Also those boobs weren’t remotely giant at all.
It wasn’t gratuitous, it was gratifying. 
Yeah, even a character in the movie told her to put some clothes on.
Huh. I’m sure I remember a shot where she looked really chunky. Anyway, as far as why there was female nudity of any kind, I think it was the reverse of what usually happened. Prior to 16C, movies aimed at teenagers tended to be either deadly damn serious, or gross and exploitative. Since 16C was clearly not a drama, someone must have insisted that it couldn’t be sold as a comedy without !!!boobies!!!1.
Not that it usually matters to me since I visit a lot of sites at work, but I try to draw the line at nudity. How about a NSFW tag or something?
Your work lets you look at thunder thighs?
Topsy-Turvy about Gilbert and Sullivan writing The Mikado.
For no reason, they have a scene with Sir Arthur cavorting in a brothel with a couple of half-naked French girls. For good measure, they tossed in an utterly gratuitous F-bomb - apparently for the sole purpose of getting the film an R rating. If they hadn’t, the film would have been rated G.
I am otherwise in favor of naked women, but if they (and the pointless swear word) had not been included, the film could be shown in schools to introduce Gilbert and Sullivan to children.
I’m in cybersecurity, and I know if someone is reviewing the proxy logs 
It’s my own sense of “Nothing about nudity can be work related” feelings.
I’m launching a new business to crowdsource breast cancer screenings.
gaffa:
Instead, the school children will just have to make do with information animal, vegetable and mineral.
Oh, lordy, I’m sorry 
I guess because you can’t really see anything I forgot about the rule. Mods, please fix my link so it complies with the nekkid link rule.
Apologies, everyone.
One thing nice about being self employed; no such thing as NSFW.
Rene Russo in The Thomas Crown Affair. I understand what they were going for, but it was hardly necessary for the plot.
I realize Lifeforce is a bad movie—and I would know, because I’ve seen it twelve or thirteen times—but I have to step up and defend it here. The nudity in that film is justified by the plot.
Mathilda May’s character survives by luring men to her and sucking the life energy out of them; being nude obviously helps her do that. She also has a line about how she took her form from Steve Railsback’s mind, so perhaps he imagined her that way.
We also see the aliens in their true form in a couple of scenes, and they aren’t wearing clothes either. Maybe they’re from a planet where clothes never existed, and they don’t understand why humans have this weird hangup about nudity.
Also, if you’ll forgive a small nitpick, she isn’t naked for the whole film; there are a couple of scenes (a dream sequence, and the final scene in the cathedral) where she’s wearing something, though not for long.
I am well aware of that fact.
That was the example I thought of, too. I think I watched the DVD with the director’s commentary on and he was talking about how the scene is a boring expositional conversation between Russo and Pierce Brosnan, and Russo is topless mainly as an audience distraction.
I would include anything in the category of “former wholesome teen star does nude scene to kickstart more serious film career”. Most notably, Katie Holmes in The Gift.
[Moderating]
A reminder, all, that while NSFW links are allowed here, they must comply with the two-click rule: A user must have to click at least twice to see the non-safe content. The easiest way to do this is to put the link inside spoiler tags. I have modified one reported post to be in compliance; if any others need it, too, let me know.
That was the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread, and it’s addressed in the OP. In the context of the movie’s silliness, it’s not gratuitous (and I first saw it in a theater!).
My vote goes for that scene in “The Big Chill” where Glenn Close is crying in the shower, fully naked and everything exposed.
When MAD parodied it, one panel said, “If we showed Julie Andrews topless, the movie might bring in enough box office to break even” and someone else replies, “If it showed Dolly Parton topless, it would pay off the national debt!”
I also nominate the closeup of John Malkovich’s penis in “The Sheltering Sky.”