Salon has a new bloggishy section called Broadsheet---well, it's new to me---which seems to be devoted to, among other things, resenting the fact that there are women in the world men want to see naked and some of these women are willing to let men see them that way.
Ok, that's probably an unfair snap judgment based on the very first two posts I read. One is about the cover of Vanity Fair's new Hollywood Issue, which features Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson nude. The other is about Uma Thurman's recent knighting by the French---I didn't know the French still bestowed knighthoods---to honor her great contributions to society by having been born beautiful. In both posts the writers don't see anything fun or amusing about the situations or consider the possibility that Knightley, Johansson, and Thurman might have had some say in what was going on and even enjoyed themselves.
(Shakespeare's Sister sent me the link, knowing my feelings about Uma.)
Like I said, there is no sense in either post that the actresess might have been happy and willing participants in what both writers clearly regard as degrading affairs. What there is is the unfortunate habit some feminists have of treating women who do things they themselves don't approve of---taking jobs as strippers, marrying men and bearing their children, voting Republican, being born beautiful and talented enough that glossies with huge circulations want them to pose for their covers and European nations addicted to wine and cheese and having a reputation for producing the most beautiful women in the world decide to honor them as if they are one of their own---as hapless victims and mindless accomplices in their own oppression and exploitation.
Page Rockwell sneers at those silly French for praising Uma for her "grace and sensuality" and her "classic and disconcerting beauty," pretty sorry reasons for admiring a movie star, if you ask Rockwell. She herself admires Thurman for being "savvy enough to take this fawning in stride." Rockwell, though, can't take it in stride and she scorns the French on Uma's behalf for their condescension and sexism. Smith herself knows the real reason to honor Uma Thurman.
"She kicks ass," Rockwell says triumphantly, linking to the official website for Kill Bill, and thereby she reduces Thurman's career to the most atypical of all the roles she's played, defining her by a movie that negated both her beauty and her talent and used her as puppet in Quentin Tarantino's creepy and ultra-violent video game fantasy.
(Yeah, I know, it was an homage...to movies that are creepy ultra-violent video game fantasies.)
Tracy Clark-Flory doesn't find the Vanity Fair cover objectionable so much as risible. But she harumphs as she comes to the defense of Knightley's and Johansson's dignity:
A number of Hollywood actors also posed for the issue, but no word yet whether they were also asked to bare all. Interesting that no matter their level of fame or success -- Knightley received a best-actress Oscar nomination for "Pride and Prejudice," while Johansson received a Golden Globes supporting-actress nomination for "Match Point" -- it's women who still face pressure to strip off their clothes.
There is definitely a double-standard when it comes to male and female beauty in Hollywood. (Is it really true that the female leads in Brokeback Mountain get nakeder than the male leads? I wouldn't be surprised.) A young actress is far more likely to be asked to take her clothes off and if she has any qualms about it and wants to refuse she has to worry that she'll lose the gig and her career will suffer if she says no. She wouldn't want it to get around that she is "difficult to work with."
I think there's less pressure than there used to be, for several reasons, one of them being the rising use of body doubles. A disappointing fact of life for makers of movies is that talent and beauty are not always located in the same body and the kinds of pretty faces the camera loves often sit atop unphotogenic figures---this is more the case these days because of a far more pernicious pressure young actresses face than having to get naked: having to be stick-figure skinny. I don't understand this one. The camera puts on 10 pounds excuse doesn't explain it, because the camera always put on 10 pounds, and at one time it was ok for actresses to be 120 pounds and look 130 on camera. Now they are supposed to be 90 or so and look 100. Why did the standard for female beauty go from voluptuous to skeletal? But it did, and this creates a problem. You don't want the audience to mistake a nude scene for a CARE commercial. But with a body double and some judicious camera placement and editing, a character who in her clothes looks anorexic turns out to be built like a centerfold when she's naked.
