The Most Important New Year’s Tradition – Our Favorite Nude Scenes

You can keep your bowl games and your In Memoriam segments. The best way to celebrate a New Year is to look at the best nude scenes from the previous one.

We’ve had ups and downs over the years. There have been spectacular years like 2014, when Alexandra Daddario, ScarJo and Margot Robbie all graced us with their full-frontal debuts. It was such a good year that I had to expand the list to 25 scenes in order to include some great scenes like Elizabeth Olsen in Oldboy. And there have been total duds like 2008, when lower frontal nudity had almost been declared extinct.

In general, 2021 was one of the best years overall for the quality of the nudity, but not for the familiarity of the performers. There was no great full-frontal standout from a big name or in a familiar production, so nothing matched the three performances I mentioned from 2014, but there is not a dud in the top ten, and our voters generally gave the great scenes the recognition they deserved, from the biggest releases to the most obscure foreign films. As I re-watched the scenes this week, I was again dazzled by the beauty of Vivi Koenig, the full-blown insanity of Agathe Rousselle and Daria Polasik-Bulka, the masterful writing and photography featuring beautiful Lea Seydoux, the incredibly lengthy exposure of Odessa Young, the dedication of Sarah Shahi, the unearthly figure of Sydney Meyer, the daring of Maryse Miege … and that’s just a sample. Some of those, and other brilliant scenes, couldn’t even crack the top 20. In fact, there are some great nude performances that didn’t even make it to the final poll: Paulina Gaitan and Daphne Patakia come to mind immediately.

I rarely give in to the “popularity contest” aspect of the competition. In general, I try to seek out a truly meritorious scene rather than a popular favorite. In my typical process I would have voted for Odessa Young or Daria Polasik-Bulka, but this year I didn’t vote with my head. I let other body parts determine the selection, and I realized that Sydney Sweeney creates as much of a stir in me as she does in everyone else. I joined many of you in giving her a record-breaking victory, in which she garnered as many votes as the next four choices added together.

Here is the 2021 recap, including a link to brief film clips from each of the winners.

Here is a list of the top tens from the entire Scoopy era (1995-2021, the lifespan of the site), with links to the full recaps for each individual year.

Here is a mini search engine that goes through all of the lists (and nothing else).

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For reference:

Here is the final numerical tally from the 2021 voting.

Here are the results of the semi-final poll, which determined the candidates in the final selection. It’s kind of interesting to see how the list differed from the final results. Some mediocre scenes, like Daddario in The White Lotus, got a lot of attention when people could offer an opinion on every scene, but when voters were forced to name only their very favorite scene, the so-so entries fell by the wayside, replaced by … well, by great scenes worthy of being called the best of the year. (Note: three late entries or omissions were added to the final poll. One of those, Odessa Young in Mothering Sunday, deservedly made the top ten!)

Here is the original list of nominees, with links to pics and/or clips from every performance.

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And most important, let’s all have a happy new year and a happy nude year in 2022. Thanks to all of you for participating in the poll, and for reading the “other crap” that appears here every day.

8 thoughts on “The Most Important New Year’s Tradition – Our Favorite Nude Scenes

  1. Somehow, Ms. Sweeney did not get a lot of love from the comments in this forum, even if she won.  Go figure, but there must be at least something compelling about her nude scenes for them to rank. Personally, I don’t think she is getting enough credit for the stark, vulnerable sexiness of her performance. And that is why she had my vote.

    If we had been allowed second-ranked votes, mine would have been for Halsey. Her nude scenes are not all that sexy in a direct sense, and not really intended to be. They are more in the category of celebration of the power of womanhood/motherhood – and that is great in its own right. What I particularly liked about it was that, unlike numerous celebrity pregnancy shots over the years, with their strategic camera angles and strategic placement of arms and legs to hide the nudity, this was full on. Good for her. And big bonus points in my book for the all-natural look.

    My third-ranked vote would have been for Megan Montaner. That scene was a bit stylized (for example, the perfectly even ‘sweat’ on her upper body clearly was sprayed on in advance), but still effective. She looked great in it.

    1. Baseball metaphor.

      From 1949-1958, the NY Yankees won the AL pennant nine out of ten times. Seven of those nine times they won the World Series, and the other two were narrow 4-3 defeats .

