An interesting read as usual. My thoughts on all this:

I think there is a clear difference between attitudes to sex and nudity in films in the UK and Europe versus the US. In the US, they did at one point appear a lot more uptight about male nudity than female nudity. But that female nudity had to be limited, or else you'd get slapped with an NC-17 rating. Here in the UK, censors have always been more concerned about violence than sex, so we'd always get such films nice and uncut (regardless of which genders were naked).

In the last few years, there's been a weird pendulum swing where men are naked a lot more in films. I don't see an issue with that, but I do see an issue with female nudity being constantly politicised the way you discuss here, primarily by the US media (though in fairness, it does happen in the UK too).

My opinion? We all need to grow up. Nudity can be an essential part of drama, and even if it is gratuitous or titillating, so what? There's no point denying certain scenarios are sexually arousing, and if that is woven in to a drama, why can't we all be grown-ups about it and stop with the sanctimonious hypocritical whining? Not everything has to be political, or a feminist statement, or whatever. Sometimes nudity is beautiful, sexy, arousing, and so on, within the context of a drama (obviously, if the only purpose of the drama is sexual arousal then it's pornography, but you take my point I'm sure).