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And it is officially time to call it out.
You saw it even if you didn’t want to.
Kanye West’s wife, Bianca Censori, made quite a statement by wearing a completely sheer dress to the Grammys earlier this month. She stepped onto the carpet covered by a black-fur coat but soon dropped it to expose her near-nude fashion statement. Yet, it reveals much more than just her uncensored nudity. The entertainment business continues to prioritize female objectification over protection but disguises it behind the mirage of “sexual liberation” and “female empowerment.”
Is liberation found on a red carpet, fully nude, under the watchful care of hungry eyes and hundreds of cameras clawing at the best angle to snap a quick pic? Is it empowering to have that image blasted across the internet and bombarding social media for days? That certainly doesn’t sound like female empowerment to me. That is using the sensation of sexualization as a commodity– and the cost only continues to burden women.
It’s hard not to notice the ways the entertainment business continues to objectify women– whether that be on red carpets, on the silver screen, or stage. As a young woman who hopes to make her way onto the screen herself as a television reporter, I am frankly disgusted by how the sexual liberation movement has normalized promiscuity and near-nudity, especially in Hollywood. Yet I am even more shocked that it has been labeled as somehow freeing for women when, in fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Emilia Clarke, the 38-year-old British actress who stars in HBO’s Game of Thrones, said she was in tears after filming “terrifying” nude scenes that she was initially unaware would even be included. Now more experienced than her 23-year-old self at the beginning of filming, she says she’s become “a lot more savvy” with what she is and is not comfortable filming. But the existence of that pressure shows exactly how over-sexualized the entertainment industry has become, and vulnerable young women are its prey.
The testimonies of Jennifer Lawrence, Keira Knightly, and Reese Witherspoon echo Clarke’s story. When filming her “first real sex scene” in Passengers, Lawrence says she got drunk. In 2019, Knightly announced she would no longer be filming sex scenes directed by men due to how uncomfortable she felt. When she was early on in her career as a 19-year-old, Witherspoon says a sex scene was not explicitly written in her script and that she “didn’t have control” over the scene. Story after story from actresses reveals how this excessive objectification leaves a bitter aftertaste. And yet the pressures of a culture that feeds off over-sexualized media leave women in Hollywood feeling like they have no choice but to give in to keep their careers afloat. Similarly, for Censori, the nude dress may have been another way to stir up publicity to ensure her or Kanye’s names stay in the headlines.
But this over-sexualization doesn’t just impact women in Hollywood– it also has consequences for all of us who are watching it unfold. The presence of sexualized images online, including of celebrities, contributes to body dissatisfaction among adolescent girls. Another study revealed that men’s greater consumption of TV media that objectified women correlated to behaviors that supported violence against women, such as rape myth acceptance. It’s no secret that what we consume has a real impact on our thoughts and behaviors; these days, it feels like we sometimes have no control over it.
The photographers at the Grammy’s didn’t consent to seeing Censori’s nude body. Neither did anyone else on the red carpet or at home who couldn’t escape the image as it spread across every social media platform. When propagators of promiscuity seem to be lurking at every corner, how do we escape this cycle of pervasive over-sexualization in Hollywood?
Well, buying into the sexual liberation movement that feeds into this cycle is certainly not the answer. Being comfortable in your body shouldn’t mean stripping down to near-nothing, and it doesn’t mean showing up on a red carpet for everyone else to see you, either. Our culture perpetuates these distasteful behaviors by sensationalizing and praising stunts like Censori’s. The naked truth? It’s time we stop lying to ourselves that nudity, provocative dress, and excessive sexualization in media are female empowerment when evidence continues to point to its danger. Freedom for women shouldn’t come at the cost of their dignity.
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Abbey Ferguson is a student at Baylor University and a Student Media Fellow with the Network of enlightened Women. Contact Abby at abbeyyferguson@gmail.com
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