Story highlights Peggy Drexler: Male models at Rick Owens' Paris runway show wore clothes that exposed their penises

She says as we become harder to shock, the culture keeps going lower and lower. The bottom is in sight

Peggy Drexler is the author of "Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers, and the Changing American Family" and "Raising Boys Without Men." She is an assistant professor of psychology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and a former gender scholar at Stanford University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

(CNN) In Paris on Thursday, fashion designer Rick Owens gave audiences quite a show when he sent male models down the runway wearing clothes with peepholes that offered a glimpse of the guys' formerly private parts.

"Nudity is the most simple and primal gesture -- it packs a punch," Owens said of his decision to have his models bare all. "It's powerful. ... Who else can really get away with this stuff? It's a corporate world!"

The looks were simply for shock and awe and the attention such reactions generate -- after all, they can't be worn out in public and won't be sold in stores. But let's be honest: Were we even shocked? After all, female models have been asked to sashay down runways in states of near nakedness for years.

Meanwhile, more and more films are featuring full frontal male nudity. There was Michael Fassbender in "Shame," of course. And who can forget the uproar over the cameo of Ben Affleck's penis in "Gone Girl," albeit so brief one had to know the precise moment to look for it? And if we've seen Ben Affleck's penis, who cares about some male model's?

Of course, women have been going full frontal in films for years.

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