The Oscars were held on March 10, 2024. Majority of the people watch the Oscars award nights. All the celebrities come out excited, hoping to be nominated. Although, this year’s awards night was a little different. Better yet, a little alarming. As an audience we are used to seeing celebrities dress up professionally or accordingly. A huge celebrity came out naked. This is only the beginning of the awards night, yet someone comes out naked. That “someone,” is John Cena. He didn’t come out to the audience with the need of being naked. His naked appearance was a remembrance of an unexpected event that happened in 1974. The article “Naked John Cena Presents At 2024 Oscars in Skit.” mentioned that in 1974 during the Oscar’s some random person ran across the stage naked. In remembrance of that John Cena came out naked to nominate someone for best costume design to “poor things.” Although the audience had a good laugh, there are other audiences that took this image differently. Instagram has represented how people view posts critically.
The account @womensrights_news created this post. We see large critics of the women, for simply having a dress that reveals a bit of her butt. The crazy part is other women are the ones talking disrespectfully. Why do we as women always tend to criticize other beautiful women that feel confident in how they dress? Yeah, it can be surprising sometimes but it isn’t enough to be “disowning” her in a way. Women tend to say “we need to support each other” or “be a girl’s girl,” yet some of us don’t stick to helping each other out. On the other hand when it comes to a man, since he has a defined and muscular body, women fantasize it. He came out to an audience naked. Yet those people in the stands just laughed. I bet if it was a non-celebrity person or a woman, it would have shocked the whole room.
There are other people that think otherwise. What John Cena did shouldn’t have been done or could have been done differently. The comments on Instagram represented people contradicting the comments shown on the post. Women can love and say John Cena is handsome but when a woman does something similar it’s no longer a confidence viewpoint. Going back to the article, there is a comment from Liywalii Ndunga saying “It’s just weird, some of us had some respect for Jc but that has gone down the drain, or maybe It’s just one of the illuminates signs.” John Cena is an extremely popular celebrity, so the reactions went both ways. We have seen him act for the longest time and suddenly getting flashed by him was a curveball. I am glad people had different opinions. There’s no need to praise one person more than the other.
I personally think that if the Oscar’s wanted to represent “Poor Things”” by telling John Cena to walk out naked, they could have done it completely differently. Since these are famous people, it doesn’t really matter to them how they represent themselves. These celebrities are going to get paid regardless. What plays a huge role in this circumstance is gender. I know for a fact if a woman stood out like that in the Oscars she would be called all these horrible names. Yes, John Cena was possibly called horrible names as well but it would not have been the same compared to a woman figure. Society tends to always shape women into a norm, in something they want to see. It’s always “you’re showing too much, cover up” or “you’re not even showing your body, find better clothes that reveal your physic.” All this pressure is tied down to a woman, especially as teenagers since the body is shaping itself. It’s also not just our clothes but our body shape. Let’s say John Cena didn’t have that body physique, people would’ve given him much more crap for it. We are always the cause and effect here. No matter what goes on there will always be a critic somewhere. People need to come to a realization that things aren’t going to be the way they portrait it to be. Let people embrace their body the way they want. I, myself, am a critic as well. I’m mentioning how John Cena could have given a different perspective of Poor Things, but if they wanted to do that then go ahead.
Work Cited
Demopoulos, Alaina. “Oscars 2024 viral moments: John Cena in the buff, Emma Stone’s eye-roll and Paul Giamatti’s tears.” The Guardian, 11 March 2024,
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/11/oscars-2024-viral-moments-emma-stone eye-rolling-paul-giamattis-tears-john-cena-naked . Accessed 28 March 2024.
Sharf, Zack. “Naked John Cena Presents At 2024 Oscars in Skit.” Variety, 10 March 2024, https://variety.com/2024/film/news/naked-john-cena-presenter-2024-oscars-1235937368/ . Accessed 28 March 2024.