At any rate, when an actress reaches a certain level of box office appeal, she can tell any director or producer who wants her to show her tits on screen to go boil his head.
And both Keira Knightly and Scarlett Johansson have reached this level.
On top of which, they don't work for Vanity Fair.
So why did they pose naked for the cover?
Because they're actresses!
Actresses, and actors, tend to be uninhibited.
The reason there is so much more female nudity in the movies isn't simply that actresses are unfairly pressured. It's that actors are unfairly not asked.
The pressure on an actress who wants to maintain her modesty to bare all comes more from the fact that plenty of other actresses don't even have to be asked before they'll get out of their clothes.
I once sat in on an audition session a friend of mine was holding for an off-off (off) Broadway play he was directing. The play had a scene in which the lead female character bared her breasts. One of the actresses who came in to read for the part, and knew the play, insisted on reading that scene and without prompting, unbuttoned at the proper moment. My friend stopped her before she got her bra unhooked.
She got the part. Not because my friend was impressed by her can-do spirit. He knew her already and had worked with her. He had her mind for the part from the start, because she was good. But he also knew that when the time came he wouldn't have to pressure her to take her top off.
And---here I get to play Six Degrees From Kevin Bacon and tell you that I am three degrees away---I dated a girl whose sister, who wasn't an aspiring actress but who happened to be in the right place at the right time, got a part in a movie (with Kevin Bacon; I'm not telling you which one because you might be able to identify her from the details I'm about to give). She had one scene, a sex scene with the male lead, and she had to get naked. (Great body. Her sister was prettier though.) She did it, reluctantly, she informed her family, and if she'd known she would have to do it she wouldn't have taken the part!
That's what she told her father anyway.
She confided to her sister that she had known from the start, and while she was a bit scared at first, she decided it would be ok because several of the other actresses in the cast also had nude scenes.
Back in high school and college I spent a lot of time in the company of aspiring actors and actresses. All of them had come to terms with the fact that at some point in their future careers they would would be required to get naked on stage or in front of a camera. Some of them had resolved never to do it, whatever consequences it had professionally. Others resigned themselves to having to do it. And others not only didn't mind but began looking for opportunities to practice. Of course I was glad to do my bit to help them.
(Question: What am I missing here? One of my fondest memories from that period of my life is of being the only man in a conversation that included four of my actress friends discussing how naked they'd be willing to get when the time came. Only one of them felt she could do a complete nude scene. The other three decided they were willing to appear topless or wholly naked in profile, but they would not do full frontal and they would not show their rear ends. This struck me as odd. I understood about frontal, but I would have thought that going topless would have been more intimidating than appearing bare-bottomed. But they were insistant. I didn't get it then, and I don't get it now.)
Once upon a time, in the 1960s and early 1970s, when gratuitous nudity was the next new thing in Hollywood, many actresses were pressured, some to the point of being coerced, to do nude scenes. But that followed a, rare it turns out, period when pretty young actresses could expect to make movie after movie without even having to take a sweater off. Silent movies regularly featured nudity, male and female---Gary Cooper did a nude scene in one of his earliest films---and even into the thirties, semi-nudity and heavily implied nudity weren't an unusual part of a starlet's job. This is why there are so many nude and semi-nude glamour shots floating around of actresses from that period. And every aspiring actor and actress who has come of age since about 1970 has had to take into account the prospect when planning their careers. So whatever pressure there is isn't so much on actresses already in the business as on those still in high school and college and it works in such a way that they either give up the idea of becoming actors or resign themselves to having to do it or accepting the consequences of refusing.
I suspect that some who had decided they were willing to do it discover that they aren't as uninhibited as they thought when the time comes. Then whether or not they go through with it depends on the workings of their own consciences and egos, and fears, and the sensitivity of their directors. I wouldn't count on there being a whole lot of sensitive types in Hollywood, but, like I said, this is what body doubles are for.
