Celebrity nudity has gone too far
Am I the only one bored of nipples? From red carpets to album covers, baring it all seems to be all the rage. Over the years hems have gotten shorter, fabrics sheerer and underwear swapped for stick-on patches. At this point, what would really shock on a red carpet is long sleeves and a covered ankle.
Sex sells – a story as old as time. So perhaps it's unsurprising how much nudity and sexuality is on display from movie stars and pop singers. But the response to what kind of nakedness is appropriate is interesting.
Just a matter of years ago, female sexual nudity was not just condemned by priests and prudes but by feminist preachers, too. Magazines may have stopped publishing Page 3 girls, but now they're covered in semi-nude celebrities, while social media is awash with them.
Last week, Sabrina Carpenter covered Rolling Stone naked, long hair covering her modesty, in tandem with a controversial cover for her forthcoming album Man's Best Friend which appears to show her on all fours at a man's feet, like a dog, with his hand pulling her hair.
Meanwhile Liz Hurley celebrated her 60th birthday by posting pictures 'in her birthday suit' – as Gwyneth Paltrow did when turning 50. Kanye West's wife, Australian fashion designer Bianca Censori, attended the 2025 Grammys wearing a completely see-through mini dress without any underwear at all.
This year the Cannes Film Festival went as far as to ban the 'naked dress' from the red carpet for 'decency reasons', in reaction to the number of celebrities attending the festival in little more than a g-string and some taffeta, with their breasts fully exposed. Women such as Rose MacGowan have called this kind of dressing an act of 'empowerment', while Carpenter supporters have praised her for 'subverting the male gaze' by reflecting it so brazenly. But are these powerful feminist statements or have we lost all sense of public decency?
What's more, when it comes to celebrity nudity, the double standards are glaring. Who doesn't remember the picture of Kim Kardashian's bottom balancing a glass of champagne for a Paper Magazine cover that reportedly 'broke the internet'? What was so shocking about that episode wasn't that we were gazing at yet another picture of one of the Kardashians' backsides, but the fact that Labour MP and queen of the feminist morality police, Harriet Harman, praised it on breakfast television. In an interview with Good Morning Britain, Harman said the Kardashian women possess 'a kind of bravery and a pioneering… spirit to them'.
But what about all those years of arguing that sexualised women should be banned from the shelves of corner shops and that the pornification of women was a disgrace worthy of legal action? In her argument, Harman seemed to suggest that Page 3 girls, in their working-class ignorance, had no idea what they were doing or why they were doing it. But the Kardashians, one of the world's richest celebrity families, 'are in control of their own agenda'.
The middle-class war on working-class women's bodies was yet again evidenced in 2018, when 'walk-on girls' Charlotte Wood and Daniella Allfree were axed by darts bosses after pressure to end the 'sexist' practice of glamorous women at events. In a now infamous episode of This Morning, feminist writer Sally Howard told Allfree and Wood that they were 'demeaning' to women, and should be prevented from glamour modelling for the feminist cause. Perhaps the flak she got for her condescending nonsense hurt enough to make her think twice, but a cursory google shows that Howard has yet to comment on any of the other public appearances of sexualised women. The message is clear: some boobs are 'demeaning', and some are 'empowering'.
These days, the darts girls look demure in comparison to what goes on. Tight dresses and high heels were about as racy as they got – in comparison to female celebrities today who seem to be allergic to bras and knickers. The fashion world might have been unsettled when organisers at the Cannes film festival banned the 'naked' dress, but perhaps punters were simply sick of seeing Bella Hadid's nipples? A celebration of female sexuality is one thing – Marilyn Monroe was a beautiful woman who knew how to dress to impress. But there is something a little bleak about seeing image after image of half-starved models with their nether regions on show. Despite it all screaming sex, none of it seems very sexy.
Perhaps the best example of this de-sexing of nudity is Censori. Her nude stunts – seemingly controlled by an increasingly unhinged West – aren't shocking because she is in her birthday suit, but because she looks so pained while doing it. There is no fun or celebration to this sexualisation. In fact, some have raised suspicions about how consensual it all is. But while Censori might be the extreme end of the nudity wars, she represents the hollowing out of sex in the public eye. All these barely-there women seem bored with their own nudity.
The problem with this 'nudity as empowerment' narrative is that it gets murky very quickly. The other week, Sydney Sweeney went viral for her Dr Squatch soap, which, the male grooming brand claimed, contained droplets of Sweeney's actual used bathwater. The savvy campaign capitalised, with winking irony, their Sweeney ad from the previous year, which saw the star lying in a foaming bath tub, telling 'dirty little boys' to clean up.
The comments section was full of, among other things, men requesting Sweeney's bathwater, while many women criticised her for encouraging male objectification. The week the new ad dropped, Sweeney spoke to the Sunday Times about sometimes struggling to be taken seriously in the boardroom and behind-the-scenes of her production company – particularly by other women. 'A woman's body is beyond empowering and beautiful and sexy and all the things,' she said. 'And I think that one day I will be able to have control of the narrative of my body. I'll take the power.' Is it really so anti-feminist to suggest she would have more luck being taken seriously in the boardroom if she didn't sell her used bathwater to horny young men?
I've never been a fan of telling women to cover up. While I might dislike most of her politics, I rallied to Angela Rayner's defence when the Right went into meltdown over her legs being on show during Prime Minister's Questions. Telling women what to wear is never a good idea – from conservatives with their knickers in a twist to finger-wagging feminists. But we should ask ourselves, are we having a good time with all this nudity? Sabrina Carpenter's album cover might be a two-fingered salute to decorum, but is it radical if we had already lost it years ago? If there are no more nipples left to free, perhaps it might be more shocking to start tucking them away.
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