I haven’t seen Watchmen yet — Emily and I were traveling last night, bound for a quick vacation in Texas. Just about the time everyone else was suffering through “Citizen Solder” I was tucking into an enormous plate of delicious blue corn tortillas. So I say this based on the comic, not the film.
But of course Phoebe’s right that there’s a double standard when it comes to female and male nudity in films, and our discomfort at either is a bit silly. Watchmen seems like an odd time to make that case, though, because here the nudity is used precisely because we’re uncomfortable with it. Dr. Manhattan wanders around naked, and that seems odd to us. But it doesn’t seem odd to him because he’s a superbeing that’s almost completely alienated from humanity. To him a body is a construct, and it’s impossible to understand the social conventions surrounding it or anything else. If the audience was similarly blasé about Dr. M striding about in his deathday suit there wouldn’t be any point to showing him doing so.
This double standard story doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’ve never seen a movie involving a woman who was naked throughout the whole movie in non-sexual situations. Such a movie would, I suspect, get at least as much attention as Dr. Manhattan’s nudity.
There’s more sexual female nudity in movies than sexual male nudity because straight men like to look at naked women more than the reverse. It’s the same reason most (visual) porn is targeted at straight men. It’s not that visual porn isn’t available for straight women, it’s just that straight women are, on average, a lot less interested. I think this is just a consequence of bare human biology rather than a reflection of a deeper cultural dysfunction.