Girls in
Henry & June (1990)

1969 stands as the year that pop culture evolved from the mass grooviness of Woodstock and the far-out giant leap of the moon landing to the horror of the Manson Family murders and the Hells Angels stomping out flower power at Altamont.

It was also the year that Hollywood erupted with new creative freedom, emboldened by expanding societal mores and the new MPAA rating system.

Filmmakers could now dip into the palette of patently adult material, including coarse language, unflinching violence, and, most importantly, sex and nudity.

Let’s trip on back to 1969 and dig nine classic nude scenes from that headiest of daze gone by.

1. EASY RIDER
Toni Basil
(1:26)
Toni strips full-frontally nude in a New Orleans cemetery while tripping on LSD.

Easy Rider is indisputably one of the hippie era’s ultimate artistic statements. Toni Basil’s “Hey Mickey!” video is one of the most indelible media images of the 1980s. How interesting that one cultural touchstone unwittingly begat another. On acid. Naked.

By Maximilian Mueller

Part of the new generation of extreme porn stars, Ashley Blue exploded onto the scene in 2002, appearing in titles like Young and Anal, Violation of Ashley Blue, and Two in the Seat 1.

With her disarmingly sexy Elizabeth Taylor-esque appeal, no-holes-barred attitude, and her willingness to try anything twice, Ashley made an impression on fans and critics alike.

Some of the awards she has racked up include the 2004 AVN Award for Female Performer of the Year, the 2005 AVN Award for Best All-Girl Sex Scene, and the 2007 AVN Award for Most Outrageous Sex Scene.

Her new movie Sugar Town comes out on Vivid Alt in November.

Ashley recently took some time out to discuss her thoughts on art, squirting, televised litigation and Julian “Warlock” Sands with Maximilian Mueller.

Read the full interview after the jump.

Throughout the late 1980s, beloved Chicago film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert campaigned for a rating to replace the MPAA’s dreaded X which, at first, had been used to designate all manner of films containing patently adult content (such as the 1968 Best Picture Academy Award winner Midnight Cowboy).

In the wake of Deep Throat, however, the X-rating became synonymous with hardcore pornography. Siskel and Ebert led the charge for a new rating – they suggested “A” (for adult) – that could be applied to non-sexploitation films that were intended for audiences over the age of 17.

The MPAA ultimately concocted the NC-17 rating, which stands for No Children Under 17, and the first film to reach the public bearing its imprimatur was flesh-friendly director Philip Kaufman’s Henry & June, which opened in theaters on this date in 1990.

Henry & June stars Fred Ward and young Uma Thurman in the titular roles, as libertine author Henry Miller and his omnisexual gamine wife June. The story focuses specifically on their mutual sexual entanglements with erotic writer Anaïs Nin -- scorchingly embodied by Maria de Madeiros -- in 1920s Paris.

Uma and Maria explode in a lust-tastic lesbian scene, and the rest of the movie is chock full of naked nubiles (including Brigitte Lahaie) celebrating sexual freedom as they truly did – and as the NC-17 rating, finally, made possible.

Indie Sex reveals all, from scandalous silent films and censor-shocking breakthroughs of the 1960s and '70s to '80s teen romps and erotic outrages of today.

Fetish photographer Carlos Batts says his wife, April Flores, is funny. He insists that her humor is unique and that she just made up a great T-shirt by saying "I'm my favorite porn star." April is funny, but she is very modest, and you can almost say that she is unaware of her humor. It's accidental humor. Which may make her even more loveable.

In 2005 the realms of publishing, home video, and obsessive naked-movie-star fandom alike were forever reconfigured by the monumental arrival of the bestselling Mr. Skin's Skincyclopedia: The A-to-Z Guide to Finding Your Favorite Actresses Naked (St. Martin's).