Gratuitous?
One of the debates you’ll need to anticipate if you plan on having nudity in your movie is this. Was the nudity shown artistically to impact the story or was it completely gratuitous? That is often what viewers and critics ask themselves. One movie that has been viewed as the later is Showgirls directed by Paul Verhoeven. The original version of the movie received an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) because of the nudity and simulated sex scenes.
A NC-17 rating limits a movie’s theatrical release to persons 17 and older. That narrows down a movie’s potential audience and ability to make money. The story is about a woman down on her luck that comes to Las Vegas to make a name for herself. She ends up working as an exotic dancer in a strip club. Then she gets discovered becoming a Las Vegas showgirl.