# Gratuitous nudity and NON-nudity in movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 5, 2009, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447 "2009-05-05T18:53:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Aghris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecccb3/32.png) [@Aghris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aghris)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/21 "2009-05-05T21:00:59Z")
> [@HookerChemical](#): > > Dollhouse uses a co-ed shower this way but without nudity. Sure. However, in one of the first episodes, when the after effects of Alpha’s killing spree is shown, the bodies managed to cover themselves up quite prudently before they gave the ghost. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/22 "2009-05-05T21:01:40Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > In **National Lampoon’s Vacation** , Christie Brinkley is supposed to be skinny dipping, but the camera never shows anything. It wasn’t to get a better MPAA rating – \*\*Beverly D’Angelo goes nude in the film \*\*-- but probably because Brinkley refused. I will have to watch it again. I don’t remember this. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/23 "2009-05-05T21:05:54Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I’ll start the bidding with one instance of each, from the very same movie. Carla Gugino’s nakedness in _Sin city_ makes very little sense;\* why, exactly, does she not throw on a robe when Marv comes to her apartment? Wait. So what does this asterisk go to? ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/24 "2009-05-05T21:22:48Z")
Kevin Bacon’s FFN in “Wild Things.”…TRM ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/25 "2009-05-05T21:29:21Z")
> [@spooje](#): > > I will have to watch it again. I don’t remember this. :eek: I remember it in _European Vacation_, but not the original. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/26 "2009-05-05T21:39:02Z")
The Truth About Hollywood Moview Strip Clubs was wonderfully laid out by Chris Magyar at the **Jabootu** site in his review of **I Know Who Killed Me** : > [@](#): > > Actually, as Lohan continues to walk very slowly about in her nightie and occasionally squat down and stand up as if she can’t decide whether or not to poop, it’s worth having a brief discursion on this particular genus of movie strip club. Hollywood has a vehement love-hate relationship with strip joints: they love the opportunity to parade women’s bodies around with impunity, but hate the frank and sometimes unsexy fact of constant nudity. > > In real strip clubs (in case you need the education), the outfits generally stay on for all of sixty seconds, and the dances are choreographed for maximum viewage of the important naughty bits, accompanied by lots of writhing and leg spreading. Meanwhile, the non-dancing strippers are usually sitting near the bar chatting with each other while wearing bikinis or less, or sliding across the laps of the various patrons. > > In movie strip clubs, the dancers perform long and slow numbers in complicated lingerie, with perhaps a brief flourish of nudity at the end, and the choreography involves much hair tossing and walking up and down the runway, sort of like a Victoria’s Secret fashion show with bad lighting, but the strippers in the crowd are invariably topless and wandering about with drinks, as if the bus for a Las Vegas showgirl troupe broke down and all the dancers needed to make some extra cash to get it fixed. > > The reason for this dichotomy between reality and fiction is simple: directors want to put their main actress on stage, and actresses, once they get big enough to be leads, generally (and rightly) frown upon the necessary physical exploitation involved in real strip club pole dancing. In many cases, the movie ‘strippers’ never strip at all, a fact which only “Planet Terror” has ever bothered to explain—Rose McGowan insists she’s a go-go dancer, not a stripper. In recent memory alone, we have Jessica Alba, Natalie Portman, Salma Hayek, and now Lindsay Lohan all portraying this special breed of non-stripping stripper. The movie patrons never seem to mind, of course, even though they’d be screaming bloody murder at a real place (or more likely, not there at all—who would go to these clubs?). > > This all makes sense, of course, but has led to some strange notions of pole dancing in popular culture, to the point that pole dancing classes are now popular at fitness clubs, and young women who probably have never set foot inside a strip joint think of it more as a dancing technique than the gritty, exploitative act that it is. > **[I Know Who Killed Me – Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension](http://jabootu.net/2008/02/i-know-who-killed-me-2/)** ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/27 "2009-05-05T21:43:07Z")
> [@Cluricaun](#): > > My favorite instance of gratuity as a kid was the scene in Airplane! before Ted takes the controls and the plane is all out of control…and up pops a topless blond shakin’ some great looking knockers right at the camera. Gratuity was the point, but I loved it when I was 7 or 8. Those great looking knockers belonged to[Kitten Natavidad](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001563/), who also appeared in such cinematic masterpieces as _Titilation, Takin’ It Off_ and my personal favorite _Bodacious Ta-Ta’s._ There’s also the all-too-often-edited scene from _Animal House_ where Bluto steals a ladder and climbs up to look in the 2nd floor window of a sorority house, where he sees a bunch of Mandy’s sorority sisters having a pillow fight in various states of nakidity. As for non-nudity, how about the scene in the first _Austin Powers_ movie where Elizabeth Hurley and Mike Myers manage to have their bits concealed by plants, vases, salt and pepper shakers and nearly every other object in their hotel room. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/28 "2009-05-05T21:45:54Z")
In the gratuitous non-nudity realm, I would cite every bleeding 007 movie ever. All those women, all those boobs. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/29 "2009-05-05T21:51:19Z")
Related question: Has full-frontal male nudity become more prominent these days while full-frontal female nudity is virtually non existant? I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen full frontal female in an R-rated feature. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/30 "2009-05-05T22:12:21Z")
I’ll just link to my previous post for the gratuitous nudity in [Under Siege](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10745166&postcount=114). ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/31 "2009-05-05T22:23:47Z")
