Because it's a normal, common interaction among humans, not particularly charged politically if there's no power relationship between the two people. This guy is not asking for nudes to an intern, for instance.

Public exhibition of sexual desire is acceptable in most contexts. If there's a topic of sexism, it is in the fact that men doing this is more acceptable than women doing it, but this should be addressed by removing the stigma from women doing it rather than adding stigma to men doing it.

But more generally, the policing of celebrities personal behavior to conform to strong social mores is a mostly protestant thing. In other cultures, especially before modernity or globalization, fame allowed you exactly to escape the commonplace social mores because you were outside of the community. Taking celebrities as role models and therefore asking them for moral behavior is a very American thing to do, even though after WW2 this system has been pushed throughout the world.

Pathetic maybe, but being pathetic is still not wrong. Creepy I wouldn't say so. Creepy implies an indirectness and second motives: here he's being very direct and his motives are clear.

I don't ask for nudes, because I have no particular interest in nudes and I prefer when they are sent spontaneously. But I deliberately post horny memes on main, where I have professional contacts, to fight against cringe culture and sex-negativity.

Uh I'm not American but I still think ASKING women for nudes is pathetic and creepy

You might not be American, but you're puritanical enough to fit right in in Salt Lake City. The only thing pathetic is being so sexist as to view sharing nudes as diminishing the woman who shared them somehow, which is the only way in which you could see it as demeaning to ask for nudes.