‘When is a woman going to get naked at the Oscars?’ They do it every year

A naked man at the Oscars! It was John Cena, the professional wrestler and actor known for his unabashed action films. And not everyone was happy. In the comments of certain conservative profiles, both on Twitter and Instagram, two questions were asked again and again, almost always by men. The first: what would happen if a woman did this!? And the second: when is a woman going to do this!? As if sensing those questions were going to be asked before they were even typed, journalist Rhonda Garelick answered them in an article in The New York Times shortly after Cena’s appearance. “It’s the norm to see female bodies in various states of revealing dress on the red carpet, and in movies as well,” she explained.

We have seen women walking around practically naked on dozens of red carpets: be it in a tightly hugging gown that covers very little of their bodies or in a naked dress that exposes their breasts and bottoms. It’s true, these looks are usually seen on red carpets for less serious events than the Oscars, such as the Grammy Music Awards or the Golden Globes. Kendall Jenner, Olivia Wilde, Emily Ratajkowski, Florence Pugh, Beyoncé, Zoë Kravitz, Megan Fox, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian are examples, only from recent years, of women who have appeared just as naked or more so than John Cena did at the Oscars on Sunday.

And it’s been happening for decades: in the 1970s, Cher was already wearing Bob Mackie dresses that left very little to the imagination. Some of the most memorable outfits in red carpet history (Jennifer Lopez’s green Versace dress at the 2000 Grammys or Maja Hanson’s mesh dress that Rose McGowan wore to the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards) are precisely so because of how revealing they were.

If John Cena’s streaking act was funny, it was because a man was doing what a woman usually does. The joke was in the role reversal. At Sunday’s Oscars, many women were showing off inches and inches of skin, but no one was laughing. Next to a fully clothed Chris Hemsworth, there was Elsa Pataky with a plunging neckline. Like Camila Alves next to Matthew McConaughey. Or Becky G, who wore a transparent corset and a skirt with a high split. Or Laverne Cox’s low-cut bustier.

Of course, plunging necklines and daring outfits are no longer exclusively for women. Men are also beginning to show their legs, arms and chest on the red carpet. But it is still ridiculously one-sided: the norm is for men to wear suits and for women to wear dresses that are not only more revealing, but are almost always much more uncomfortable. Another good comedy number would have been for John Cena to wear something similar to the Giambattista Valli gown that Ariana Grande wore last night, a voluminous pink dress that probably weighed more than her, which she evidently had a hard time walking in. That would be the joke, the uncomfortable joke: why would a man wear a suit that barely allows him to walk or sit down?

In 2013, just 11 years ago, one of the most embarrassing Oscar moments in living memory took place, one that didn’t just age badly, but was clinically stillborn. And it also had to do with nudity, specifically women’s nudity. Seth MacFarlane, creator of irreverent series such as Family Guy, opened the awards ceremony with a musical number called We Saw Your Boobs. In the song, he recounted all the instances that he had seen actresses — many of whom were sitting in the theater that night — show their breasts in a movie.

“Meryl Streep, we saw your boobs in Silkwood / Naomi Watts’ in Mulholland Drive / Angelina Jolie, we saw your boobs in Gia,” he sings, continuing: “Anne Hathaway, we saw your boobs in Brokeback Mountain / Halle Berry, we saw them in Monster’s Ball / Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut.” MacFarlane went on to list other stars such as Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron and Helen Hunt.

But in many of these cases, the scene in the film depicted rape. Perhaps the worst line was: “And Scarlett Johansson, we saw them on our phones” — a reference to private images of the actress that had been leaked in 2011. The song probably wouldn’t have been funny even if it had been, for the sake of comparison, about actors who have shown their penises. It’s also likely that it would have lasted about eight or 10 seconds.

John Cena’s nudity, with a body sculpted by years of professional wrestling and playing the role of hero in video store action movies, was aesthetic, beautiful, it could not make anyone uncomfortable. In that sense it was also sending a message, intended or not, about who can and cannot show skin on a red carpet: the normative, perfect bodies, like those of all the women named in the second paragraph of this article.

In the case of men (again, there’s only a few), the same is true: it’s the likes of Manu Rios, Harry Styles, Jon Kortajarena and Timothée Chalamet who have appeared in more risqué outfits on red carpets or stages. Lizzo, a musical star who champions the XL size, has been a pioneer in this regard by wearing naked dresses or plunging gowns on the red carpets — making it clear that although she may not have the body of a model, she does not have to cover it up.

Cena’s act was a nod to Robert Opel, who streaked across the Oscar’s stage 50 years ago. The incident was not planned (although not everyone thinks so) and it did not comply with Hollywood’s beauty standards. While actor David Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor to present the Oscar for Best Picture, Opel walked across the stage naked, holding up a peace symbol.

At that moment, there was nervous laughter in the audience, but when Cena popped out naked, without any message and a body straight out of a magazine, the audience were in on the joke. At one point during his exchange with host Jimmy Kimmel, Cena says: “The male body is not a joke!” But the Oscars don’t seem to think the same way. Although Kate Winslet, Charlize Theron and Halle Berry have won the Oscar for Best Actress for roles in which they showed their naked body. No actor has ever won the award for a role that included frontal nudity (Benedict Cumberbatch for The Power of the Dog in 2022, and Viggo Mortensen for Eastern Promises in 2007 are among the few who have been at least nominated for a role in which they showed their penis). Other universally applauded roles such as Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant or The Piano, Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights, Michael Fassbender in Shame or Simon Rex in Red Rocket, all of them with full nudity, were overlooked. Maybe when John Cena made it clear that the male body is not a joke, he was speaking for the Academy.

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