A great example of both: Robert Altman’s **The Player** (1992). The two women in protagonist Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins)‘s life are mousy Bonnie Sherow ([Cynthia Stevenson](http://www.celebritypicturesarchive.com/avatars/220x220/c/cynthia-stevenson/cynthia-stevenson.jpg)), the girlfriend he has and doesn’t want, and bodacious June Gudmundsdottir ([Greta Scacchi](http://www.ilovethe80s.com/gretascacchi.jpg)), wife of the man he semi-accidentally murdered, whom he wants but can’t have without practically announcing his guilt to the police. June is photographed so beautifully, flawlessly and so full of light that you’ll swear you can see through her clothes and you’ll certainly want to, but you never do. Bonnie, whom Mill and you wish would accidentally disappear quickly and permanently, flashes her okay-but-unspectacular figure in a hot tub scene. This was, according to Stevenson, a calculated decision on Altman’s part to both enhance and subvert the viewers’ voyeuristic desires. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/32 "2009-05-05T22:39:40Z")
In my opinion there is none more gratuitous than Barbara Bach’s nude bath scene in **Force 10 from Navarone**. The WW2 adventure film did not need to have a naked woman. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/33 "2009-05-05T22:58:44Z")
The nudity amounts to only a brief flash of bum, but in terms of gratuitousness rather than explicitness I think the 2002 A&E version of _The Magnificent Ambersons_ deserves mention. Those of you who’ve seen the 1940s Orson Wells film may remember there’s a scene where Georgie is standing outside the bathroom and having an angry conversation with his uncle, who’s in the tub. In the A&E version the uncle is still in the tub, but Georgie is also in the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel, and shaving or something. Partway through the conversation Georgie drops his towel, gets in a separate shower stall, and takes a shower while continuing to talk to his uncle. Who jumps in the shower in the middle of a conversation? It’s really silly and is obviously just an excuse to spice up a period piece and get the leading man (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) as naked as basic cable would allow. The need to show the actor’s face while he’s speaking, avoid full-frontal nudity, but still work in a bit of cheek, requires Rhys-Meyers to keep turning back and forth in the shower in a rather awkward manner. Sillier still, he is then forced to grab his robe and _storm out of the shower_! What makes the whole thing even more bizarre is that Georgie and his uncle don’t even live in the same house – it’s fairly significant to the story that Georgie’s house is right next door. Why wouldn’t he wait until he got home to take care of his personal hygiene? > [@Sigmagirl](#): > > Girls do not run around naked in sorority houses. > > Based on a sample of one. On a similar note, contrary to what the opening scene of _Carrie_ would have you believe, teenage girls do not frolic nude in the girls’ locker room. Teenage girls are actually quite adept at changing clothes for gym without ever being nude or even revealing much skin at all. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/34 "2009-05-05T23:01:10Z")
> [@](#): > > Girls do not run around naked in sorority houses. But they have pillow fights in their jammies, right? I told my wife that someone should make a movie with some sorority girl looking in the window at the frat house at guys in their underwear and jocks having pillow fights. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/35 "2009-05-05T23:17:26Z")
The most blatant case of gratuitous clothes in recent movies was in _X-Men United_, in the scene where Wolverine is confronting Phoenix. She’s continually disintegrating him, and he’s continually regenerating from it, but of course his shirt isn’t, so we see his well-muscled torso. But for some unfathomable reason, his pants above the knees stay completely intact. It’s not like Phoenix is deliberately avoiding the pants; Phoenix is a manifestation of Jean’s primal urges, one of which (as we saw in the movie) was lust for Wolverine. His pants should have been the _first_ thing to get disintegrated. It’s not like the movie was worried about its rating… We femophiles got to see Rebbecca Romjin naked in an earlier scene. And, OK, maybe Hugh Jackman wasn’t willing to do a nude scene, but in that case, you either get a body-double, or you let him wear a Speedo and choose your camera angles carefully so it looks like he’s not. Rumors I’ve heard of another one, which if it’s true, it’s one of the great tragedies of cinema. Supposedly, for the final scene of _Alien_, when Ripley is getting into the cold-sleep pod, Sigourney Weaver thought that she ought to be naked, to highlight the character’s vulnerability at that point. But the producers disagreed, so instead she was wearing that bra and panties that looked like they were about to fall off. People, this is not a difficult question: When Sigourney Weaver, especially Sigourney Weaver as she appeared in the early 80s, volunteers to get naked, you say YES. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/36 "2009-05-05T23:26:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > When Sigourney Weaver, especially Sigourney Weaver as she appeared in the early 80s, volunteers to get naked, you say YES. [COGIC] HALLEJUJAH! Preach it brother! [/COGIC] ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/37 "2009-05-05T23:29:53Z")
> [@Morbo](#): > > I’ll just link to my previous post for the gratuitous nudity in [Under Siege](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10745166&postcount=114). That scene _made_ the film for me. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/38 "2009-05-05T23:32:16Z")
The sex scene with the two prostitutes in the gym at the end of _Stay Hungry,_ where Thor Erikson drunkenly ravages one upon the exercise machine in various bizarre positions, while Newton aka “Wamba of the jungle” ties the other one up on the massage table and stuffs a gag in her mouth. Yes, this actually happens in the movie. ---
**Author:** ![enomaj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/59ef9b/32.png) [@enomaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enomaj)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/39 "2009-05-05T23:57:42Z")
**Wild Things** Gratuitous nudity( **Denise Richards** ) and lack thereof( **Neve Campbell** ) in the same scene. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447/40 "2009-05-05T23:58:21Z")
There’s also Kevin Bacon cock, which I think would be gratuitous under pretty much any circumstances. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gratuitous-nudity-and-non-nudity-in-movies/495447.md?page=3)