i agree, ebert seemed to miss the point at that point in time

To me, any nudity in Lynch's films has never seemed gratuitous or 'for the sake of it', oddly, unlike 'softer' films such as Love & other drugs; anne hathaway's nude scenes i guees are apparently there to show the 'richness' and all angles of the key relationship, but i felt it was just thrown in in order to add some more faux artistic weight    Plus, it sells tickets    "my girlfriend wants me to see love and other drugs, i aint goin to a chick flick"  "dude, she gets naked" "ZOMFG!!!"    Ugh.

 Here's Ebert's review of Blue Velvet: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19860919/REVIEWS/609190301/1023

Roger Ebert has written three films. All of them are Russ Meyer's (s)exploitation flicks. It's not like he has something against sex or nudity in films. I guess he is saying that if one does a film with so serious and twisted sexual scenes it should be done in the same tone all the way. Or then just do a full on sex comedy like he used to do.

To me, Blue Velvet has always been overrated. It holds up extremely well to the first encounter with MacLachlan and Rosselini but after than the movie just slowly loses its momentum.

Anyways, I don't see how some people would think David treats women bad. I can see that David likes women and loves to view them sexually. That doesn't mean he would be degrading towards them. Now, Patricia Arquette said she was totally mad with David during the making of Lost Highway. She said David is the devil as she hasn't ever been comfortable with her body and she felt awful when she had to be naked. But David didn't do it just to be mean.

David understands how much of a pleasure it is to see naked female bodies. He understands people's sexuality. He might depict some characters as whores or submissive to male characters but he never does it to degrade women. Just look at Laura Palmer. She was a young girl who didn't care who she had sex with and she had it very very often. She prostituted herself. In real life that kind of girls would get a lot of badmouthing from other people. But David showed us that kind of girls are also human beings. They can be lovable no matter how sexually immoral they are.

"I guess he is saying that if one does a film with so serious and twisted sexual scenes it should be done in the same tone all the way."

I've actually seen some of Ebert's work with Meyer. The last one "UP!" was extremely ugly. While it always disturbed me that in "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" Ebert stated that the ending had everyone who was bad die. In this case it was 2 lesbians and a crossdresser. Very offensive. 

Most viewers saw Dorothy as everywoman and because of this they got riled up. The fact is that Dorothy was one woman in a unique situation.

I've always viewed "Blue Velvet" has a very powerful love story. From what I could tell, the character of Frank Booth had been scarred in some way. He also was possibly unable to perform sexually. A deleted scene hinted that he was not sexually equipped. So as Lynch stated he wasn't able to show love in a normal way. The striking part of this is that Dorothy eventually betrayed to the audience, though it goes unnoticed, that she sought this affection possibly because she loved him back but was ashamed of her love. Even though her needs are being met by Jeffrey she soon demands that he hit her too.

In that final shot we see Dorothy happy. Yet a certain hint of longing crosses her face as we hear the final strings of "Blue Velvet". Jeffrey may very well have rescued a damsel who didn't want to be rescued at all.