christianity didn't try to put a halt to biology. otherwise, birth control would be used more.
I think that just about agrees with what I meant.
Guilt is another favourite weapon.
what would posing nude do for a person except embarrass them?
Why would it embarrass them? It might embarrass you, of course. Roald Dahl's short story is a warning about that societies taboos, not about posing for an artist.
Generally, the idea about life drawing is to see anatomy so you can learn to draw it.
It's academic. Much like the dissections performed to teach Doctors, except perhaps, when they had one shown on TV here, there was probably enough fear and disgust response by the red gooey bits that the nakedness didn't trigger.
A lot of 3d modelling sites have a few that get their knickers in a twist when, inevitably, the odd work in progress has naked humans in it, even though they aren't real people - otoh they also have a fair few of the age that get excited looking at the bra section in a home shopping catalogue creating them to blur the line about whether it's art.
Those 3d sites also show, inadvertantly, why to use real people for it - because if someone posted a 100% accurate 3d model of themselves, correct in every detail and proportion, to a 3d modelling site, 50% of the comments would be "The nose is too big" "The ears are too low" "The butt sticks out too much" "the thumbs are too small" etc etc - in other words the naive strive for a perfection in proportion and assume that, the very things that make someone look like they do, and not like someone else are "mistakes" when it comes to art.
Ironically, despite the clear desire amongst many to see certain parts of anatomy, even when the context isn't sexual or intimate at all - from which you'd suspect that, given the opportunity, they'd have done it as often as possible - much of learning to draw is more or less about realising you've never really looked at it at all.
So I would say it's no big deal. It's about anatomy - and there are better places to see naked people in the context of them being "hot" or provocative etc where you can get embarrassed for the people doing it. But it's a good thing that some aren't for this specific thing.
Topic: Thinking about posing nude...