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

Jennifer Lawrence at the 83rd Academy Awards in 2011, Wikimedia Commons

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?

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