But the truth is most people who go into acting have a strong streak of exhibitionism in them. From the beginning actors have had to do things in performance that aren't done in polite society or that polite society keeps hidden. One of the reasons we go to movies and plays and watch television is to spy on people doing things we aren't allowed to watch them do in politie society. Sometimes this has been nothing more than kissing on stage or showing a little leg, but it's been enough to get actresses a reputation that's barely above that of prostitute. At other times they've had to get naked or nearly so. But at all times it's included exposing themselves emotionally.
To act the part of a madman or a murderer, a whore or a betrayed wife, a cad or a violently jealous husband, a lover, a saint, or an angel of vengeance, requires an emotional nakedness that can be more terrifying and more demanding than simple physical nudity. It's harder to bare the soul than to bare your ass, and I think a lot of people get out of acting more because of that than because of any nude scenes they may or may not be asked to do. Actors who have no inhibitions about doing graphic sex scenes completely naked can't open themselves up convincingly enough to pull off a tender love scene.
My guess is that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal didn't have anywheres near as much trouble playing gay men in Brokeback Mountain as they did portraying those men's pain, which is why they're both nominated for Academy Awards.
Getting naked is easy compared to the real hard work of acting. Particularly if you're young and good looking. This is why I don't believe producers and directors have to do very much pressuring to get young actresses to take off their clothes. Actually, point a camera at most people and they lose all their inhibitions, and the rise of digital photography has probably created a whole generation of closet centerfolds. I know a few housewives with portfolios of nude glamour shots---for their husbands' eyes only of course. I'm sure that if digital cameras had been available when I was in college I'd have quite a collection of "artistic" nudes of all my old girlfriends, even the ones who weren't aspiring actresses.
As for the Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue? I think Clark-Flory is right to sneer, the whole concept sounds stupid. How many Hollywood Issues does Vanity Fair publish a year anyway? Feels like 5 or 6. And the cover is depressingly unerotic. Maybe it looks different on the news stands, but online it looks as though Knightley and Johansson were made up and lit to look Corpse Bride white, and they are posed and photographed in a way that accentuates their slenderness to the point of their appearing stretched out like rubber dolls that have been played with too hard. Actually, they don't look like themselves at all. They look like cgi animated versions of themselves created for a movie in which they are turned into vampiresses.
If either actress is sorry she did the photo shoot it's probably because of how the pictures turned out, not because she felt pressured into doing it in the first place. Frankly, I doubt they minded it at all, even if there was some pressure from their publicists or studio or whoever might have clout enough to pressure the likes of them.
They are actresses, after all, pros. Knightley is a former model who did her first nude scene when she was 16. They might both be humble people but they aren't modest, and they don't need to be. Both are incredibly beautiful and probably proud of the fact and in the immortal words of the recently knighted Uma Thurman in her role as Ulla in The Producers:
"If you got it, flaunt it."
Thank you my little Lance-stang! I knew you'd understand. You know... in a parallel universe, we're a smokin' couple and in a parallel universe, you're buck-naked on some magazine cover.
Posted by: uma | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 11:11 AM
I think that what's different now is something you touched on briefly -- the digital revolution. Whereas nude scenes in the past could be done and then confined to the movie theatre, actors and actresses now know that their nudes scenes will be paraded around on the internet days after a film is released on DVD (or even before). The medium has more of a memory than it used to. And yet, that hasn't seemed to cause too many people to refrain from nude scenes, probably for the reasons you point out. In fact, if anything, such scenes seem to have become more common since the rise of digital media.
Posted by: Matt | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 11:46 AM
Slight, personal nitpick on a subject that I'm really much too sensitive about- Kill Bill isn't really a homage to movies that are creepy ultra-violent video game fantasies, as nearly all of the movies it references (well, clumsily strip-mines, really) were released well before video games were capable of anything more complicated than Triangle vs Several Squares.
Posted by: Moleman | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 12:05 PM
Moleman,
Good point, and well taken.
