed passionately. It was love at first sight.”
That day, while the pair were out sightseeing, they received dirty looks from strangers.
“I heard one woman tell her friend that we looked disgusting and we shouldn’t be together,” Pam said.
“Every person we walked past gave us a horrible look.”
‘WE MADE LOVE AND IT WAS WONDERFUL’
The following night, the pair spent the night together for the first time with Pam describing it as “wonderful”.
“There was very little sleeping done that night,” she said, adding that while Jonathan may have been decades younger, “he wasn’t inexperienced”.
“He knew exactly what he was doing,” she said.
“During the next few nights, we were all over each other. Jonathan was amazing.”
“I felt myself falling for him already.”
The following week after finished packing to head home, Pam admitted she loved him and begged him not to go.
“Jonathan told me he loved me too and agreed to stay,” she said.
“As Jonathan had been living on his friend’s sofa back in Minnesota, he didn’t need to make any arrangements and moved in.”
PAM’S DAUGHTERS MEET HER YOUNGER MAN
The following day, Pam invited her daughters over to meet her new boyfriend.
“Before they arrived I texted them, ‘Just a heads up, he’s 19 and he’s moved in with me.’
“When they arrived, they looked so shocked when they saw Jonathan’s baby-face.
“Jonathan said he hoped they could be friends and hugged them.
“As my daughters and I watched Jonathan play around the house with my six-year-old granddaughter, they admitted they liked him.
“I was relieved to have their blessing.”
Soon after, Jonathan broke the news to his parents, who are both in their 60s.
“They replied saying they knew Jonathan always had a thing for older women so they weren’t surprised,” Pam said.
“They even looked forward to meeting me. I was so relieved.”
Unfortunately for Ms Shasteen, her long-time friends didn’t have the same reaction when they met Jonathan, forcing the 60-year-old to cut them from her life.
“I hoped they’d be happy for me, but instead, they sat in silence and were cold towards Jonathan,” she said.
“A few days later they told me Jonathan was using me.
“Another said he was young enough to be my grandson and that I needed therapy.”
Jonathan proposed in May 2018, after three months of dating.
“I knew it was fast, but I was turning 60 soon and I knew life was for living,” Pam said.
“I’d been waiting all my life to meet my soulmate and he was right in front of me.”
To join the conversation, please
log in. Don't have an account?
Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout
An infamous British traveller, whose family made headlines for causing havoc while on holiday in New Zealand, has been found dead.
Disgraced influencer Andrew Tate has announced that he is setting up a charity to help women and men after his ban on several social media platforms.
A mum has opened up about how she managed to prepare enough meals to feed her family for the next eight months.

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