Female Nudity Research Articles

“Nomi Malone is what Las Vegas is all about!”: Phallic women in Showgirls

Showgirls (1995) was a high-budget, high-concept Hollywood movie that immediately bombed at the box office. Despised by audiences and critics, Showgirls later found an appreciative audience through late-night cult screenings in cinemas, drag shows, and in academic discourse on trash cinema. Considered lowbrow and sleazy due to its abundance of female nudity, Showgirls is reconsidered in this article. With its hyper-stylised format, considered visual construction, and campy performances, Showgirls, perhaps inadvertently, allows space for a queer female subjectivity through main character Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkeley); a complicated woman who embodies an intersection of gendered, sexual and classist oppressions that are archetypal of the fallen woman melodrama of classical Hollywood. 
 By queering Nomi’s journey through the heteropatriarchy that is the Las Vegas showgirl scene, this article identifies themes of narcissism and doubling that enable Nomi to construct her phallic public performance of female sexuality when she is on the stage, in order to protect a tender, loving, yet naïve inner self that emerges with close interactions with her best (girl) friend Molly (Gina Ravera). Nomi’s sexualised stage-self -reflected and thrown back at her through omnipresent mirrors - reveals the sacrifices she must make to reach for her dreams but also to protect her fragile, yet expansive capacity for loving other women. Showgirls unveils the complex struggle for empowerment that women face in patriarchal societies yet, unsurprisingly, perhaps this narrative journey was instrumental in the film’s box office failure and categorisation into trash cinema.

Exploring the private universe of Henri Matisse in The Red Studio

The exhibition Matisse: The Red Studio allowed for an in-depth study of The Red Studio (1911) and six of the works featured in the painting by Henri Matisse (1869–1954) of his studio in Issy-les-Moulineaux near Paris. The grouping includes three paintings from the collection of the Statens Museum for Kunst (Le Luxe II, 1907, Nude with White Scarf, c. 1909, and Bathers, c. 1909), one painting from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Young Sailor II, 1906), a painting from a private collection (Cyclamen, c. 1911), and a glazed and hand-painted earthenware plate from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (Untitled (Female Nude), 1907). The six paintings were investigated using technical (X-radiography, ultraviolet-induced fluorescence, infrared reflectography) and chemical imaging (MA-XRF) and, in some cases, spectroscopic techniques (FORS, SEM–EDS, Raman, SERS, and μ-FTIR), to better elucidate Matisse’s materials and working techniques for this selection of paintings; the plate was also analyzed using MA-XRF. New findings revealed the full extent to which Matisse had completed The Red Studio before applying its hallmark color, referred to as Venetian red in his correspondence, over the original palette of blue, pink, and ochre that dominated the composition. Particular attention was given to identifying the wide range of pigment choices made by Matisse in the execution of the works from 1906 and 1911 that are depicted in The Red Studio. These pigments include lead white, zinc white, bone black, earth reds, madder lake, carmine lake, vermilion, cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, aureolin (cobalt) yellow, orpiment, viridian green, chromium-oxide green, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, cobalt violet (deep and light), and other cobalt violets, as well as possibly manganese violet and eosin red lake. The results of these analyses allowed for a direct comparison between the original works and their depictions and revealed that Matisse, unsurprisingly given his strong association with color, often translated the pigment choices faithfully between the actual works and their depictions in The Red Studio.

Histotripsy significantly decreases tumor viability in neuroblastoma xenograft model

