Setting aside all the middle class social imagery, such as “being an educated liberal person,” “a middle-aged woman” or whatever is fancy these days as a suitable mask of self-representation, while spending time on decaying social media, I will be as dull and as unequivocally direct as possible: everything quoted below is an evidence of sexual abuse, no matter how hard anyone would try to prove otherwise. It’s also painful to read, and, of course, you can google this particular work of Freud, if you are curious.

Nothing had been discussed, I just assumed I would be naked. I got undressed and asked him what he would like me to do. He said it was up to me. I lay on the sofa, but I didn’t want to look obedient in my portrait, I didn’t feel obedient. I wanted my father to paint me but not like the others – there was some kind of battle going on, unacknowledged but expressed in the muscles of my bent leg – I was alert, prepared to spring up at any moment.

I asked him not to paint in my hairy legs. He said it was not like that. We talked about make-up. He didn’t like to paint it, but I was not going to take off my mascara. In the end he decided it was part of me. That was a small victory. ©

(Lucian Freud’s daughter on posing naked for him at 19)