Two months ago, few people on this side of the Atlantic knew what the term "full monty" meant.
 
Thanks to the box-office success of the film The Full Monty, it's now clear that it means buck naked. The hit comedy is the story of six unemployed British steel workers who form a rag-tag strip act. The only way they can compete with a touring Chippendales troupe is to bare all.
 
Even with its premise, The Full Monty points out the double standard that applies to nudity in mainstream films. The actors strut naked for the audience in their film but not for moviegoers.
 
"If the movie had been about six women, you know the actresses would have been required to provide plenty of full frontal nudity," says Julianne Moore who appeared nude in Robert Altman's Short Cuts and will again in Boogie Nights about the porn-film industry.
 
"Robert planned to film a hot-tub scene for Short Cuts with Matthew Modine, Fred Ward, Madeleine Stowe and myself that required all of us to be nude but the studio warned him we'd
get an NC-17 rating if the men were nude."
 
Jennifer Lopez ended up doing a nude scene for Oliver Stone's U-Turn, even though she had not been contracted to.
 
"Oliver decided at the last moment he wanted a nude scene. We talked for about an hour before I agreed," explains Lopez.
 
"I didn't see Oliver trying to coerce Sean Penn or Nick Nolte into appearing nude for the same scene. Movie studios are mostly run by men and most directors are men, which helps explain the double standard, but it doesn't justify it."
 
So, it would seem, are the American censor boards.
 
Producer David (Jaws, Kiss the Girls) Brown says "directors and producers run the risk of serious censorship problems when they include male nudity. Often it becomes a case of editing the nudity or not having your film get a wide release."
 
Scottish actor Ewan McGregor doesn't understand what the fuss is about. He was naked in Trainspotting and The Pillow Book.
 
"I guess you could say I'm doing my bit for the woman's movement. Actresses are always appearing nude. I think that's grossly unfair. I've ap peared naked in almost every movie I've done. I think it's in my contract somewhere."
 
Like McGregor, British actor Rupert Graves says screen nudity is becoming second nature for him.
 
"I had nude scenes in my first two films Room With A View and Maurice, but I'd had several on stage before that. It only takes getting used to the first time."
 
British comedian John Cleese points out that "there is a long tradition in British farce that requires men to drop their pants. It's all harmless fun and it always gets a big laugh.
 
"It's only recently that male nudity is meant to be sensuous. The Full Monty works because the nudity is played for laughs."
 
British and European actors appear nude far more often than their American counterparts.
 
Bruce Willis insists its the American studios not the American actors who have the double standards.
 
"I filmed nude scenes for 12 Monkeys and Color Of Night but they were carefully edited for the American markets," Willis recalls.
 
"It's not that I'm an exhibitionist. I just feel it's unfair to actresses. I wanted to make a statement for them. I was hoping if I appeared nude other actors would follow suit, or ... out of suit."
 
Arnold Schwarzenegger encountered similar problems when he wanted to do a nude scene in Red Heat.
 
"The scene took place in a Russian steam bath. Nobody would be wearing towels. I felt ridiculous," Schwarzenegger recalls.
 
 "It's an American thing to be self conscious about your body. I took my wife (Maria Shriver) to a steam bath in Austria. She was shocked because men and women were nude together in the same rooms. It's the way you grow up in Europe."
 
Before his film career took off, Schwarzenegger posed nude for the New York arts magazine, After Dark.

Like Schwarzenegger, many of America's leading actors appeared nude before they became famous.
 
Richard Gere had his first of several nude scenes in American Gigolo. Gere was primarily a New York stage actor at the time he stepped into Gigolo because John Travolta refused to appear nude.
 
Tom Cruise had a brief nude scene in All The Right Moves, Rob Lowe in About Last Night, Tom Berenger in At Play In The Fields Of The Lord, Harvey Keitel in The Piano and John Malkovich in The Sheltering Sky.
 
Brad Pitt skyrocketed to fame after his peek-a-boo nude scene  in Thelma & Louise and has doffed his clothes in most of his movies.
 
Yet Pitt recently sued Playgirl when the magazine printed two-year-old nude photos of him and then-girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow.
 
"I never posed for those photos or gave permission for them to be taken. It's a clear invasion of privacy," he explains.