Children diagnosed with high-stage neuroblastoma (NB) have a <50% 5-year survival rate, resisting intensive treatment. Histotripsy, a focused ultrasound method, can ablate subcutaneous tumors. Here, we characterize histotripsy in an abdominal NB-xenograft model.Intrarenal injection of NGP-Luciferase cells in female NCr Nude mice generated 1–2 g NB tumors after 5–6 weeks. We assessed tumor viability with bioluminescence before, after, and 24h after Histotripsy. A 1-MHz focused source under ultrasound image guidance delivered 4–6 pulses per tumor with individual targets separated by ∼1 mm. Immunostains of the apoptosis marker TUNEL, endothelial marker Isolectin-B4, and hypoxia-marker pimonidazole were imaged or scanned. Statistics were performed using Graphpad.Histotripsy decreased bioluminescence by ∼50% (p = 0.02, n = 7), suggesting a decrease in viability. Untreated tumors did not change (n = 4). TUNEL staining increased in Histotripsy-treated tumors compared to controls (56 ± 6 versus 9 ± 3 %area, n = 3 to 8, p < 0.0001). Histotripsy increased pimonidazole positivity adjacent to targeted areas, suggesting hypoxia. Finally, Histotripsy increased red blood cells compared to controls. Histotripsy dramatically reduces tumor viability by inducing apoptosis of targeted areas. Hypoxia patterns suggest histotripsy alters perfusion and/or permeability within the tumor, indicating potential for synergy with chemotherapy.

Da vedersi «anche a costo di grave sacrificio». I cattolici e lo spogliarello nell'Italia degli anni Cinquanta

The article focuses on the representation of striptease in Italy in the late 50s. While the unveiling of the female body became more and more pervasive - in posters, in magazines, in theaters, in cinematography - Italian moralists sought strategies to contain the phenomenon. At the same time, many courts issued acquittal sentences which, in fact, liberalized striptease. At the center of the dispute was not female nudity (which had been showed since at least a decade) but rather the rules of behavior of women, disputed between the will to control and the desire to look. In both cases, considered as an object of the male will.

Representation of bathers by Paul-Emile Chabas (1869-1937)

The painting of Paul-Emile Chabas is representative of that of the end of the 19th century which relies on the fantasies of the public by showing female nudity. Nevertheless, the artist stands out for having made these figures a subject in their own right, having his young models pose most often at the edge of the water. For this article, it is a question of analyzing and categorizing the different representations of the female nude by Paul-Emile Chabas with regard to artistic production between the two centuries. This study has also aims to account for the preponderance of the subject of bathers within the artist’s production, a multiplicity that earned him recognition.

Female Nudity, Interspecies Sexuality and ‘Horseness’ in Laetitia Dosch's Hate (2018)

The aim of this paper is to analyse Laetitia Dosch's play Hate, first performed in Lausanne in 2018, in light of recent theories on female nudity, interspecies sexuality and non-human animal subjectivity. Featuring a completely naked woman and a white stallion, the show revolves around the possibility of interspecies communication and the need to re-evaluate the meaning of humankind and animality through theatrical performance. I begin by drawing on Derrida's writings on the subject of shame and nakedness as a means to explore interspecies identification. I then turn to recent ecofeminist theories in order to discuss Dosch's performative criticism of industrial exploitation of non-androcentric ‘others’, as well as the implications behind her dramatization of interspecies sexual intercourse. Finally, I examine how her ‘ventriloquist’ techniques to provide the horse with a voice invite considerations regarding Levinas's concept of ‘the face’ and how that affects animal subjecthood and subjectivity.

Abstract 1092: Correlation of platinum sensitivity with donor patient treatment status in a panel of breast, ovary, uterine, and lung XPDX models

