Shirtless!

"Sex sells."

This is something that Hollywood had figured out ages ago and has been running with ever since (hence the cliche, Gratuitous Female Nudity). But of course, nowadays, you can't just sexualise women for the benefit of teenage boys all the time. That's sexist. So, begrudgingly, Hollywood started to sexualise its men.

But, then, some Hollywood exec realised that the effects of sexualising women goes double for teenage girls (and middle aged women who should know better) who see a sexy man.

So nowadays, in order to make an action movie or a sports movie or some extremely laddy movie more palatable to the girlfriends who are dragged along to them, most films contrive a reason to get the leading man (often extremely hunky) into getting his shirt off to demonstrate those money making abs! Often, there's very little reason for doing so (see: every single Jason Statham movie ever made) but, regardless, it can send several often very untalented star's careers into the stratosphere (eg: David Hasselhoff, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Matthew McConaughey) as they become this generation's ultimate pin up.

That's this cliche in a nutshell. The films that contrive an excuse to get the lead actor's shirt off because damn it if he didn't spend hours in the gym preparing for this movie if he isn't going to show off his efforts!