Movie Nudity Is on the Decline

Authors: John Stonestreet | Shane Morris

Without looking it up, would you think that sex and nudity in movies are more common or less common than 24 years ago? If you said “more,” you’re blessedly mistaken. In fact, according to a study by The Economist, sexually explicit content in top-grossing live action films has fallen by 40% since the year 2000. 

It’s not that Hollywood had a moral awakening. As producer and film industry analyst Stephen Follows pointed out, drugs, violence, and profanity have remained roughly constant in movies during the same period. The only type of potentially objectionable content to have dramatically fallen is explicit, sexual imagery. 

According to polling by Talker Research, reported in The New York Post, much of this rediscovery of movie modesty may be driven by generation Z. Forty-three percent of that demographic report having turned off a film because of a graphic sex scene. Compared with the next older generation, only 26% of millennials report ditching a movie when the clothes came off.  Still, more than a quarter of those polled in all ages said that sex and nudity have “no place” in movies and TV today. Nearly half believe that such scenes are either always or usually unnecessary to enjoying the movie, while a mere 10% thought nudity improved the experience. 

What explains this surprising shift from pornographic content on screen? Demographer Lyman Stone suggested the pessimistic possibility that unfettered access to online pornography has made Hollywood’s raunchy sequences lose their appeal. Perhaps, but that doesn’t explain why Gen Z audiences are more likely than millennials or Gen X’ers to turn off such movies. Something has changed their attitude in a dramatic way.  

It seems more likely that the backlash of the #MeToo movement has played a role, especially since some of the main figures exposed during that time were Hollywood producers and executives like Harvey Weinstein. Also recall that several A-list actresses like Jennifer Lawrence and Emilia Clarke revealed in the late 2010s that they had been pressured to do things in front of the camera that they were not comfortable doing. Others have spoken of having the increased confidence to say “no” to such scenes, and the rise of so-called “intimacy coordinators” on set reveals that studios are much more careful in handling nudity and sex on screen.  

The change is notable, especially to anyone who remembers how sketchy some of the top movies of the 1990s were. However, it has not been motivated by a resurgence of Christian values in entertainment. Instead, it demonstrates just how unworkable the sexual free-for-all, voyeuristic attitude of that time truly was. 

A central idea of the sexual revolution in the late twentieth century was that consent could be the new sexual morality. In fact, up until just a few years ago, the promise was that if adults choose to do something with each other, whether in a hookup, the workplace, or even the motion picture set, it was okay and harmless—perhaps even a symbol of sexual liberation! 

However, as case after case of sexual harassment, manipulation, and exploitative encounters went public under the “MeToo” hashtag, it became increasingly clear that consent, by itself, wasn’t enough. Even when a woman technically agrees to do something, it perhaps came under pressure to advance her career. Even if not, she may still come away from the encounter feeling degraded and taken advantage of. The highly sexualized depictions of women common in film and advertising during the ’90s, even if consensual, sent an objectifying message that feminists were right to identify and condemn.  

A growing number of feminist authors, like Christine Emba in Rethinking Sex and Louise Perry in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, have correctly argued that consent is insufficient for sexual ethics. Sex, they suggest, must also involve mutual understanding, respect, and a recognition of human dignity. However, both stop short of the only vision for sexual ethics that has ever preserved the dignity of women, the vision that is rooted in the Christian worldview. Only lifelong, monogamous marriage can truly uphold the value of another person.  

It’s hopeful that younger audiences are losing the taste for selling and buying sex, but without the positive understanding of what sex is for and where it belongs, cleaning up movies is a superficial solution that ignores the heart of the issue—as well as the hearts and lives broken by our naïve view of sex.