Nude Bodies in British Women’s Magazines at the Turn of the 1970s: Agency, Spectatorship, and the Sexual Revolution

Around the turn of the 1970s, women’s magazines began to feature naked female bodies in advertisements for health and beauty products. By the mid-1970s, this nudity had largely disappeared. This article examines the reasons for this spike in nude images, the types of nakedness depicted, and what this tells us about prevalent attitudes to femininity, sexuality and women’s ‘liberation’. Focusing on representations of naked female bodies allows us to explore definitions and operations of sexual ‘knowledge’, especially the role of mass media sources in influencing inchoate ideas about sex and sexuality. In this way, we consider the complex interaction between representation and experience in constructions of sexual knowledge, challenge theories placing women as passive objects of the male gaze and nuance notions of female agency in ‘sexual revolution’.