Every so often a scene gets paired with a song that, for better or worse, ends up making it that much more memorable, and this Tunes-day’s selection times out perfectly because we’re looking at nudity from a stunning star born on this day!
Sanaa Lathan Nude in Love Basketball
The 2000 romantic sports drama Love Basketball stars Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan as childhood friends in LA with similar hoop dreams and an intense will-they-or-won’t they dynamic.They do end up in bed together when they both get accepted to USC, giving fans their first flash of Sanaa’s sumptuous suck sacks. Before this, Sanaa had only briefly bared her butt in 1999’s The Best Man.
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The sensual mood is set thanks to singer-songwriter Maxwell’s cover of the Kate Bush song “This Woman’s Work”. One might think nothing of this song choice unless they actually knew the history of the song itself. Bush originally wrote the song specifically for the 1988 film She’s Having A Baby. It was purposefully played as lead actress Elizabeth McGovern is in distress during childbirth while her husband (Kevin Bacon) can do nothing but wait for news while remembering the couple’s happier moments.
Now it kind of seems like a weird choice for sex scene, right?
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Or maybe it’s not. The song is meant to be from a man’s perspective, and perhaps instead of reflecting on the role of a woman as child bearer, it’s now inadvertently about how before women fulfill that role, they have another within their sexual relationships with men. It could even be argued that because it’s Omar’s character’s basketball career that initially takes center stage, there's even more underlyingpatriarchal commentary.
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It all sounds speculative until you realize the film’s director is the ground-breaking Gina Maria Prince-Bythewood, who’s built a career focusing on the experiences of women of color and has actually confirmed the film is about normalizing women working toward their career aspirations while within romantic relationships.
As her character in Love Basketball, Sanaa eventually shows that women can work it both on and off the court and don’t have to choose between sex and success. And lucky for us, Sanaa also realized she could have a great career and give audiences more great nudity in films like Disappearing Acts and Nappily Ever After! So why not honor this sexy September-born babe by watching her work!
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