Posted by: Lance | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 12:11 PM
I assume Ms. Thurman has her head on straight or she wouldn't have earned Lance's admiration. Ms. Knightley earned mine when I noticed a quotation from her in our paper (the kind of squib you see in the bottom right-hand corner of the entertainment pages). She sounded like Reggie Jackson. Paraphrasing: "I'm 22 years old! I'm no role model! I'm gonna make mistakes! If you use me as a role model you're crazy!"
Posted by: Linkmeister | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 12:26 PM
also revelant to this conversation: Uma Says No to Nude Scenes After Dangerous Liasons Trauma
Posted by: Matt | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 12:40 PM
You can use your body as you choose as long as you are the one choosing.
Some feminists get all upset when a woman uses her body as she sees fit...shouldn't choices regarding all uses of our bodies come with the feminist package?
Lance- you mention baring ones soul on screen as being more treacherous than baring ones skin. I would have to agree. My question, you bare your soul to us everyday on this blog... if you can do that, why no beefcake? I don't believe blogs add 10 lbs, but Philly Cheesesteaks might.
Posted by: Jennifer | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 12:51 PM
One thing that a lot of people seem to miss in discussions of male vs. female nudity is that women have a lot more nudity to show. In Brokeback Mountain, I'm sure that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal spent more time topless than Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams, but we aren't inclined to count Ledger and Gyllenhaal's topless scenes as nudity. Breasts just don't have an equivalent on men. Men and women both have asses, and we saw much more of the men's asses in BBM than the women's. In general, I'd say that men's asses are more likely to be exposed on film than women's, though I'd need to see an empirical study. And men and women both have external genitalia, which get about the same amount of screen time.
Posted by: BanjoSteve | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 01:08 PM
we aren't inclined to count Ledger and Gyllenhaal's topless scenes as nudity.
True. And maybe we should. Why should men's chests be considered any less sexual than women's, after all?
Posted by: Linnet | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 01:36 PM
Ok, I’ll admit to being really immature right here, right now. I do not have a problem at all with people getting naked in movies -- more power to ‘em -- but it is a huge distraction for me. I just watched “The English Patient” and there’s the one scene where Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas are in bed after making love -- and she’s showing more, ahem, skin than he is. Anyway. All I could do was stare at her boobs! I don’t remember what they were talking about, because all I remember of the scene were her boobs, and me sitting there wondering:
Is she comfortable showing her boobs like that? Look how little they are! What do the cameramen think? Was she walking around the set topless for a few minutes before they started shooting the scene? Or did she wait to get into bed before she took her top off?
I can go all third grade in two seconds flat. And why would I be so drawn to staring at a woman’s boobs? It’s not like I haven’t seen boobs before.
Am I the only one distracted by nudity in movies? I’m thinking no. (Unless you all are way more mature than me) And if that’s the case -- what’s the point of it? Is nudity in and of itself erotic? I say not so much. I found the one moment in The English Patient where he’s enthralled by the one part of her neck way more erotic than the nudity.
Regarding men naked in movies...lots of male actors are small men. Like, say Al Pacino. He’s a cool guy, but nope. Wouldn’t do a thing for me to see him naked. And other actors who I consider handsome and *not* small-ish, say Kevin Kline -- who I love -- I just saw him in a movie where in this one scene he’s walking around in only boxer shorts. And he’s built good -- but he’s holding his stomach in throughout the entire scene, kind of acting like he’s not holding his stomach in. Ick! I wish I never would’ve seen it.
Just give me a guy with a good behind in a pair of Levi’s and I’m happy.
Lance, you’re right. That Vanity Fair cover is ghoulish.
Posted by: blue girl | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 02:14 PM
I'm not surprised that your actress friends had little discomfort with the idea of showing their boobs compared to showing their lower halves. While they're certainly very sexualized in our culture, and we know how men are attracted to them, but it's somewhat different living with them. Think about how many women call them things like "the girls" -- they're friendly sorts of appendages, without all the body-hating cultural freight that our "private parts" and cellulite-prone bottoms carry around them. One may be embarassed to bare one's breasts, but it's more likely that the audience will have a positive reaction to them than it will to the other parts.
