Viewpoints

Body Painters Celebrate Self Love

Motivated by a desire to promote self love, more than 100 nude models and 75 artists gathered in New York’s Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on July 18th to participate in the second annual New York City Bodypainting Day.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R0zE3DLsOY[/youtube]

“I feel that all bodies are beautiful; it doesn’t matter how big you are, how small you are, what color you are. It doesn’t matter,” said model Brandy Baker, 37.

The founder of New York City Bodypainting Day, Andy Golub of Rockland County, created this event to allow several different types of artists to express themselves by painting models in what Golub called “their most vulnerable state.”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7Ufl2tmF3E[/youtube]

“The body painters, they work very often with pasties and they don’t work with the full nude,” Golub said. “What some of them might not realize is how much there’s shame that’s sort of imposed that we’re not even aware of. So by introducing this art to them I think it sort of opens people up and expands their world.“

The 49-year-old artist chose the theme of “What the World Needs Now” in order to portray the importance and true meaning of art.

“I created this theme because I feel that the artist’s voice has been taken out of our society,” Golub said.

Model Marisol de Soto, 34, from Oakland, California, participated in the event last year and says she likes the idea of spreading body acceptance and promoting the importance of self love throughout this event.

“I feel like I was created as a beautiful piece of art, as a human being, and we all are. We’re all different shapes and sizes, and we’re all one,” de Soto said.

Robin Slonina, 44, was inspired by the creation of man and woman and incorporated it in the body art of her model. She is a judge and producer on Skin Wars, a body painting competition show.

“It kind of reminds me of the garden of Eden and back where Adam and Eve had no shame about their body,” Slonina said. “I’m interested in portraying this small version of Eden in this beautiful park in New York City where we can all just exist without any shame in our natural form.”

This event has brought together several naturists, which is equivalent to a nudist, like Los Angeles writer Nicolette Barischoff, 30. “This just seemed like an incredibly wonderful event for exhibiting the spectrum of just how many different types of bodies there are in the world and how good they all are to look at. I think we spend a lot of time in our culture trying to pretend we don’t have bodies.” Barischoff said.

In a 2014 survey conducted by TODAY/AOL 41 percent of men and 59 percent of women worry that people judge their appearance. The same survey stated that 80 percent of teen girls compare themselves to “glamorous celebrity images.”

“The people who are allowed to be naked in our culture are actresses and porn stars and models and only that body type is acceptable in the ‘tiny tiny’ sphere of naked,” said Barischoff. “I think we’re all kind of here to reclaim naked for regular people and look at how many different types of bodies there are and go ‘wow look, they’re all kind of cool to look at,’ and you know, ‘they all make great art.’”

Agreeing with Barischoff is 11-year-old Forest Golub who was with his father Andy. He believes people should not be concerned with their body image.

“People are naked, but they’re painted. And being naked is just a part of your body, so it shouldn’t bug people so much,” Forest said.

39-year-old Jeanette Salazar, from New York City, brought her daughter to the event to expose her to new ideas about body image. “I like seeing art and I think that the body is beautiful,” Salazar said. “You’re born naked anyways, so there’s nothing really bad with you being naked. And the artistic expression is just beautiful. So I even just brought my daughter.”

12-year-old Cassandra Salazar enjoyed seeing the abstract expressions painted onto models bodies throughout the day despite her original feelings of discomfort. “At first I thought it was a little awkward, but then I saw all the body paintings and I thought it looked really cool,” Cassandra said.

After being fully painted, the living canvases traveled throughout the city until they reached the United Nations and promoted self-acceptance and cultural diversity.

“I very much view things from an art point of view or an artist point of view,” Andy said. “It’s like a painting, one painting might make one person sad and another person happy or it might change your view. People are gonna see it how they’re gonna see it.”