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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Dad ogling pg 3 girls in playground

406 replies

anotherglass · 21/09/2010 15:02

Strolled into school this morning with DS1 (6) to find a dad "reading" pg 3 of the Sun ( norks were in full view of the Year 2 line up ).

I thought this a tad inappropriate and asked him to turn the page, but he was really put out and huffed and puffed at me.

Tell me I was not being unreasonable.

OP posts:
FindingMyMojo · 23/09/2010 13:48

YANBU to be offended and comment.
The Dad is NBU to huff & puff in response.

Personally I think he acted without thought and in bad taste and I probably would have said something to him also. However its The Sun, a mighty British institution, available everywhere without an age limit, and free on most buses & tubes etc.

I'd never seen anything like it before I moved to UK. Then again what about all the top shelf stuff in the local newsagent - just above all the kiddies sweets??? It is sad at how much sexist stuff is taken to be 'normal'& therefore acceptable in UK, but I believe UK pales in comparison compared to say Scandinavian countries.

FindingMyMojo · 23/09/2010 13:48

YANBU to be offended and comment.
The Dad is NBU to huff & puff in response.

Personally I think he acted without thought and in bad taste and I probably would have said something to him also. However its The Sun, a mighty British institution, available everywhere without an age limit, and free on most buses & tubes etc.

I'd never seen anything like it before I moved to UK. Then again what about all the top shelf stuff in the local newsagent - just above all the kiddies sweets??? It is sad at how much sexist stuff is taken to be 'normal'& therefore acceptable in UK, but I believe UK pales in comparison compared to say Scandinavian countries.

MindFreakette · 23/09/2010 14:25

"In my experience, many men know that you don't look at stuff like page 3 when there are kids around, especially other people's kids. Maybe that is because many men understand at a more personal level what effect such pictures have on them and know they don't look at in front of kids".

Are you having a laugh? Most men who look at bare breasts in a non-sexual context like a newspaper just think, "ooh boobs" and that's about it, it only has an "effect" as you put it, on 14 year old boys or extremely immature men.

I'd be very suspicious of any grown man who is seriously aroused by a page 3 picture in a public place.

They are just breasts for God's sake.

It makes me laugh a little when people go on about the "pornifcation" culture, are most of you so young that you don't remember what TV was like in the 70's and 80's?

Hot Gossip and Benny Hill are just two of the mainstream examples that spring to mind - at least we don't have those delights anymore.

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 23/09/2010 14:47

Ok, everyone who is giving the "just boobs" argument:

Why does page 3 continue? If it's not interesting or arousing or attractive? Why not fill it with news or pictures of sunsets or gerbils?

sethstarkaddersmum · 23/09/2010 15:24

or nuns.
I have met some very pretty nuns if prettiness is all that is required.

vanillacupcakes · 23/09/2010 15:50

Not that it has any relevance anymore but when I said men need some sort of - often visual - stimuli to make sex possible, how did i mean porn?! Maybe with you, though, sethstarkaddersmum.

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 23/09/2010 16:00

ooh vanilla how can you upset poor little SSM like that by suggesting that you don't find her attractive?

chandellina · 23/09/2010 16:10

mindfreakette - I'll take Benny Hill any day over five minutes of MTV

sethstarkaddersmum · 23/09/2010 16:28

I have got even less idea what VanillaCupcakes is going on about now.

HerBeatitude · 23/09/2010 18:27

I don't think we need to think too hard about it SSAM, it's not likely to be very interesting or enlightening. Hmm

Chippinin, I'm going to ask you a direct question: Do you understand that those of us who are objecting to page 3, are not objecting to the sight of breasts per se, because we have no problem with the sight of breasts?

YOu keep saying you disagree, without ever having addressed my original point to you, which was that you misrepresented the argument about breasts being shown in public as a distaste for the sight of breasts per se. I just wonder if you're ever going to acknowledge that or if you're going to keep ignoring it, preferring to re-state that you disagree. Hmm

By all means just tell me straight that you have no intention of addressing that argument, and I'll stop flogging this dead horse.

