"When PORN becomes normal"

*Warning: THE SYNDICATE DOES NOT EXIST*

I do not have a problem with female nudity. I’m more than comfortable being naked and I think it’s absurd when people have a problem with women breastfeeding in public (that’s you Claridge's.) I don’t stare at women changing in the gym, and I lived in Barcelona for long enough to see topless women on the beach as the norm.

But what I do find uncomfortable is the in-your-face nudity blasted over billboards and fashion adverts. The recent Alexander Wang jeans ad, which shows a naked woman slouching on a chair with her jeans round her ankles, is one such example. It makes me squirm. I know it’s just giving into the outdated idea that sex sells – and more specifically a sexualised woman sells – and that I should just roll my eyes. But I can’t.

It bothers me to see model Anna Ewers oiled up and turned into a naked object, reduced to the sum of her boobs and flesh. I feel the same way about Coca Cola’s Fairlife ads, which depict women 'splashed' in milk, that only just covers their genitalia.

The phrase that jumps into my mind when I see ads like this is ‘sexual objectification’. I know I’m not the only person who thinks like this – dozens are criticised daily for being sexist, tasteless and spreading negative messages to young people.

Where I fear I’m alone is in being bothered by the onslaught of female celebrities who have recently been posing naked. As a feminist, I feel like I should join my peers in finding Madonna, Keira Knightley and Kim Kardashian empowering for taking control of their bodies and posing nude.

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But I don’t.

It isn’t that I'm judging these women, or think they shouldn’t have posed with their clothes off. That was their choice. No doubt each of them did it for personal reasons, and I admire them for sticking to their guns and doing what made them happiest at the moment.

I just feel sad that they felt they had to strip off to prove a point. WhenKnightley posed topless, she said she was doing it because she’d had her body “manipulated” so often. She wanted to just show her body as it really was, without any airbrushing or retouching.

It’s a great message, and one I’d love to see more celebrities and models adopt. But why did she feel she had to go naked to share it? I know they’re just boobs, and campaigns like Free The Nipple want women to be able to go topless, in the same way as men.

But taking your clothes off in the public eye is still a huge decision.

_{Keira Knightley's shoot. Photo: Patrick Demarchelier/Interview}

Knightley was clearly in control of her shoot with Interview magazine. But I can’t help but feel that the sexualised culture we live in has affected her decision at some level. Just how much of her message is really, truly hers – and how much of it comes from the pressures around her?

Stephanie Davies-Arai, of the No More Page 3 campaign, agrees.

“We don’t judge Page Three models or women who choose to display their bodies. But what we have is a culture that puts so much pressure on women to have beautiful bodies and be aware of our bodies.

“Within that culture it’s not surprising that it creates a pressure on women to compete and go along with it, because that’s what’s expected of them. Whatever positive message is in there, it’s still within a culture where women are judged by their bodies.”

Of course, there are instances where women reclaim their bodies through nudity. Laura Dodsworth is an artist who created Bare Reality,images of 100 women’s real breasts, to counteract the sexualised images we see in the media and show what real women look like.

_{Madonna pictured in Interview magazine}

She thinks that’s just what Knightley and co are doing. “I don’t have a problem with it. I think debating whether they should or shouldn’t take their clothes off is besides the point. Who decides whether they can or can’t?

“It should be a woman’s choice.”

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I agree. It’s entirely up to them to reveal their bodies or not. But I dothink we need to question it - because these women aren’t just stripping off in private, they’re high-profile figures who are doing it to make a statement and get our attention.

Because as nice as it is to see all female nudity as equal, quite frankly, it just isn’t. There is a difference between breastfeeding in public and stripping off to ‘break the internet’ as Kardashian recently did. There’s a difference between Knightley trying to say something positive about female bodies, and the Wang advert using Ewers’ to sell jeans.

J-Lo and Iggy Azalea may have waggled their bums around in a song called Booty to celebrate their own bodies, but they were doing that within a culture where female musicians are so often sexualised to sell music.

It all comes down to the message behind nudity. When Lena Dunham strips off in TV show Girls, she’s not trying to be ‘sexy’ – she’s just depicting a 20-something young woman having a healthy sex life.

Dodsworth may not see that as any different to Kardashian’s sexualised photo shoots, but to me, it is. Dunham is the subject of her work. Her naked body is just a by-product. But in the Kardashian photoshoot, and others, these nude celebrities become objects – the focus is their bodies, and nothing else.

That’s even more obvious in the Wang advert, where Ewers is simply a naked body. Some people may still view all of this as positive – these women know what they’re doing and they’ve chosen to show off their bodies in this way. They’re happy with it, and good for them.

_{Kim Kardashian's magazine cover}

But it’s important to consider the message behind their actions, and whether they’re in control.

The biggest problem is that - in the context of our sexualised world, where the male gaze has dominated for centuries - it’s hard to see these women’s decisions as truly their own.

It’s why, for now, I still can’t bring myself to celebrate the nudity of Madonna, Knightley and Kardashian. To me, it is too similar to the sexual objectification of sexist adverts.

These women may feel they’re in control - especially someone with as much experience as Madonna - but perhaps all those years working in a male-dominated industry have affected them more than they realise.

Until I can safely say that all these women showing their nude bodies are 100 per cent doing it without any external pressures - subconscious or not - then I can't bring myself to see their choice as a positive move for equality.

And that's the bum note.