Nudity and sexuality have been portrayed in art in many ways throughout history, varying across cultures and mediums. More recently, though, female nudity in film, advertising and music has been overwhelmingly used as a tool to sell a product rather than provide substance to it, and in turn, the term “female objectification” was born.

This trend is present in the media and commonly seen in the last decades where bodies— especially women’s—are used as an object to satisfy sexual desires. For some time, women’s rights movements have spoken against this, causing a wave of change in culture so that over-sexualization is not as common as it was.

However, in the film industry, the female body is still often used for no other reason than to attract viewers through their sexual fantasies and retain the viewer’s attention without putting real effort in. This has happened in many movies, such as the unnecessary nudity and child-like naivety of Leeloo in “The Fifth Element,” or the famous scene in “Transformers” where Mikaela Banes, played by Megan Fox, leans on a car hood allowing the camera to focus on her body.

Unfortunately, the use of the female body in the media and the strong reaction against it has caused many people to start looking at sexuality and over-sexualization as the same thing. However, there is one crucial difference between the two: a good portrayal of sexuality serves a purpose for the story and its themes, whereas over-sexualization serves purely as eye-candy.

This misconception is present in the sometimes unwarranted backlash some movies have received for having too much female nudity, such as “American Psycho,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Black Swan.” However, all three movies are examples of female sexuality used correctly—as a tool for storytelling, rather than sexual satisfaction.

Even before the novel was first published, “American Psycho” received plenty of criticism for celebrating misogyny and appealing to a dark male fantasy in the guise of satire. Since the movie adaptation was directed by a female director and it steered clear from the most gruesome scenes of the book, the movie managed to become a classic, even by feminist standards.

But how can a movie with so much explicit violence against women ever be anything but misogynistic? Simple, the movie portrays misogyny (among various other issues) but does not endorse it.

People are often quick to criticize things on what can be seen at first sight, but while the book and the movie certainly include a lot of sexual and physical abuse toward women, the story is meant to emphasize various societal flaws, among which misogyny and greed are the most obvious in the film. The graphic violence and sex scenes in the film serve as a way for the director to show these horrors to the audience unapologetically, and as it would be assumed from a female director, it is not meant to normalize the objectification of the female body.

Similarly, Stanley Kubrick’s last movie “Eyes Wide Shut” faced some criticism for being an underwhelming, boring movie that merely depicted the hidden sexual fantasies of the director as a “Freudian” odyssey. However, this movie also has a purpose behind the nudity throughout the film, even though there’s an obscure orgy for the majority of the film’s duration.

“Eyes Wide Shut” shows a promiscuous and almost unbelievably naive Bill Harford in a loveless marriage where lust and jealousy spark a brutally honest argument between him and his wife, Alice Harford, during which she tells him she is just as lustful and promiscuous as he is.

This shocks Bill and causes him to get into a mysteriously elaborate cult-like orgy, where he quickly learns he is in the wrong place. As a sex worker helps him escape, he is warned by organizers of the “party” to forget everything he saw. He returns home willfully ignorant to the perverse actions by the most powerful men in society, just as he was ignorant about his wife’s sexual desires.

In this case, Kubrick uses sexual themes to mirror a struggling marriage with deeper societal problems. Similarly to “American Psycho,” the sex scenes and the nudity in this film, then, serve a deeper purpose for the message of the movie beyond promoting female objectification.

Finally, there’s “Black Swan,” a movie where Natalie Portman stars as a ballerina who is sexually harassed by her ballet director. It’s clear why some might think this movie is misogynistic, but this movie uses female sexuality as a major theme to move the story forward.

In contrast to “American Psycho” and “Eyes Wide Shut,” the sexual themes in this movie are not used to make a statement about society or even the ballet industry’s flaws. Instead, director Darren Aronofsky takes a more anthropological approach to Nina’s story, with an easily exploitable, underdeveloped sexuality and an obsession with perfection as a ticking time bomb.

The story of “Black Swan” revolves around Nina, a ballerina in her mid-20s who lives with her overprotective mother, talks with a shy and high-pitched voice and surrounds herself with stuffed animals and butterfly decorations.

However, Nina is soon forced to change this infantile lifestyle when Thomas Leroy, a famous ballet director (also a sexual predator), chooses her to portray both the White and Black Swan in his version of “Swan Lake.”

According to Thomas, Nina is perfect for the White Swan’s purity and innocence. However, he is not pleased with her performance of the Black Swan. Instead, he favors Lily, a carefree and promiscuous ballerina who becomes Nina’s rival for the rest of the film.

In order to play the evil and lustful Black Swan, Thomas tells Nina to let go and embrace the dark side of the Force. However, instead of convincing her to kill younglings like Anakin, he takes advantage of her naivety.

At first, Nina is reluctant, but her obsession with perfection and her desire to please Thomas prompts her to do as he says. This eventually leads Nina to a forced and rather late evolution of her sexuality, which ends with a lesbian sex scene to mirror the completion of her metamorphosis into the Black Swan.

While some viewers might be disturbed by the shocking imagery in “Black Swan” and the other movies, or simply think it is demeaning, these three movies serve as examples of how nudity and sexuality in a film can be used right, by supporting a major theme or message in the story, instead of simply objectifying women.

For example, in the cult-classic “The Fifth Element,” Leelo is also an attractive and naive woman who, through her ignorance, is bound to an emotionally distant male lead. This makes her not only dependent on him, but also makes her comfortable with being either completely naked or barely dressed in public. This eventually turns into a relationship that, in reality, reflects female objectification.

This is precisely what sets a movie like “Black Swan” apart from one like “The Fifth Element.” In the former, the protagonist’s submissive sexuality is crucial to the plot, whereas the latter is simply an unnecessary sexual fantasy.

Ultimately, the difference between the good use of sexuality in film and over-sexualization is the purpose of the inclusion of nudity. While over-sexualization is included for lazy and appealing distractions, sexuality can be used in a narrative to support a message, like in “American Psycho” or “Eyes Wide Shut,” or it can support a narrative theme like in “Black Swan.”

Gustavo Gutierrez can be reached at guti6327@stthomas.edu.