Definitely men bad gross, for sure for sure.

Buuuuut... I think the real villains are the other men, not the ones getting angry and entitled, but the network execs and ad companies, most of whom are men, that tease here and there, and promote scantily clad photos on billboards or magazines, or write articles or press releases to tempt people.

Sex sells, they say, but sex only sells if you have a market of sex-starved marks who have enough pressure built up over the years of campaigns that when they hear Actress A that's been all over the place nearly slips a nip in this one, they're like "well shit, I've gotta see that"

I don't blame the actresses. Their industry has told them they only get to do their art if it attracts an audience of Men, the only market worth pursuing somehow even in the far flung future of 2026, so the women that want to be allowed to act have to give the men at the ad companies and film studios what they want. And what they want is a career timeline from demure to saucy to scandalous to breasts to nude so each film release can play on pushing the envelope just slightly further than the last one, capitalizing on the demand built up by the previous release, and they can ride that rollercoaster for as long as possible before having to pick another girl.

And the sexually frustrated target men are victims of a different kind. Not of the women, as the incels would have you believe, but of the other men. Because by and large, the women don't want to be in sex scenes, they don't want to flash tatas, or have yet another shower scene for no damn reason. They want to tell stories that are meaningful and emotional and resonant. But so often they're tools for Powerful Men to steal money from Powerless Men, used up and cast aside. And then the frustrated jackasses get mad at the women for it. It's a win-win...

And to be clear, I'm not saying women should be ashamed of their bodies and stay covered up at all times. Quite the opposite! The "pressure" comes from repression. We can walk through a store full of magazines with half-naked people on them, and it would be easy to say "look how liberated this all is, there's skin everywhere", but it's not liberation, it's sexualization. Because it isn't casual skin, it's not relaxed, it's created specifically to titilate, to produce demand, to build pressure.

I have no data on this, but I presume actresses aren't being accosted by naturalists/nudists. They're probably not getting hate mail by people embedded within a kink community. The people with, in my biased view, outlets and balance, with respect for sex and bodies, aren't as susceptible to the machine.

Well, I should have gone to bed an hour ago, because apparently I'm in a mood. 😅