At least in my experience. Obviously, ymmv.
Posted by: Rana | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 02:25 PM
bg- having been in many art classes and around many theatrical events where nude parts were common I don't find nudity that distracting. Or maybe it is a distraction from a lacking script! I will say though that I think it's pretty common to be comparing boobs. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes and I don't know that anyone gets past wondering if theirs are more the norm than the ones they see on screen.
I'd agree with you though that major nudity has little to do with eroticism. A pair of hands, a smile, a bit of chest hair sticking out of an open shirt (I don't see why men feel the need to wax a hairy chest!)can be much more exciting than nudity.
I'm with you on the Levi's! Don't forget the big white shirt with sleeves rolled up.
Posted by: Jennifer | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 02:52 PM
Pam and I were commenting last night on the fact that whenever Tony Soprano climbs into the sack with someone not Carmella, he keeps his boxer shorts on! T's lovemaking is usually under covers, but how amusing it is to think of his posterior hidden by his shorts. And most of the time he keeps his tank top on also.
Funny how all great minds should run in the same channels. At a time when all of us should worry and talk about our head asshole wanting to eliminate the Social Security death burial benefit, the one federal program never indexed for inflation, we concern ourselves with nudity. Then again, I suppose Keira, who is British, needn't have that problem.
Posted by: Exiled in NJ | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 03:07 PM
This feminist resents the style of the Vanity Fair cover without making any judgement at all on the individuals who chose to bare all: as you point out, they are gorgeous people who chose to show skin, and there's nothing wrong with skin.
The problem is that, as you attempt to rationalise, it's so overwhelmingly the female skin that gets shown. Male model advertising a car - normal business clothes. Female model advertising a car - legs and cleavage galore, in an outfit that one definitely would not wear to a business meeting. Sure, catering to the male gaze is what the market deems attractive: and it's that double standard that feminists generally loathe.
You spoke of your actress friends' long discussions and dissembling to family regarding nudity on film. If your male acting friends weren't having these concerns about nudity, that actually says more than you seem to realise about the difference in what nudity represents depending on whether one belongs to the sexualised class or not.
If we lived in a culture where cars/beer/magazines were just as likely to be marketed without irony on network TV using pouty men in skimpy bathing suits as pouty women in skimpy bathing suits, and family restaurants all over the place had male as well as female waiters in itty-bitty uniforms there really wouldn't be a feminist problem with this.
Posted by: tigtog | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 03:22 PM
Addendum: having read the Vanity Fair blurb, I'm damn disappointed that Eric Bana backed out of the Speedo shot. Why isn't that hot actor catering to my gaze, dammit?
Posted by: tigtog | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 03:49 PM
I have some possible answers to your question about why it might be easier for women to show our breasts than our rears. First, we see our breasts every day. While other folks might be fascinated by them, to us it's just part of the landscape - even if we feel we have really great breasts. Kind of hard to see your own ass, and no matter what you do, you can't see it straight on. Furthermore, we are given more grief about the size, shape and the effects of gravity and time on our asses than we are about our breasts. On top of that, there is the belief that you can't do anything (short of surgery) to change the way your breasts look, but you can "shape" your ass. Of course, there are plenty of work out routines that strengthen the muscles in your chest and thus change the shape and position of your breasts, but you don't see videos about chest-strengthening flooding the market. "Breasts of Steel" would be a rather intimidating thing to contemplate.
Does that help?