      Baseball was America’s sport then, and the Yankees were always the team to beat. But they were only one team of 16 in the majors, so about 90% of Americans rooted for other teams. The country’s sports fans were divided into “go Yanks” and “anyone but the Yanks.” If you were in the latter group, you rooted for the Indians and Red Sox to finally win the pennant, and when they inevitably failed, you rooted for the Dodgers, Giants or Braves to beat the Yanks in the Series. Anyone but the Yankees. Even the lowly Phillies got a chance in 1950, whereupon the Yankees’ pitching staff held them to only five runs in the entire World Series.

      Maybe some of those opponents were better than the Yankees. The 1953 Dodgers were the greatest National League team of the integration era. On paper, they were better than the Yankees, just like Odessa Young’s scene is better than Sweeney’s. But the Yankees always seemed to come out on top, always smugly assured, as if their triumph was god’s will. One wag noted that rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for U.S. Steel.

      Well, Sydney Sweeney was the New York Yankees of 2021 nudity. We knew she was a heavy favorite and we rooted for her to have some competition. Everyone else turned out to be the 1950 Phillies. We loved them. We knew they were good. But they just didn’t have the right stuff to topple the champ.

      We don’t dislike Sweeney. We think she is swell. We admire her beauty. We enjoy her scene. But there are many better scenes, and Sydney’s victory was just so smugly assured that we just hoped something interesting would happen to derail her express train.

      1. That’s a perfect analogy and you picked my favorite Baseball team and I whole heartily agree with you

  2. My thoughts.

    Bah, humbug.

    Yes yes, you all like Sweeney. I like Sweeney. But this is like 1977 in here with Farrah Fawcett, we don’t all need that one poster on our ceilings. It was a mediocre scene. Period. We’ve seen her before, much better. Every other scene on this list is better and I’ll stand by that. If her scene featured a nobody it wouldn’t even have passed the semi finals. Again I say, bah, humbug.

    The most notable thing other than most readers giving up their souls to zeitgeist is the death of the formula. It’s not just wavering, it is thoroughly demised. It has ceased to be.

    TWO, count them, TWO former child stars with nude debuts in well lit scenes that weren’t even blips on the radar. Fanning was there a bit, Depp may as well have kept her kit on. That one shocked me thoroughly. I’d have expected her to be a long awaited debut. A double whammy in the old formula: not just a former teen star but the child of a star as well! Normally that’s cause for everyone to lose their collective noodles, but here only four of us even noticed her sitting there all perky.

    I guess the age of the formula is dead, and the age of the cult of personality reigns. First Daddario, now Sweeney, who shall be dubbed the next Queen of Other Crap?

    Remove the undeserved ruler of the list and I’m quite happy with the remainder. My choice came in third, but the two who topped her (phrasing) are certainly deserving and I thought over Shahi for my own vote.

    I only picked Montaner because I watched that show, thought she was very attractive throughout, then suddenly out of nowhere in this paltry religious thriller, WHAMMO, super explicit sex scene with the leading MILF. It was the only enjoyable moment from the series but I became an instant fan.

    But yes. No more “formula” unless Chloe Moretz finally decides to go full Margot Robbie or something.

    My personal early bet for this year is my favorite Florence Pugh, that nugget of joy, who just finished a movie for Olivia Wilde called “Don’t Worry Darling” that pairs her with Harry Styles. Wilde has said it “elevates female sexuality” and “why don’t films have good sex anymore?” She lists Adrian Lyne’s sexier films as inspirations and talks about one scene that’s “sure to get attention” that shows “female hunger for pleasure” like it hasn’t been shown before. Given that Pugh is not camera shy for nudity? I’m calling it, scene of the year right here. Sounds like the two young actors and Wilde wanted to really push some limits. It comes out in September.

  3. Just noticed that Noemie Merlant showed up again on the Top 25 for the 3rd year in a row – and the second consecutive year she appears on the ten best scenes, again in the 10th position like past year!

    Are we seeing a new queen of nudity rising?

    1. She is certainly consistent 12-10-10 (and her performance in Curiosa could easily have done better than 12th).

      1. Oh, I didn’t remind that the Curiosa scenes were so close from the Top 10, since it’s a movie that didn’t get a lot of noise!

        Let’s see how she will show up on next years, since I don’t think she’ll stop her nude resume, thank god!

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