Disney Plus is the Instagram of streaming services, by which I mean it’s prude and hates nudity. The relentlessly “family friendly” platform’s obsessive censorship has been well documented, famously forcing Lin Manuel Miranda to edit multiple “fucks” out of Hamilton and halting a Lizzie McGuire reboot for daring to suggest that the 30-something heroine of the early aughts tween series might now be a grown woman with a sex life.
And yet, as various outlets have pointed out, Disney Plus seems to have loosened its rigorous moral code for a certain uncensored man butt belonging to Hugh Jackman. The actor’s backside is left completely bare in a scene from X-Men: Days of Future Past, now streaming on the platform. Jackman himself recently shared a still of this scene on Instagram (edited, of course, because it’s Instagram). Meanwhile, not only does the unedited version of the film leave Jackman’s ass as bare as the day he was born (probably, I wasn’t there), but the film also let at least one “fuck” slide.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not mad at Hugh Jackman’s bare ass. I think Hugh Jackman’s bare ass is a lovely thing for families to enjoy together on movie night. The issue that I and various other Disney Plus critics have taken with the platform’s sudden moral 180 is that Jackman’s ass has been allowed to grace screens everywhere totally unencumbered by the chains of censorship, while just a few months ago Disney Plus made headlines for covering a woman’s butt — namely the butt belonging to Darryl Hannah in Splash — with CGI hair.
So why is a man’s butt more “family friendly” than a woman’s? Probably for the same reason it’s fine for male nipples to just be out and about while nipples attached to a female-presenting body must be covered and shamed, both in real life and on some social media platforms — again, looking at you Instagram.
In other words, it is — as it was in the beginning, is now, and probably ever shall be — a bunch of sexist nonsense.
Again, it is important that we not scare Disney Plus away from its apparent change of heart in favor of nudity and occasional profanity. I am not calling for the censoring of Hugh Jackman’s butt, but rather for the freeing of all butts in the hope that someday, our children will be able to see all bare butts on every streaming platform.
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