Posted by: Reba | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 04:01 PM
I was in a life drawing class in college, and generally the students appeared more embarrassed about the nudity than the models did. I wasn't embarrassed while they were modeling (well, you're busy drawing), but some would walk around afterwards to look at the drawings, still naked and engaging you in conversation. That was a little hard to take, they were no longer "on stage" as it were. (I hate when strangers want to chat when you just got out of the shower at the gym too)
One model, a stunning young woman with a slim but still very curvy figure, had the problem about showing her butt. But it was only about showing it to men apparently. Full frontal was fine for men, but no butt. By chance that day the students had chosen spots around the room with most of the guys on one side. She did the 1st pose with her back to the girls, and when it came time to change poses she absolutely refused to turn the other way and had a tantrum. Hell, she'd been naked in the room for 20 minutes by now. I felt annoyed at having to draw her butt and back twice - not much in the way of feature there, a couple of curving lines and you have it. I would have liked a face, a collar bone, a knee - something with some detail.
So when I drew her butt the 2nd time I rounded it up some, to entertain myself, a little artistic license at her expense. Hey - I'm not a photographer! ;-) She came around to look at the drawings after she got dressed and she got mad about it. Hell, it wasn't a caricature, I only rounded up a little. I wouldn't even know the difference if someone did that to my butt because I don't have a clear idea how it looks exactly. I said I may have lost my concentration by having to do the same drawing twice.
The funny part was later, when I brought it home, and the male roommates thought the 2nd drawing was the best butt ever. If she only knew.
Posted by: muddy | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 05:03 PM
It's a typical Leibowitz cover, overretouched and making the subjects look about as come-hither as the smoked-fish counter at Russ & Daughters. Actually, the smoked-fish counter is eminently droolworthy. What I wouldn't give for some of their sable right now ...
Where was I? The actresses are very beautiful and as a fair-skinned lass myself I am personally ecstatic to see such acres of alabaster, tan-free skin. But their expressions are glassy-eyed and vacuous and Tom Ford's pose just looks like a staged version of a Fashion Week air-kiss. It makes me cringe. I don't know why VF, an admirable magazine in so many ways, persists in posing ravishing young actresses in ways that make them look like tired call girls.
Posted by: Campaspe | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 05:40 PM
Smoked fish! That was beautiful!
I was about to say that I never liked VF covers because everyone looks as if they have been killed and stuffed. The yearly "actress cover" is a chief offender. Last year's cover looked like Madame Tussaud's, which is unfortunate because everyone on the cover is so pretty.
I never worry when women want to get naked. I worry that there aren't enough female doctors, lawyers, politicians, Supreme Court justices ... I think that's what we should be complaining about. I'd also like it if more men got buck-naked. Like George Clooney. He can get naked for me any day.
Posted by: Pepper | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 06:06 PM
Here in Australia we now have close to or over 50% women undergraduates in medicine, law and veterinary science. Interestingly, entry level salaries in all these once high-status boy's-club professions have dropped in real terms since more women took them up.
Posted by: tigtog | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 06:49 PM
Lance, what a post. I didn't see the Vanity Fair cover, but I'll check it at a newstand. This post brought to mind a great person who is doing a great service to protect the bodies of celebrities. He's known as the Fake Detective [He's asked that no links be created to his page; a Google search turns his site right up], he's a retired Milwaukee policeman, who searches the internet for nude shots of the stars. Fake shots that he exposes are nude pictures, with the head/face of a famous star superimposed on someone else's body. When he finds a fake picture, he researchs it and comes up with the source picture, their name, and often some photoshop details, that he places on his website.
Consider the star that disrobes and exposes her body to the world, and then later her face shows up on someone else's body all over the internet. He does a service that I expect most stars actually appreciate, and shows a skill that is amazing.
Posted by: Earl Bockenfeld | Thursday, February 09, 2006 at 11:21 PM
I have some questions about curvy nude body doubles for skinny actresses being seen as a happy solution to the question of the film nudity for modest female actors. In the cinema there's still more nude women up on the screen than there are nude men, which is the point the feminist objections started at.
Posted by: tigtog | Friday, February 10, 2006 at 12:47 AM
lance, i have a suggstion:
how about you and gen. j.c. christian get together on the american street and talk about female nudity? it'll be 200 percent hetereosexual, i bet.
