Body Types

This month saw the 25th anniversary of my Who Wants to Be a Millionaire appearance. If you’ve seen it, you might have seen Regis ask me whether I had to audition before modeling for an art class. When I told him no, he asked something like, “They took you sight unseen?” “Yeah, they prefer a wide range of body types,” I told him.

I have, of late, discovered that that isn’t necessarily the case. In my post “Passion for Art Modeling”, I detailed how I wound up sitting for another portrait class at the Texas Academy of Figurative Art instead of the figure class that I coveted. I had texted Ron Cheek, TAFA’s director, in mid-December, more than a month before the spring term started, to tell him about the long string of Tuesday-Thursday afternoons I had available, knowing that their figure class met on those Tuesday-Thursday afternoons. He immediately texted me back, ignoring my statement about Tuesday-Thursday afternoons, and offered me that Monday-Wednesday portrait class. It felt to me like a rejection, with the portrait class a consolation prize.

My work in that portrait class lasted six and a half weeks. Combined with the four week portrait class I did in the summer of 2024, my previous gig at TAFA, I walked through that door twenty times in a row without doing a single figure session. I began to think of TAFA as TAPA, the Texas Academy of Portrait Art. What was the most depressing was seeing the work the students were doing in that TTH figure class. The model was male, and judging from the drawings and paintings, he was a bodybuilder type. The work was amazing, as it always is at TAFA, the kind of paintings that I would love to see done of me. And when that portrait gig mercifully ended, I was all out of sorts when I left, feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.

Seeing the body type of the model Ron hired instead of me, the rejection stung all the worse. I resolved to change my diet and exercise routines. I have long had an addiction to sodas, Coke, Dr. Pepper, and Mountain Dew. I decided to limit myself to one per day. I also started doing chair Tai Chi and walking at least 10,000 steps a day. I’d also throw in some push-ups and planks into my routine as well.

As I was ramping up my new plan, I heard back from another school called The Society of Figurative Arts, run by artist Michael Mentler. I had long wanted to model there, but, for some reason, never got my schedule right. I did fill out the application on his website, and his studio apprentice emailed me, complimenting me on my impressive credentials and inviting me to stop by the studio and “interview” with Micheal. I made it there in February, just before one of their Friday figure drawing sessions was starting. That studio apprentice wasn’t there, but I did talk to Michael and to some of the artists that I knew from other venues. Michael told me that that apprentice did all of his scheduling and told me I could wait for her. Caroline was the model that day. I knew her from our Dallas College meetings. When she started posing, I felt silly just sitting in the studio. I also felt an extreme envy seeing her on the model stand, wishing I could be up there instead of her. So I texted that apprentice to tell her I was leaving. She told me that she would be working on the schedule soon but that she didn’t have any openings until late March. I sent her my availability and waited.

I didn’t hear from her for weeks despite sending her several reminders. When I finally texted and emailed her to tell her that I was anxious to get on the schedule and that I would be returning to TSOFA to meet her in person, she finally texted me back. She apologized for the radio silence, explaining that she had family issues or whatever. She also said she had talked to Michael and confirmed that they were only booking lean athletic types for their nude male sessions because of their anatomy instruction.

Coming on the heels of the perceived rejection from Ron at TAFA, this blatant rejection left me even more determined to attain that “lean athletic” build. I cut out sodas completely and increased my consumption of mushroom coffee, which is supposed to alter cortisol and metabolism to shed belly fat. Whenever I feel a craving for a soda, cans of which are still in the house because everyone else drinks them, I make myself a mushroom coffee or tea.

The heaviest weight I’ve ever seen on my scale is 226 which was not that long ago. It might have been right around the time I met with Michael Mentler. I was at 213 this morning. My target weight is under 190, and I hope to get there before summer ends. I wear a 36 x 32 pants, but I hope to be able to get back into 32 x 32 pants soon. And then we’ll see how many more modeling gigs I get. Of course, after being in two movies, I am in acting classes and plan to start applying at talent agencies this spring as well, so possible future acting gigs might impact my availability for modeling.