The Nudity of Beautiful Young Actresses Can Just Be For The Male Gaze, Okay?
Let’s stop doing backflips pretending that it shouldn’t be
Full frontal nudity, especially (and not surprisingly) of the female variety, had quite a year in 2023, so much so that it almost deserved an Oscar category of its own.
And to be clear here, when I say “female variety,” I’m talking about a very specific type of woman here: younger than 40, conventionally attractive, and slim.
I’m talking about Scarlett Johansson. I’m talking about Emma Stone.
I’m especially talking about Jennifer Lawrence (whom we fondly know as JLaw).
And other people are talking about them, too, in think pieces from the likes of Vulture and The Guardian, both of which hail all this au naturel frolicking as a win for feminism.
And maybe it is? I’m still wrapping my head around that.
But I do know something else. It’s also an appeal to the male gaze.
Why? Because the onscreen nudity of beautiful young actresses is always an appeal to the male gaze.
And guess what? That’s okay.
So why do we perform such mental and verbal acrobatics insisting that it isn’t?
No, JLaw’s nude fight scene isn’t a “feminist victory”… and it doesn’t have to be
In his Vulture article entitled, “What If I Told You JLaw’s Naked Fight Scene Was a Bold Feminist Victory,” Nate Jones lauds Ms. Lawrence’s now-famous nude fight scene in No Hard Feelings, praising it for using onscreen female nudity in a way that male nudity has been used for years: for non-sexual humour.
“It’s goofy, un-self-conscious, and has nothing to do with sex,” he writes.
On the first two counts, Jones is not wrong.
Sure, what’s goofier than a naked person of any gender going mano a mano with a bunch of thieving teens? We laughed at similar scenes featuring men in Borat and The Hangover. And JLaw, bless her, doesn’t seem self-conscious in the least.
But on the third count, I can’t quite agree.
I mean, sure, the scene has nothing to do with sex. But does that mean that certain people will not be sexually aroused by the sight of Ms. Lawrence’s body, no matter what she’s using it for?
Jones goes on his article to sympathetically discuss the 2014 incident in which intimate photos of Ms. Lawrence were leaked online, a violation that she described as “an impossible thing to process.”
Now, he suggests, we have Ms. Lawrence reclaiming her body and how it is viewed. “She is not letting you in if you’re trying to drool,” he writes. “Only if you’re trying to laugh.”
Except… Ms. Lawrence has no control over whether people laugh at or drool over her body (or do both).
She has no control over whether or not legions of 14-year-old boys (or girls, for that matter) won’t wear out their television remotes, rewinding the scene over and over while praying that their parents don’t walk in.
Because heterosexual 14-year-old boys do tend to enjoy the sight of beautiful nude women (I suppose I could quote some science on this, but do I really have to?), and trying to put a feminist spin on Ms. Lawrence’s full Monty doesn’t change that.
But guess what? It doesn’t have to.
Sure, it’s great if Ms. Lawrence wants people to laugh at the scene.
It’s also totally okay if she wants them to drool.
“Normalizing” nudity also isn’t a feminist victory
Nudity is already normal and normalized.
It’s perfectly normal — and normalized — in certain situations, such as sexual intercourse, bathing, sunbathing, maybe even walking around one’s own home, and yes, skinny-dipping on a Montauk beach at night.
Nudity is a part of life, and as such, it belongs in certain scenes in certain movies for reasons of verisimilitude, if nothing else.
But there’s been a recent push advocating for more nudity in film, in the interest of desexualizing it and “normalizing” it, and framing this as a win for feminism.
In this recent-ish Guardian article, film critic Kristen Lopez says,
“Nudity can be funny, it can be sexy, it can be dramatic. I’m all for expanding it out. Maybe we’ll see the rise of non-sexy nudity — make bodies just bodies. […] If bodies are just shown as ‘here they are’ — they are not that interesting.”
But isn’t the “interesting-ness” (yes, I made that word up) of the nude body what gives it its power? And isn’t it what particularly gives the nude bodies of beautiful young women their power?
In one scene in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, the character of Midge, played by Scarlett Johansson, doffs her bathrobe and stands nude in front of a full-length mirror, in clear view of her love interest, Augie (Jason Schwartzman).
Why? It’s to attract and hold his gaze. (And it works, by the way). But if she’d been walking around nude the entire time, what would be so lovely and enticing about it now?
In Poor Things, Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, a young woman who — for a plot point I choose not to overthink — discovers her sexual agency and the multitudinous joys of what she names “furious jumping.” (That’s just “sex” to you and me, folks).
It’s a jaw-dropping performance, unabashedly physical and fiercely cerebral at once, and Ms. Stone is well-deserving of the Academy Award she won for it.
It’s also a role that “required” (yes, that’s in air quotes) a lot of nudity.
And, as is to be expected, there has been much debate about the necessity of all this nudity. Is it too much? Or is every second of it purposeful, solidifying the story’s feminist message behind this young woman’s shameless sexual agency?
My two cents? I think there could have been a little less sex and a little more exploration of Bella’s other developmental strides.
But let’s face it: Watching someone read a book isn’t quite as interesting as watching them have sex.
And film directors know it.
Just as we have all known since before the dawn of celluloid that women’s nudity — and particularly the nudity of those beautiful young women of whom we speak — is interesting.
It sells movie tickets, it is the subject of endless discussions and debates, and it gets attention. Hasn’t even started and ended a few wars? If not, I believe it could.
It is powerful.
And it’s a power that women have been using in various ways — including to attract men — for centuries.
And so they should if they want to. So why would we want to “normalize” nudity and take that power away from them?
Here’s an actual bold feminist victory
JLaw has called her nude fight scene “hilarious,” and also said that she found her nude scene in 2018’s Red Sparrow “empowering.”
But you know what else she said? This, in response to a question from Ellen Degeneres on her choice to do nudity:
Finally just got hot, you know? — Jennifer Lawrence
In other words, she was proud of her body, and wanted to show it to the world.
Unfortunately, she appears to be joking. But I wish she wasn’t.
Because feeling hot and sexy and wanting the world to see your body (and maybe even wanting them to drool over it) is a perfectly legitimate — and probably a pretty honest reason for choosing to do a nude scene.
But what I really wish is that Ellen didn’t even ask the question in the first place.
Because not asking actresses to explain or justify their nudity, or to explain or justify it on their behalf?
Well, that would be a truly bold feminist victory.
Kim Downey is a mother, writer, and pop culture enthusiast. She also writes about fitness, sobriety, and parenthood.