....to want to ban page 3???

[DianaVreeland]

I remember seeing a page 3 girl for the first time when I was about 6 as my neighbour bought the Sun. I cringed inwardly, and haven't stopped feeling the same since. I have 5 nieces 3 nephews and my own 2 sons.....I hope they could grow up without seeing images of women objectified like this. Clearly I am not showing this to them but at some point I know they will. Does anyone else feel the same?

I don't see any evidence for 'people like' Krumbum creating a divide. What do you mean?

unity with krum here

Why are you getting personal GhostShip? Just explain your argument instead of saying stuff about Krumbum.

I'm hiding now as I'm getting too agitated and personal :)

I do feel extremely sorry for someone who is going to go through life feeling they need to fight for equality, needlessly. I suppose some people need something to fight for, whether the cause is there or not.

But there is cause. A HUGE amount of cause, I can prove it. I care about how other people in this society are treated. You don't need to feel sorry for me, Im glad I care for other people and I'm glad that I am not ignorant.
Why do you debate on forums if it makes you agitated? Debate is meant to be intellectually stimulating not personal.

I don't see feminism as needless, not at all. It is a very important cause to me and millions of other women around the world. I regard it as extremely important for my children, both the DD and the DS. I hope things will have moved on a bit by the time they're grown up.

Page 3 is a tiny tiny part of feminist motivation, but it is a part of it.

To quote, rather simplisticly, a couple of lyrics from Jam's 'Going Underground' that sum it up for me.

'And the public gets what the public wants'

And then later on...

'And the public wants what the public gets'

The Sun is there because people buy it and it makes a profit. (Showing a blokes knob is not likely to increase sales, because women aren't particulary interested in buying pics of blokes knobs.)

And most of its newspaper readers are female.

Very, very worrying. And long has it been so.

Demographic of Sun Readership

Demographic of Daily Mail Readership

DM readership is 53% women. The Sun is 41%.
Age groups and social class are interesting too. Also there are regional differences.

Have a look at that, and its a very good guide to where you need to focus attention to changing attitudes about women for different reasons and in different ways. Instead of banning things, use the information this provides... its a very, very helpful tool.

YANBU at all. For a long time I felt like I was BU/jealous/petty for disliking it and feeling that it belittled women. It's taken me a long time to overcome those feelings, and to see it's not really related to wishing I looked like them, at all - it's just so demeaning.

I think that some people are looking it in too small away. How it will affect the individual model or reader. I think the issue is how this, and things like this, affect society as a whole. It is just a daily reinforcement that women are just here for mens sexual titilation. I am not saying that p3 is the be all and end all of it, but it is part of it. The thing is it is so engrained in to our society that women are secondary to men that I think that some people don't see it any more. They may feel that from their own personal point of view that they don't feel that way but that is such an insular way of looking at it.

What irritates me is the ridiculous sidebar with the photo which is clearly there to mock the model, quoting philosophers, scientists and writers. Its so false and to me has a really nasty undertone.

Yanbu, they should have got rid of it years ago.

I find TV and films worse in that I get so sick and tired of male protagonists. I am so over the 'male experience'! I know more about how teenage boys react to life events than I do. And it pisses me right off!

I have actually started saying to DH that I am not watching that as the only women in it are girlfriends.

I wish wish wish Mumsnet would help campaign against Page 3. In the mean time those that do want to can sign this: www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/dominic-mohan-take-the-bare-boobs-out-of-the-sun which has been started by a team with MASSES of energy and commitment to this cause. Yes it's just another internet petition but if you do feel it's time this dinosaur were extinct then it only takes a few seconds to sign and the team behind it have a lot more up their sleeves (I have been in email contact with Lucy who is spearheading it).

And remember, those of the 'it's only boobs' camp - it's a newspaper. Boobs aren't news and they are freely available all over the internet or in mags of your choice on the top shelf. The campaign isn't looking to ban porn so you will still have plenty of boobs to look at. Just not in Britain's biggest-selling national newspaper that young girls see in a family setting, thus learning that the path to happiness and successful womanhood is having strange men judge/like your tits. (So long as you are young, thin, large-breasted and white, obviously.)

