I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when The White Lotus’s Jason Isaac claimed ‘no one would dream’ of discussing a woman’s private parts.
Where has he been?
Every season, without fail, Mike White’s hit HBO series The White Lotus sparks fervent discourse for its shocking, scandalous and outrageously explicit themes.
This season alone there’s an entire incest subplot, commentary on Trump’s America and plenty of love for Aimee Lou Wood’s untampered-with teeth.
One moment, however, that left fans’ jaws hanging wide-open was when Jason’s character Tim Ratliff – dysfunctional dad and dubious businessman – went full-frontal nude in front of his mortified children.
Following in the footsteps of Theo James’ own newsworthy flash in season two, the moment sparked plenty of questions including whether it was Jason’s real penis.
Especially since his predecessor, Theo, had previously shared that he had used a prosthetic.
Discussing the speculation on CBS Mornings, the Harry Potter star seemed disgruntled.
He said: ‘A lot of people are debating it. It’s all over the internet. And it’s interesting because the best actress this year is Mikey Madison at the Oscars. And I don’t see anybody discussing her vulva, which was on [the screen] all the time… It’s interesting that there’s a double standard for men.
‘But when women are naked, Margaret Qualley as well, in The Substance, nobody would dream of talking to her about her genitalia or her nipples or any of those things. So, it’s odd that there’s a double standard.’
And while Jason is more than entitled to shut down questions around his private parts if he doesn’t feel comfortable – his understanding of women’s plight in Hollywood couldn’t be more wrong.
And it’s an especially concerning take from a veteran star who has not only been knee-deep in this culture for many decades but has had plenty of female co-stars who have likely undergone the scrutiny he claims isn’t taking place.
It feels almost futile to list all the ways in which women’s bodies have been under the spotlight over the decades – from the 90s and 00s when Pamela Anderson’s sex tapes, eating disorders and the male gaze was the order of the day.
To the modern day where, despite movements like #MeToo and attempts to make Hollywood more inclusive, social media and popular discourse remains an exhausting place for women and their bodies – whether nude or fully-clothed.
Brooke Shields has opened up about how being sexualised from as early as her childhood shaped her life in her documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.
In 2007, barely an adult, Vanessa Hudgens was the subject of depraved internet gossip and intrigue after her nudes were leaked.
In 2013, Blue Is The Warmest Colour stars Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos were interrogated by the world about the lesbian sex scenes in the movie – and at one point admitted filming it was humiliating sometimes’ as they were made to feel like ‘prostitutes’.
In 2016, the President of the United States Donald Trump publicly said that chat about forcibly kissing and groping women was simply ‘locker room talk’.
People lay in wait of Millie Bobby Brown turning 18 in 2022 to flood her social media with sexually explicit images.
Last year, Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney’s boobs somehow became a political symbol representing the ‘death of wokeness’.
The same year, Megan Fox told the Call Me Daddy podcast how being labelled a ‘sex symbol’ in her youth fuelled her body dysmorphia.
During Trump’s inauguration, Kid Rock felt empowered enough to tell a female reporter she ‘sounds sexy’ on live TV.
And we see how the audience’s perception of a woman’s body remains a central theme of plenty of TV shows and films.
For example, the Bond girl (already defined by a man) has been, up until very recently, almost exclusively associated with her sexual appeal.
There’s plenty of commentary yet on a woman’s body and how it is treated on screen – for better or for worse.
HBO’s The Idol was harshly criticised for its depiction of lead character Jocelyn, with the heavy sexualisation of her body told through the perspective of the male characters. British GQ even labelled some scenes ‘trauma porn’.
In 2019, rights group Plan International and the Geena Davis Institute, found that female leads were four times more likely to be shown naked on screen than similar male roles.
‘The bigger picture is that gender discrimination and harmful stereotypes still dominate on screen… We need to stop the sexualisation and the objectification of women and girls on screen and everywhere else,’ one of the lead researchers said at the time.
And Jason was factually wrong.
Both the best actor winner Mikey and supporting actress nominee Margaret were asked about nudity and the use of prosthetics in their movies – given the female body is at the crux of both of these films.
As put by America Ferrara in Barbie, women can put no foot right.
Simone Biles is ‘too masculine’, Millie Bobby Brown looks ‘too old’ now, Sydney Sweeney has ‘big boobs’, Sabrina Carpenter is ‘too sexual’…
The amount women’s bodies – both in a fictional and real-life context – have been dissected could fill pages and pages.
There’s no end to the discourse around the female body, what it should and shouldn’t look like. It is so interwoven into Hollywood culture, it’s difficult to imagine the landscape without it.
And unless actors like Jason fully comprehend this, they become part of the problem.
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