NotanOtter · 23/09/2010 21:32

chippingin read it and weep

Clumsymum · 23/09/2010 23:04

Blimey, this still going ??

NotanOtter - I fail to see what the death of Emily Davison has to do with this. She died (to my mind pointlessly) in a campaign to give women the right to vote, to hold property, to have rights over their own lives.

Well "lovely Lulu (23) from Epping" Or whoever is on page 3 has taken that right and used it. She has the freedom to get her boobs photographed and shown off in the press, and she has the freedom to have her own bank account into which to put the money she gets paid for that.

Right, now lots of you say that you don't mind boobs, but apparently you do mind tittilation.

Well, putting aside the fact that if tittilation is such a bad thing, how come sooo many of you are parents, you are all making the assumption (along with the OP) that said bloke was ACTUALLY tittilated by the picture, and that is what you find so offensive.

Now as I said back at the beginning of this thread, I assume he wasn't actually exhibiting any openly sexual behaviour (I think OP would have said so). I think the 5 and 6 y.o. kids you are sooooo concerned about wouldn't have noticed the newspaper anyway, and none of them would get the "tittilation" factor anyway, even if they had noticed it, because 5 and 6 year olds aren't equipped to even know what it's about.

So in this case, the only one who might have been harmed by any of this is in fact the OP herself.

She nebbed at what said father was doing, she apparently kept watch on him

"The dad must have been receiving some sexual gratification from the picture (albeit low level) otherwise why would he have been staring at it for so long"

and then she got all offended when he "huffed and puffed" cos she told him he shouldn't be doing it

sethstarkaddersmum · 23/09/2010 23:34

we mind titillation in the playground.
How hard is that to understand?
Sex is fine in private. Soft porn - well, don't like it personally but each to his own in private.

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 23/09/2010 23:54

Thanks NotAnOtter - I never knew this: "On 2 April 1911, the night of the 1911 census, Davison hid in a cupboard in the Palace of Westminster overnight so that on the census form she could legitimately give her place of residence that night as the "House of Commons". Tony Benn MP placed a plaque there to commemorate the event."

All the more reason to love Tony Benn

NotanOtter · 23/09/2010 23:58

Tony Benn ...my hero.....

(that's a whole 'nother Mumsnet Classic thread Wink)

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 24/09/2010 00:11

What a brilliant thing for ED to do. The memorial plaque (pic on wikipedia) has her picture with the suffragette sash across the bottom left

NotanOtter · 24/09/2010 00:32

what a brilliant woman she was!

AngelsOnHigh · 24/09/2010 09:27

Can't believe a daily newspaper still has "page 3 girls".

Haven't had them in OZ for about 2 years

sethstarkaddersmum · 24/09/2010 14:50

that;s interesting Angels.
Why did they stop? Was it due to feminist/religious pressure or were they just making the paper look old-fashioned and not selling any more?

NotanOtter · 24/09/2010 20:54

angels that shocks me
bloody uk with its all male cabinet and page 3 grrrrr

sethstarkaddersmum · 25/09/2010 09:19

I thought we'd got a woman Home Secretary NotanOtter?! Don't tell me Theresa May has been liquidated? Shock

NotanOtter · 25/09/2010 21:08

sethsmum that's called a TOKEN woman Wink

AngelsOnHigh · 26/09/2010 07:16

Meant to say 20 years not 2.

It just wasn't relevant to our society anymore. Don't think that there was any uprising or anything.

I think it was just old fashioned.

Besides, go to any beach in Sydney for about 9 months of the year and you can see the real thing.

Your poor blokes spend most of the year looking at women bundled up in winter clothes so they probably buy the paper just to oogle at the page 3 girl. Grin

sethstarkaddersmum · 26/09/2010 08:44

LOL Notanotter!

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 26/09/2010 17:52

Spot the women - fun for all the family

Clue They have put three of them together right at the front so you can't miss 'em