YANBU. If people want to look at 'fit birds' with their tits out, there are plenty of other publications available in newsagents. It's not right to have these pics in a 'family' newspaper.

I complained to my newsagent once about having the Daily Sport on full display right near the children's magazines.

yanbu. of course it should stop and move to more specialist places. anachronistic, out of date and sexist in 2012 imo.

If everyone hates it so much, don't buy the paper. Whats a petition going to do except for create more publicity? As for the Sun being a 'family paper', I can honestly say I have never seen a child read it. And personally I am in the 'its only boobs' camp, there are several papers and magazines that have pictures of topless men for no reason other than the fact they look nice, you can't call for one to be banned and not the other.

Sadly not buying the paper does not stop the fact that a message that women should be judged above all else on what their tits look like and it is perfectly OK to do this to the woman in the paper, and therefore why not all women?, is being perpetrated by a national 'newspaper'. I don't like it, I don't model for it, I don't buy it, yet I feel it affects me directly as a woman in a negative way against my will all the time. To see examples of the sexism women face everyday, a lot of which is focused on being judged on their appearance, see @EverydaySexism on Twitter. It's unbelievable and hugely reinforced by Page 3. Why is it that a man that voices a political opinion is just a man with an opinion, but a woman with one (particularly one that is anti-page 3) is immediately branded a fat, ugly, no tits, prudish, lesbian, anti-sex, minger by people on the internet who don't even know what that woman looks like? Strangers on twitter have told me I was obviously turned down as Page 3 model and am 'jealous'. As though the very worst thing they can say about me is that my tits are 'not good enough' to be ogled by random blokes. Yet I love my body, it's fab. It so saddens me that pro-equality should be associated with self-loathing. This is what is so so wrong with it.

There is simply no correlation between the media's depiction and men and women. How many men in newspapers have their genitals on display? The day after Jessica Ennis won gold the largest pic in the sun of a woman was the one on page 3 with her tits out. What does that say exactly?

I grew up in a house that took the Sun. Did my parents censor it or hide it from me? Of course not? Did I look at it? Of course! I hated it then and I do now. Not because I object to nudity, the human body is beautiful. Page 3 prostitutes its models to sell papers whilst simultaneously ridiculing them in news in briefs.

What does it say about society when pics of breastfeeding mothers are seen as revolting (I was told when BF to do it in private), yet looking at women's tits on the bus is fine? Do you think women growing up wanting to be a page 3 model are going to consider BF when they have kids? I think not...

I'd be interested to see what impact banning P3 would have on BF rates.

As someone pointed out, some people are happy to see boobs on p3 but not if someone is BF with them. Given that breasts are for feeding babies, I wouldn't what the difference would be if they were seen doing this more than they were seen in daily newspapers.

The reason some people think BF is 'disgusting' is because they are first and foremost seen as playthings for men.

So true FolkGirl! When I was BF DD in 2003 I lived near Hampton Court Palace. That summer a worker there told a BF mother to stop and move on as it might cause offence. Do you think he would have told someone copping a good eyeful of page 3 to stop in case it caused offence?

And missymoomoomee I forgot to say: the Sun regularly has Lego giveaways on its front page. If that were lying my round my house my kids would certainly be thumbing through it. Of course kids look at it!

If a man thinks like that anyway then a pair of boobs not being shown in a newspaper is't going to make him any less sexist or rude, thats down to the person.

I haven't seen a man with a picture of his penis hanging out in a paper no, equally I haven't seen a woman with her vagina out in a paper either.

Do you really think by banning boobs in a paper you are helping the women out there who breastfeed? I don't, by calling for these pictures to be banned you are helping stigmatise a bodypart that is essentially there to feed a child. You can't ask for pictures of them to be banned then complain that you got asked to move when bf in public (which also happened to me more than once).

Personally I feel like women like you, who can simply make the choice not to buy a newspaper, but instead start demanding that things are sexist and should be banned also negatively effect me also.

Why does equality only seem to work when its against women wearing makeup or getting photographed? What about the girls who want to wear tonnes of makeup and get their boobs out? Why don't they deserve equal rights too?

Emc, you know that those pictures are in there, if you don't want your child to see, don't leave it lying around.

Gosh just read my post:

"wonder what" not "wouldn't what"

What was I thinking!