Posted by: harry near indy | Friday, February 10, 2006 at 04:50 AM
addenum.
i wanted to check this before i posted it.
nathan lane is openly gay -- at least google has references to it, so it's not like i'm libeling/slandering him. so i bet he was only professionally interested in ms thurman's bosom.
Posted by: harry near indy | Friday, February 10, 2006 at 04:54 AM
tigtog, I'm not sure I'd call body doubling a "happy" solution. I don't know where body doubles live on the Hollywood food chain, what they're paid, or what career path you have to follow to become one. I'm assuming that they are like artists' models, maybe even like stunt people. The post is about the pressure on actresses to take off their clothes and body doubles take away some of the pressure. Unless young actresses with great bodies are pressured into body doubling for more powerful actresses who have the clout to resist the pressure. I don't know. I read an interview with a body double who said she liked her job, got well paid for it, and thought of it like being a stunt double. The only pressure on her was to never tell anybody which movies she worked on so the actresses she doubled for wouldn't be embarrassed by having it revealed that they don't look good, um, revealed.
The double standard is a separate question.
Earl, it's a dirty job but someone's go to do it, I suppose.
harry, you know no one's as heterosexual as the General. I would look like a pansy in his manly, American presence.
Posted by: Lance | Friday, February 10, 2006 at 06:25 AM
Muddy, thanks for the funny story!
C, brilliant, as always.
Reba, Rana, I don't think I ever took vanity into consideration. I was 20 at the time and I thought all 4 girls were beautiful. And all four did have lovely breasts. But one of the girls who said she would only appear topless, who was my girlfriend at the time, was short and a little on the round side and while I liked her rear end she might have thought it was too big. Of the 4 girls, only 2 went on to have professional careers of any kind, the girl who was comfortable doing any amount of nudity and the other girl who said she'd only do a topless scene. And the first girl never did have to get totally naked, unless you count the movie I made, while the second girl did one topless scene before she called it quits after about 10 years on stage. She had no problem with the topless scene. She did complain once about having to play Helen of Troy in Troilus and Cressida in dominatrix gear---boots, a leather bikini top and a thong---because she felt she had to go to the gym for three hours every day during rehearsals and the run of the play to feel she looked good enough to be comfortable.
That discussion was about appearing naked on stage, by the way. All the girls wanted to go to New York, not Hollywood. Appearing before a camera on a closed set full of professionals is different than appearing live on stage in front of hundreds of strangers. Nowhere to hide, so to speak, and the lighting isn't designed to help and there's no cameraman to find your best angle. Two of those girls posed regularly for art classes, and my girlfriend posed for friends taking photography classes.
Posted by: Lance | Friday, February 10, 2006 at 07:39 AM
Exhibitionism may not be the right word. Vanity hits the target. When I dreamed of acting, the vision included full frontal nudity, becasuse, as anyone who knew me at the time could vouch, I was a vain about my body as a man could be. I just knew evrybody wanted to see it and remember it. A nude scene from me would change the audiences, would reach into their souls. Yes, I was deluded, and my conviction strained (or broke) more than one relationship. I doubt that most actresses think differently. Today, after a workout, I still catch myself in the locker room mirror and think, that's a great body for a man pushing fifty. Today, I know that middle aged men's bodies are a specialty taste. Young women's bodies never go out of style.
Posted by: Gregory Thelen | Friday, February 10, 2006 at 09:35 AM
One of the things that memebers of both sexes often miss is the fact that men and women react differently to nudity. There is an old joke that goes (summarsied and paraphrased) - "How do you turn on a women? - Cologne, tux, flowers, candy, good sense of humor, caress, kiss, laugh, cry etc. How do you turn on a man? Show up naked."
I don't claim to understand women any better than other men do, (ok I'm lying - maybe I do a little!) but one thing is for sure: What women find erotic is more subtle, more complex and usually more varied than what men do.
