When a man texts a pic of his junk in a lame effort to turn me on, I delete it. But if I catch a glimpse of full-frontal nudity on cable TV or in a film, it feels delightfully naughty.
That’s why I’m intrigued that so many popular TV shows like "Insecure," "And Just Like That," "Euphoria," "Scenes from a Marriage," "Power" and "Pam & Tommy" are flashing the male goods at us.
"Take Me Out," a Broadway play starring "Grey’s Anatomy" alum Jesse Williams as a gay baseball player that debuted earlier this month, rewards the audience with full frontal.
The reason for the uptick in penis sightings is simple: There are more women, gay men and nonbinary folks in writers’ and directors’ seats. Jane Campion directed Benedict Cumberbatch’s bare-the-jewels scene in the Academy Award-winning "Power of the Dog." Screenwriter Kim Morgan included a buff moment in "Nightmare Alley" for Bradley Cooper. With greater diversity in filmmaking and at networks like HBO — where a lot of this exposure is taking place — cameras are shifting to the female gaze.
It’s summed up in the first episode of HBO Max’s phallus-filled comedy "Minx," directed by Rachel Greenberg and now streaming. The editor of a fictional 1970s-era nudie magazine played by Ophelia Lovibond says, “A magazine has got to make you feel something, and seeing a naked guy does that to a woman.”
“Whether they are curious or turned on or just wanting to laugh at them,“ she continues, “it’s the ability to look that makes a woman feel powerful.”
That’s a change, as women’s private parts have been available for ogling since medieval times. And we know that objectifying women’s bodies keeps power in the hands of men, but Sarah Iepson, chair of Community College of Philadelphia’s art and design department, takes it a step further, arguing that penises popping up on screen make men more vulnerable.
“Men are being observed in a way they weren’t before, and that changes the dynamics,” Iepson said. Gender equality has a better chance of entering our homes and work places, she says. “It will be interesting to see how and if society will be impacted if this trend continues.”
Covered by the Church
Societies have treated genitalia as taboo for centuries. However, it was commonly seen in art until Vatican leaders got a bug in their robes in 1541 and asked artists to paint clothing over the naked figures in Michelangelo’s "Last Judgment" at the Sistine Chapel. More than a decade later, Pope Paul III decreed in the Council of Trent that all naked images in church paintings were to be covered because nudity was not holy. It was a prude move, Iepson said, but there was “equality in this iteration of the church’s nudity clause because both sexes were ordered to be covered up.”
Rich men found a way to get around the rule. Patrons of the some of the most important Renaissance artists requested images of goddesses, specifically Venus because, of course, the goddess of love should be naked. Venus paintings were the nudies of their day. And on many of these canvasses, like Titan’s Venus and Adonis, the women were unclothed while the men powerfully towered over them fully dressed.
“This is when the shifting of agency started,” Iepson said. “The observer was a man and the object of his gaze was female. The representation of the nude female becomes standardized and there is no standard representation of nude males.”
Male nudity in art took another hit from the church in the 1850s when Pope Pius IX ordered all the penises lobbed off Vatican statues. In some cases, entire statues were destroyed. Penises weren’t to be gazed upon because they stirred desire, and, of course, there was no place for that in the Church.
Nudity on screen
Movies and television brought its own set of puritan rules, said Filippo Trentin, a professor of film and media studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Profanity, vulgarity, homosexuality and all nudity — even the outlines of bodies — were all forbidden by the Motion Picture Production Code enforced by the Motion Picture Association of America. The code went into effect in 1934 and was challenged by Hollywood many times for 30-plus years until Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film "Blow-Up," filled with sex scenes and nudity despite the MPAA’s disapproval.
“The movie broke all of the rules, but it was the female’s body that was sexualized in the movie, not the male body,” Trentin said. “This ushered in the era of nudity in movies as we know it today.”
Over the last half-century, female nudity became so ubiquitous, who even notices it? The last time the world was surprised by a woman’s nude body in a movie was Sharon Stone’s crotch reveal in 1992′s "Basic Instinct." We are so used to seeing women’s bodies that we are no longer only seeing long-held versions of what the idealized body was. Plus-size-butts, tiny breasts, hairless and hairy mons pubis are standard visual fair.
Penises, on the other hand, became synonymous with pornography. Since the 1971 flick "A Clockwork Orange," there have been quick appearances in mainstream movies, accompanied by a lot of hand-wringing and an R-rating, such as the unforgettable transgender reveal in 1992′s "The Crying Game" and Bruce Willis’ skinny dip in 1994′s "The Color of Night." Mark Wahlberg wore a prosthetic penis in "Boogie Nights" back in 1997.
Flashes of equality
Medieval dragons, drunkenness, incest, and rape made penises a common sight in HBO’s "Game of Thrones." Yet, in episode eight of "The Watchmen," the camera lingers on a powerful character who stood helpless and naked. Lawrence (Jay Ellis) is arguably one of the most emotional men on "Insecure," so the nudity — and admittedly graphic sex scenes — is revealing. He’s just a guy trying to make sense of his messy love life without cracking. Meanwhile, the drug-addicted teenagers who appear in "Euphoria," schlongs wagging, are not powerful at all. But their vulnerabilities are driven home by nudity. (There’s something more to be said about adults playing the roles of sexualized teenagers, but that’s another column.)
These images chip away at patriarchy, but may be short lived. As in HBO’s "Minx," the male nudes are a distraction. In a particularly funny scene, the magazine’s staff inspects penises of different, colors and shapes for the centerfold. Although Joyce, the magazine’s editor and feminist protagonist can look, she’s reminded that men control the magazine’s advertising dollars, distribution and promotion.
By producing more work with male full-frontal, women will have stronger influence over how the world sees men. Whether or not that truly changes the power dynamics in the bedroom and the boardroom, we will have to wait and see.
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