Ask ArcRoyale #3
Time for another Q/A session with your favorite (heh) maniac, to take arguments and tear them apart to show how ridiculous they are.
Today's question has been in my inbox for a while, and goes something like this: "How do you reconcile your desire for women to be used for funny nude situations with the fact that women tend to be sexually abused?"
Well, the simple fact is that there's all the influence in the world telling the people to sexually abuse the women. I'm of course talking about a media that portrays the female body as "inherently sexual" by using it for sexual purposes. The idea behind this sexualization thing is very much a "I'll know it when I see it" sort of issue, and you can very much tell when something has been added for little purpose other than sex and when it's being used organically.
The truth is that the nude body can be quite beautiful, and women have frequently been associated with beauty (though men can fulfill that domain too, if my Sunday posts are anything to go by). The line between appreciation and perversion is rather thin, but I suppose the two best factors to determine something like that are "are we intruding on her private time without her permission" and "is she trying to flaunt her body". The scene with Tuppence Middleton in Jupiter Ascending is a good example of the "flaunt the body" approach; there's no reason for the shot to be there other than for sexual purposes.
A couple of examples of good scenes, at least I feel, include Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds' scene in The Proposal which is mainly played for awkward humor and Sarah Connor's scene in Terminator Genysis which mostly uses nudity to show how she opens up to Reese. Scenes like those either use nudity for humor's sake in a very easy way to tell, or service the plot without exploiting the female in question. That's what I'm talking about with the whole "I'll know it when I see it" sort of thing.
One more thing: Female sexual abuse is most certainly not funny. But for some reason, Hollywood has made it seem that male sexual abuse is funny. Those countless Prison Rape jokes of men raping men, the claims that men who were raped by women "scored", and of course all the disrobings for humor's sake... Even if we do our best not to reduce women's power, we still go out of our way to humiliate men. Why? Because "they can handle it?" Who's to say they can? And isn't it kinda backhanded to say all women are not strong enough to be able to defend themselves?
So yeah, the bottom line is that if there's sexual abuse on part of the camera, I'll know about it. It should be obvious to tell. That shouldn't diminish the girls' ability to be funny and naked at the same time.