Posted by: The Viscount | Friday, February 10, 2006 at 11:58 AM
After returning to this post and re-reading my comments, I felt kind of embarassed. The thoughts I had in my mind were not as obvious as my comments - I kind of just dashed them off and moved on.
The point I was trying to make was that men don't exactly understand women's views and reactions toward nudity and sexuality and vice versa. Men favor obvious porn, but women like erotica and neither side truly gets the other's pespective. This is why magazines like Playgirl didn't really catch on the way Playboy did, and why you rarely see a man reading a Harlequin novel. If we are open-minded and mature, we learn to accept and work with those differences in an adult relationship.
Posted by: The Viscount | Saturday, February 11, 2006 at 07:55 AM
I thought it was obvious. Actresses face more pressure to get naked in movies because men make most of the movies. Then there's the age thing. Young nubile actresses are often paired against older men and rarely the reverse. I have absolutely no doubt whatever that if I was ever in a position to be directing Jack Nicholson in a movie against any female lead I'd be begging him to keep his clothes on too.
According to Salon, men direct 96% of movies. And it's any surprise that actresses face more pressure to get naked? What happens when women direct movies? You get Denzel Washington getting about as naked as he's ever been in Mississippi Masala. Something that has apparently never occurred to any male director to ask him to do, much to my wife's dismay!
Just saying. Sometimes it's really not that complicated.
Posted by: Kent | Sunday, February 12, 2006 at 01:20 AM
According to Salon, men direct 96% of movies. And it's any surprise that actresses face more pressure to get naked? What happens when women direct movies? You get Denzel Washington getting about as naked as he's ever been in Mississippi Masala. Something that has apparently never occurred to any male director to ask him to do, much to my wife's dismay!
Damn right. It's time for more hot male actors to get naked.
But do naked cover women really help Vanity Fair? I thought VF's readership was mostly women interested in fashion. And if a het man wants a wank, is his first choice really going to be the cover of Vanity Fair?
Posted by: Nancy | Sunday, February 12, 2006 at 03:32 PM
Lance, I think this is a cheap summary of the situation and it's clear you could have gone into a deeper analysis of why women's nudity is the standard and why women are still the "sex class" onscreen and off.
Posted by: Faux Real | Saturday, February 18, 2006 at 03:13 PM
This whole thing smacks of the housework debate----rather than change the standards or actually talk about it, we just hire somebody to do the woman's work. Nudity or housework, it's still a dirty job, and some woman still winds up doing it. Meanwhile, women still face a different, more onerous standard than men, and some people still whine about 'feminists' when what they're talking about are strawfeminists instead.
Posted by: ginmar | Saturday, February 18, 2006 at 04:08 PM
When it comes to female/male nudity, it comes down to the classic economic theory of supply and demand. Demand: men demand more nudity/sex than women. THink about the number of subscribers to Playboy compared to those of Playgirl etc. Supply: many women are willing to do nudity so if one doesn't wish to, a replacement can be easily found. It also depends upon the actress - some do so in hopes boost their careers (Molly Ringwald) or to know that they are still hot (Jennifer Aniston).
Posted by: Mike Schuler | Thursday, June 15, 2006 at 01:50 AM
There are on-line articles that mention that a year or so ago Keira Knightly was totally nude in a women's locker room and that a group of teen girls approached her for autographs, and Keira Knightly just stood there totally nude signing the autographs for them.
I don't blame men for not wanting to do full frontal nude scenes. Male genitalia are much more exposed in a nude scene than a woman's vagina is. And men will be judged in many different ways too if they go full frontal.
Posted by: Maria | Tuesday, August 01, 2006 at 01:47 PM
Are you a lawyer?
This is the best argument I have heard in a long time, and my family is full of lawyers and people who make difficult arguments all the time.
props.
Posted by: Amanda Luhrsen | Monday, October 09, 2006 at 12:49 PM