Male celebrities getting naked?

Last week, photos of Orlando Bloom paddle-boarding with girlfriend Katy Perry appeared online. One thing that was strange about these photos was that Bloom appeared very, very much naked. The internet shrieked with aubergine emojis, commentary that used the word “junk” and suggestions this “junk” (as obscured by a big black rectangle) was in fact the rescued black box flight recorder from Flight 370. (Keeping it classy, guys!) Next up was Justin Bieber who appeared in some oops-I’ve-left-my-pants-on-the-rocks-by-the-water! photos from his holiday in Hawaii. Although they were paparazzi shots, both sets felt posed and heavy with intent.

ustin Bieber recently appeared in some naked paparazzi photos from his holiday in Hawaii.

For Bloom the reasoning seemed clearer, and suddenly people were talking about him in a way that they haven’t really done for years: as an object of lust, as opposed to the older guy who hangs about outside of Selena Gomez’s dressing room. While Bieber seemed as if he was continuing the line of his new career as omnipresent hunk-on-a-rope, which reached a peak with his Calvin Klein advert earlier this year.

Unlike #freethenipple, these #freethepeen moments are significantly de-politicised. They’re silly, funny and bizarre. Like an X-rated Carry On film for millennials. Thanks in part to Instagram – where “likes” are king and the naked-ish selfie (nudity is still banned on the social media site) is the ultimate power move – male nudity feels casual and has lost its shock value. The male celebrity body in the public arena is now a landscape of boastfulness and oneupmanship. It’s not necessarily about what you wear these days, it’s about how big your upper arms are and how “perfect” your washboard abs can look.

It also speaks a bigger vision of nakedness in 2016 in that it feels as if nudity underpins celebrity culture in a way that it didn’t before. The catwalk may have foreseen this trend: nipples were big at the spring/summer 2015 shows (Tom Ford, Christopher Kane), with Rick Owens featuring a flashed penises at his. It felt like a rebalancing of what was commonplace at women’s shows, but it also felt prescient as to what was to come.

Specifically that we’ve now hit peak nudity. Every day there’s a celebrity story about a “leaked” photo from the cast of Ex on the Beach or Geordie Shore while the biggest video this year was an all-naked, celeb fest (Kanye West’s Famous which featured naked lookalikes of Taylor Swift, Donald Trump and Caitlin Jenner) while Kim Kardashian is currently trailering her next naked selfie. Nakedness is a high valued currency in 2016, something that Bloom and Bieber are very aware of.