Hollywood sex scenes and nudity have always been exploitative, and we’re just now admitting it
Timothy P. Carney
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Sex scenes and female nudity have long been central to Hollywood’s business model. Some of us have argued that such a business model is corrupt, harming both men and women — both those making the movies and those consuming the movies. We didn’t have much luck in persuading Hollywood or the general public of our views, though.
The last five years, though, have generated a mountain of evidence confirming at least one critique of Hollywood nudity and sex scenes: They are part of a culture of sexual exploitation and abuse in which powerful men take advantage of women, scarring them.
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Harvey Weinstein, the celebrated producer, was the first Hollywood idol to fall during the #MeToo era. His movies, of course, involved objectifying women, and he ruined these women’s careers and mental health through his predation on them, which included rape.
But it was never just about Harvey Weinstein. Hollywood is a business where powerful men use the normalization of nudity and sex to exploit women. Jane Fonda has the latest story in this regard.
Legendary French director Rene Clement planned a sex scene for Fonda and used that as a way to proposition her. “Well, he wanted to go to bed with me because he said that the character had to have an orgasm in the movie, and he needed to see what my orgasms were like….”
There are a thousand stories like this from women in Hollywood.
Actress Emilia Clarke didn’t want to be nude in the television show Game of Thrones, but she was coerced into it.
Weinstein reportedly threatened to shut down production of a movie Salma Hayek had worked on for years if she wouldn’t do full frontal nudity in lesbian sex scenes.
Hayek wrote, “it was clear to me he would never let me finish this movie without him having his fantasy one way or another. There was no room for negotiation.”
“I had to say yes. By now so many years of my life had gone into this film. We were about five weeks into shooting, and I had convinced so many talented people to participate. How could I let their magnificent work go to waste?”
Here’s a whole Washington Post story about how many of the nude scenes you might see involved coercion and exploitation of young women by powerful men, headlined “How actresses who are just starting out get pressured into ‘creepy’ nude scenes.”
In one telling story from 2020, actress Kate Beckinsale explained that Weinstein yelled at her for not flaunting her body enough in public.
As Beckinsale tells it, right after the premier of a movie, “he started screaming ‘you stupid f***ing C***, you C*** you ruined my premiere.’ I had no idea what he was talking about and started to shake. He said, ‘If I am throwing a red carpet you get in a tight dress, you shake your a** you shake your t**s you do not go down it looking like a f***ing lesbian you stupid f***ing c***.”
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When Beckinsale tried to explain why she didn’t want to flaunt her body on that particular night, she says Weinstein shot back, “I don’t care it’s my f***ing premiere and if I want p***y on the red carpet, that’s what I get.”
So if you happily pay to watch movies with sex scenes and full-frontal nudity, you are happily supporting the economy of sexual exploitation.