Chapter 32: Postscript A - Ruthie’s Modeling Career

By the time she entered her sophomore year as a student in Davenport State University, Ruthie had quit her job at the coffee shop to concentrate on another she found much more to her liking; artistic modeling.

Mike knew about his girlfriend’s modeling and fully supported her. He was fascinated with her obsession with nudity and, from the time they first started hanging out together, had found it a huge turn-on. It was the part of her that made him overlook a lot of other quirks and flaws in her personality.

Ruthie became the most popular model among the university’s art instructors and independent artists around the Davenport area because she was so easy to work with. Unlike a lot of the art department’s previous models, she was punctual, dependable, and willing to do whatever she was told. Most important, she was being paid to do something she truly enjoyed.

Ruthie Burns had absolutely no inhibitions about her body whatsoever: she had no problem spending an entire day in the nude waiting for photographers or artists to set up art supplies or adjust their cameras. She normally stripped as soon as she showed up for work, and didn’t bother to get dressed until she was dismissed for the day. Even when the students had a practice session outdoors, the class model preferred to go outside in the nude and walk that way to wherever the class was going to be held. She got an erotic thrill from being the only naked person in a large group of classmates, especially if the group was outside.

The art instructor who first hired her the previous year used Ruthie for all of his classes, both painting and photography. The model’s exhibitionism went beyond even his comfort level, but the professor indulged her whims because she was so valuable to the department.

She had become a total exhibitionist, so she never worried about who was watching while she was modeling or whether images of her would be posted on the Internet.

In fact, the more daring the project and the more it exposed her, the more enthusiastic she was about participating in it. As she put it: “I’m good for anything, just as long as I don’t get arrested.”

The art department at Davenport State University received a large endowment from an alumni who had started a successful tech company in San Francisco. The department had the opportunity to expand, but one challenge was to increase student enrollment to match the enlarged program. The university decided to use several scholarship contests as a way to publicize the opportunities available to aspiring artists and photographers at DSU.

There were several photography contests, one of which was intended to to force the participants to focus on technique by severly limiting the subject matter.

Attention photographers! Davenport State University

presents: the 100 x 100 x 10 challenge

- 100 photographers - 100 photos - 10 locations - 1 model

Do you have what it takes?

Registration: July 20th through July 28th. Contest session dates - August 1st through August 14th Judging - August 16th - August 19th Prizes awarded - August 21st

for more information: call: 508-555-8322 or email: photoart.DSU@megamail.com

The competition was called the 100x100x10 challenge. 100 photographers would take and submit 100 pictures of a single figure model in 10 different settings. Each location would have a winner and two runner-ups, and the contest winners would be whoever had the highest over-all scores for all 10 places. The first prize was an all-expenses-paid art scholarship, the second prize was four-year’s free tuition, and the third prize was one-year of free tuition.

High-resolution copies of all of the 10,000 submitted photos would be posted on the Internet, each with a description of the camera, lens, and lighting used to create the image. For photographers who were using old-fashion film, information about the film and the development process would be included.

The contest needed a model who had no inhibitions about spending a couple of weeks in the nude in front of 100 photographers and other spectators. She also had to be comfortable with having 10,000 high-resolution photos of her in different environments and every pose imaginable posted on-line.

Fortunately for the art department, there was a model on their pay-roll who was perfect for the assignment.

When she told Mike that she would be featured in the very publicized “100 x 100 x 10” photo challenge, he did have some doubts, but he kept them to himself. There was no way he’d get her to reconsider something that was the fulfillment of a major fantasy. She wasn’t thinking about the consequences of having so many pictures of her posted on-line. Nor was she thinking about a pattern that he had observed with her fantasies, that when she fulfilled a fantasy, it was replaced by another fantasy that was even more extreme.

And this fantasy was pretty extreme. It wasn’t just that she was going to be nude in public for two weeks. She was going to be exposing herself in every way imaginable to 100 photographers, to the artistic community in central California, and to the entire world. There would be no going back: the nude photoshoot and its aftermath would become an important part of her identity.

Mike did not know how to express his concerns without her becoming defensive and obstinate. So, he didn’t try. She’d do the photoshoot and that would be the end of it.

As they watched the sun set from their balcony, Ruthie did say something that quieted her boyfriend’s fears:

“I ... I don’t know what I’d do without you, Mike. I really don’t. I ... I know I’m kinda a bit ... you know ... crazy ... and you put up with all my shit. I do ... I mean ... I guess I ... I do love you for it.”

It didn’t sound like much, but Mike knew that it was. Ruthie had extreme difficulty expressing any feelings of affection. Very rarely could she bring herself to use the word “love”.

The 100 photography contestants, along with their friends, partners, and assistants, as well as members of the local media, students, and other people who were interested in the university’s challenge, filled the DSU ballroom on the morning the contest began.