It's 2015. Why Is Male Nudity Still Funny?

"There's a big problem in Hollywood today," Kevin Bacon says at the start of a recently released video. "In so many films and TV shows we see gratuitous female nudity, and that's not okay."

While raising this excellent point (albeit one feminists have made before) seems like a promising start, it quickly becomes clear that this is not an earnest message, but a satirical PSA.

"It's not fair to actresses and it's not fair to actors," Bacon continues, "because we want to be naked, too. Gentlemen, it's time to free the bacon."

This video thus joins a legacy of efforts to capitalize on the pervasive double standard in the entertainment industry in which men's naked bodies are funny while naked women are sexual objects to be exploited. While I, too, believe that more men need to take their clothes off in front of the camera — thank you, Magic Mike XXL — I feel that this video effectively undermined this point by allowing Bacon to remain clothed and by framing the issue with the very same humor that stops men from displaying their bodies in the first place.

First, I was shocked that Bacon wasn’t nude in the video himself.  He spends time complaining about a sexual double standard in Hollywood, but fails to use his power in the industry and opportunity of the video to actually back up his rhetoric with action. Progress is created not just through critique, but also new representations and images. Imagine how powerful Bacon's message would have been if he had shed all of his clothes to fight for the equal sexual representation her purports to support?

Additionally, the fact that the video was satirical undermined what is actually a salient, important point. To be sure, there’s certainly a smart way to poke fun at this double standard in Hollywood. Namely, the humor must be subversive.For example, this College Humor video effectively made this topic funny by approaching it through the female gaze. It empowered the very people this trope seeks to disempower.

But there was nothing subversive about Bacon's attempt. Men's nudity is already marked as funny territory and Bacon only reiterated this by failing to appear nude and censoring a dildo incorporated into the video. The more we associate men’s bodies with comedy, the more men are not going to feel comfortable showing their bodies, which will only solidify the very problem being addressed.

Thus, there's another insulting layer evident in this video: It ultimately pokes fun at people who find men’s naked bodies attractive, as though this attraction is so disgusting as to be funny. While the College Humor video — and other recent media, like Magic Mike XXL, for example — frame male nudity in terms of the female gaze in a way that is different and paradigm-shifting, Bacon's video frames it in terms of embarrassment: women's attraction to men is the punch-line for a joke.

This video also seems like a lost opportunity to delve into why men struggle with their nude bodies — an issue that definitely extends outside of Hollywood, and which is rooted in the toxic masculinity at the heart of our patriarchal society. Toxic masculinity promotes homophobia, which makes heterosexual men feel uncomfortable viewing naked men in the media. It reproduces male entitlement and female objectification. It encourages men to consume women's bodies at all times and makes them feel uncomfortable when this cultural norm is turned on its head.

Ultimately, I support the message that men’s nudity must be incorporated into the media landscape, but I don’t think that #freethebacon is the way. Rather than make satirical campaigns while fully clothed, men in the media could take a note from films like Magic Mike and do far more good by replicating this respect for the female gaze rather than making fun of it.