Abstract Background: First-line treatment for some cancer types includes platinum-based therapy. While the rate of initial response to treatment is high, most patients develop platinum-resistant disease. Current salvage therapy provides benefit to some patients, demonstrating the need for additional effective therapies. To assist in identifying new therapies, we have established XenoSTART patient-derived xenograft (XPDX) models representing breast, ovary, uterine, and lung cancers. Each model was characterized by DNA/RNA analysis, sensitivity to platinum treatment, and annotated with donor patient treatment status at the time of sample collection. Methods: 210 XPDX models were evaluated in this screen including 66 breast, 56 ovary, 36 uterine, and 52 lung xenografts. WES and RNAseq were performed on each model and patient treatment history and outcome annotated. For in vivo studies, models were implanted into female nudes and administered (IP; q7dx3) 3 m/k cisplatin or 60 m/k carboplatin. Study endpoints included tumor volume and time from treatment initiation with %T/C values and tumor regression reported at study completion; a %T/C of ≤ 20 versus control was considered sensitive. Results: Study results are summarized below in Table 1: Sequencing identified several variants in resistant, chemo-naïve models including point mutations in RAS/RAF/MET/PIK3CA genes and others, while sensitive models lacked common driver mutations. Conclusion: We have characterized 210 XPDX models. Uterine models were most often resistant to platinum, while almost 1/2 of ovary and 1/3 of breast models were sensitive, regardless of treatment status. Only 15% of lung models were sensitive to platinum; cancer driver variants were found in several models. Overall, we report differential platinum sensitivity in a panel of diverse models useful in understanding mechanisms of resistance and for development of effective therapies in platinum-resistant cancers. Table 1. Type Breast Ovary Uterine Lung Total 66 56 36 52 # Sensitive 25 25 9 8 % 38% 45% 25% 15% Naïve 11 16 8 5 % 44% 64% 89% 63% P-1st 6 6 1 2 % 24% 24% 11% 25% P-2nd+ 6 3 0 1 % 24% 12% 0% 13% # Insensitive 41 31 27 44 % 62% 55% 75% 85% Naïve 11 9 20 21 % 27% 29% 74% 48% P-1st 14 10 5 13 % 34% 32% 19% 30% P-2nd+ 16 12 2 10 % 39% 39% 7% 23% Naïve=No Prior Treatment; P-1st=Post 1st Line Therapy; P-2nd=Post 2nd+ Line Therapy Citation Format: Alyssa Simonson, Johnnie Flores, Lizette Firova, Christian Hernandez, Morgan Harris, Kyriakos Papadopoulos, Drew Rasco, Amita Patnaik, Allan White, Lon Smith, Ronald Drengler, Amy Lang, Murali Beeram, Michael J. Wick. Correlation of platinum sensitivity with donor patient treatment status in a panel of breast, ovary, uterine, and lung XPDX models [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 1092.

Art and feminine iconography: locating the aesthetic/profane body in the Bharat Mata paintings

ABSTRACT Indian art engages with the cartographic representation of the motherland and utilizes feminine iconography as an integral tool for interpreting socio-cultural changes at micro/macro level of the nation. Bharat Mata's anthropomorphic image as a 'living mother' can be traced as the idealized, asexual, pure figure of the past which attempts in recognizing the secular-national terrain where she can claim her own 'geo-body'. With nudity emerging as a hyper-visible metonym for obscene sexuality in the popular imagination, it turns out to be a set of jumbled 'attitudes' and 'rationalizations' Positing the painting against this backdrop of aestheticism/obscenity, this paper attempts to foreground how the female body inscribed with the symbolic value of both ‘mater' (mother) and ‘materia' (matter) related to nation-building has engendered ‘naked' figure of a woman ‘clothed' in art to transgress from the aesthetic framework into parameters of obscenity thereby nullifying artistic subjectivity and creativity. The paper draws attention towards how certain feminine depictions representing the spiritual and motherly attributes are idolized and the depiction of the physical or sensual, if not actively censored continue to be regulated from the public eye by certain institutions operating as discreet forms of ‘censorship’ on female nudity.

The Disrobing of Aphrodite: Brigitte Bardot inLe Mépris

This article examines a number of philosophical concepts that are at stake in the visual culture of the nude. It particularly focuses on Aphrodite’s appearance, or rather, what I call her exposed concealment, in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 Le Mépris. A film, I argue, which is not only concerned with Aphrodite and the figure of the female nude via Brigitte Bardot, but which also explores the very idea of the sex goddess in cinema. In the first section I introduce arguments from T.J. Clark about the changing status of the nude in nineteenth-century France. In the second section, having introduced Kenneth Clark’s work on Aphrodite, I outline Michael Williams’ work on the archaeology of divine stardom and discuss my disagreement with the way Ginette Vincendeau and Colin Gardner interpret Bardot in the film. In the longest section, the third, I examine several shots in Le Mépris in conversation with Stanley Cavell and argue that the nude scenes both invoke and rework the pictorial language of nudity found in the history of painting and sculpture, as well as Bardot’s film back catalogue, and I conclude by suggesting the film provides an indirect critique of what Hegel says about female nudity.

Terrifying Nudity: the Naked Truth of Horror Film

Attitudes towards the naked body vary from culture to culture. Even within one culture, the nakedness often symbolises very different and sometimes arbitrarily contradictory things. It can be associated with eroticism, sanctity, aggression, a certain type of culture (from savagery to elitism), etc. Focusing on specific cinematic examples, the author examines the symbolism of naked male and female bodies in horror films. The author concludes that while nudity may serve to attract viewers to the cinema, it does not necessarily equate to sexuality. The nudity is frightening in its vulnerability, but it also shows how little we know about our own bodies. In cinema, the naked body is often tortured, objectified, manipulated or even sacrificed to maintain social order or nature's fertility. Female nudity in films is linked to fears of female sexuality and fertility. Often, the encounter with the naked female body turns out to be fatal for male characters, leading to their corporal transformation or loss of identity. In any case, the naked body is something out of the norm, it is marginal and destabilizing and so it scares us.

Nude Awakenings

This article considers the earliest examples of so-called Nude Female iconography that emerged in Mesopotamia in the Early Dynastic period, with a particular focus on the aspects of nudity and gesture. Rather than concluding that these images represent goddesses or concepts such as fertility, the data reveal that in the Early Dynastic period female nudity was no different than male nudity.

Awakening the film censors’ archive in [CENSORED] (2018)

[CENSORED] (2018) is a feature-length collage of clips excised from international films by the Australian Film Censorship Board between 1958 and 1971, which historian and artist Sari Braithwaite uncovered in the National Archives of Australia. While the censored clips were archived alphabetically, Braithwaite curates them by motif, capturing the numbness generated by archivists’ and censors’ processes through repetitive bombardment of similar imagery in various categories of sex and violence. Compiling and re-categorising this trove of censored fragments produces a new perspective not only into past practices of censorship but more insightfully, into patterns of gendered dynamics and action in narrative cinema. Through feminist critical practice, Braithwaite deploys a ‘layered gaze’ and expands a critique of censorship to a critique of cinema. Braithwaite’s film mobilizes ‘productive misuse’ (Baron 2020), not for her original goal of damning censorship, but to reflect on cinematic fixations (including female nudity and sexual violence) and spectatorial implication. By suturing the censors’ excisions, Braithwaite draws attention to her own growing feminist ‘disenchantment’ (Elsaesser 2005) with cinema culture as she engages with the censors’ offcuts. [CENSORED] documents an awakening of – and from – the censors’ archive. The film evolves through sensory engagement with this archive, and in doing so, provides insight into the comparable – and sometimes complicit – processes of film spectatorship, censorship, and audio-visual archival research.

Akt kobiecy i rewolucja seksualna w dekadzie Gierka. Historia wystaw „Venus” na tle przemian obyczajowych w PRL

The paper aims to critically analyse media discourse on the “Venus” female nude exhibitions, organized annually in Kraków between 1970 and 1991. By analysing discourse that legitimised nudity in the public sphere, the paper sheds light on ways in which attitudes toward sexuality and the body changed during the so-called Gierek decade. The source base consists primarily of press publications, newsreels, and photo books from the 1970s. As the paper demonstrates, there were three dominant frameworks of discussing nudity in state-socialist Poland: artistic, pornographic and educational. Moreover, historical discourse analysis allows us to observe the role female nudes played in setting the stage for the Polish sexual revolution in the second half of the 1980s.

Gaze patterns of sexually fluid women and men at nude females and males.

Gaze patterns of sexually fluid women and men at nude females and males.

“Something You Just Don’t Talk About”: An Analysis of Teenage Boys’ Experiences of Non-Consensual Sexting in Lower Secondary School

The current study explores Swedish teenage boys’ exposure to non-consensual sexting, drawing on interviews with ninth-grade students, age 14 to 15 years, in a lower secondary school in northern Sweden. The results reveal that boys are exposed to unsolicited “dick pics,” unsolicited “female nudes” and non-consensual “explicit video” sharing via the social media platform Snapchat. However, traditional notions of heteronormativity and heterosexual masculinity prevented boys from talking about, understanding and handling experiences that may be identified as digital sexual harassment. Additionally, because of traditional gendered perceptions, students had difficulty categorizing victims and perpetrators of sexting. The study shows that there is a link between male vulnerability and male loneliness that can be manifested in both an individual and collective sense.

The East Asian Erotic Picture Dataset and Gender Differences in Response to Opposite-Sex Erotic Stimuli in Chinese College Students.

Understanding the processing of sexual stimuli has become a significant part of research on human sexuality. In addition to individual characteristics (gender and sexual orientation), empirical studies have shown that cultural factors play an important role in sexual stimuli processing. The attitudes toward sex have been reported to be more conservative in East Asian societies as compared to western countries, and significantly more sexual difficulties are observed among East Asian people. However, stimulus materials, which potentially facilitate human sexuality research on native East Asian people, are relatively not satisfactory. Erotic stimuli depicting East Asian figures are limited in the existing picture datasets. To address this issue, we present a collection of 237 erotic and 108 control pictures, accompanied by self-reported ratings of sexual arousal, pleasantness, and sexual attractiveness for opposite-sex erotic stimuli by heterosexual males and females (n = 40, divided into two equal-sized subsamples). This collection is divided into six categories, depending on their contents: dressed males (44), semi-nude males (65), nude males (64), dressed females (64), semi-nude females (52), and nude females (56). We showed gender differences in sexual arousal, pleasantness, and sexual attractiveness ratings in response to opposite-sex erotic pictures. Males reported the highest levels of sexual arousal, pleasantness, and sexual attractiveness for nude female pictures, whereas females reported the highest levels of sexual arousal, pleasantness, and sexual attractiveness for semi-nude male pictures. The erotic picture dataset may provide a useful resource of erotic stimuli that can be used as stimulus materials in experimental research on sexual function in East Asians.

Nagość w kampaniach społecznych w świetle koncepcji zarządzania uwagą

Nudity in Social Campaigns in the Light of Attention Economy This article offers a quantitative analysis of social campaigns showing naked bodies, with the focus on what social problems are portrayed with the use of nudity and whether the images of nudity are of a direct or indirect character. Other questions posed in this article are whether nudity has a gender, what does it symbolize and what associations does it generates in the recipient. My research shows that nudity (primarily female nudity) is deployed in campaigns of a wide thematic array and is endowed with various meanings.

Cultural Modernisation And Film Industry: Naked Facts From IMDB

This paper focuses on the relationship between film content and human values in Europe. Our research fills in two research gaps. For one thing, it reveals the links between people’s values and visual cultural production that can showcase the effects of changing values on culture. The other part of our research concerns the use of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) as a data set reflecting changes in modern societies. We track the changes in film topics provided by the IMDb and European Values Study (EVS) data to see how the changes in people’s values are linked to the popularity of related topics. Our special focus lies on the link between choice values and the probability of nudity depiction in films. The sample contained all European countries across 1960-2013. Using multilevel regression analysis, we found that the probability of female nudity is associated with the level of choice values, whereas the male nudity is more likely to appear in films related to the topic of homosexuality.

The Artist and her Work in Carol Ann Duffy’s Poetry

Abstract The author analyses Carol Ann Duffy’s dramatic monologues and revisionist myths in Standing Female Nude and The World’s Wife that centre on speakers who are either fashioned into objects of art or that become artists themselves. In the process, the author demonstrates that Duffy deconstructs the practice of objectification and undermines humanist philosophy. At the same time, Duffy appears to reconcile the postmodern dispersal of the subject with a sense of creative agency and autonomy, unmaking archetypes while weaving together an inclusive plurality of voices engaged in both social critique and creative praxis.

Designing Goddesses: Shakespeare’s "Othello" and Marian Nowiński’s "Otello Desdemona"

The article discusses the intertextual relationship between the poster by Marian Nowiński, Otello Desdemona, and the content of Shakespeare’s play, while presenting the most important elements of the plot that are decisive for the portrayal of Desdemona. It also discusses the tradition of female nudes in Western art. This allows to usher out these characteristic features of elements of Desdemona that fashion her into Venus Caelestis and Venus Naturalis. The article focuses on the ambivalence of Nowiński’s poster and discusses the significance of the paintings by Titian, Giorgione, and Fuseli in designing the figure of Desdemona as a goddess.