Should we back the No More Page 3 campaign? Please let us know what you think...

[JustineMumsnet]

Hello all,

As some of you will know, there have been a few on-board debates about the No More Page 3 nomorepage3.org/ campaign, and whether or not Mumsnet should 'officially' join up as a supporter.

Previous threads here here here and here have been on balance supportive but not of a sufficient consensus for us to feel comfortable putting our full weight behind the cause.

With our most recent blog post on the issue, however, support seemed a bit more clear cut and there were lots of calls for us to back the campaign.

So we thought we'd canvass support more officially and widely. Do please use this thread to let us know whether you think we should sign up.

Obviously this is by no means a precise science, but in order to try to get a representative Mumsnet view, we will be placing a bit less weight on the views of those who have signed up to Mumsnet very recently.

So children are going to switch their allegience from P3 to hardcore porn?

Oh dear.

We'd better campaign against porn then.

Oh wait....

Maybe we can do both?

We can campaign for more than one thing at once. Yipeee!

Thank you for the banner poster saying NORKS GREAT.
I am very honoured

And of course I support your campaign

So glad you're on board! Hopefully we can raise a generation without soft porn in the 'news' papers, and #rapemags above kids comics!

Yes, please support it. My young DS saw p3 when some t**t had opened it on this page and shoved it back on an eye level shelf in the supermarket, breasts boobing out for all to see I had to explain to DS that maybe she felt a bit warm so had to take her clothes off.

I then took the paper off the shelf and gave it to the man behind the counter with a disgusted look on my face saying I didn't think her tits should be busting out at young children.

Yes, please support it. My young DS saw p3 when some t**t had opened it on this page and shoved it back on an eye level shelf in the supermarket, breasts boobing out for all to see I had to explain to DS that maybe she felt a bit warm so had to take her clothes off.

I then took the paper off the shelf and gave it to the man behind the counter with a disgusted look on my face saying I didn't think her tits should be busting out at young children.

This blog in the Huffington Post is by a man and about how uncomfortable page 3 makes him.

It was interesting, that blog, Annie.
I was struck by the bit where he said the women were oblivious. It made me wonder whether they really all were oblivious or whether they were just very good at appearing to be, because when some arsehole is getting his rocks off by looking at porn in public the last thing you want is to become part of his enjoyment by being visibly discomfited by it.

I am in full support of this campaign.

When taking my car into a local garage for a repair last week with my toddler son, I spotted a wall full of posters/calendars of page 3 young women - as a female customer this made me feel objectified, vulnerable and uncomfortable. Is this how I want my son to view women? Most certainly not.

Would a man feel comfortable walking into a female-dominated work environment to see pictures of scantily clad men on the walls for female gratification? I think not. Would it be frowned upon? Of course. Would it be appropriate? No, most probably not.

Recognises post is as much a rant about the sexist car garage as the Page 3 newspapers but posts anyway

I think the no more Page 3 campaign completely misses an important point. There would not be a Page 3 if young women were not willing to pose topless. Whether feminists like it or not, getting your baps out is seen as an attractive career option by a lot of young women. Having interviewed several glamour models for an article some years ago, I can say that all were from working class backgrounds and the reasons they gave for choosing to pose were overwhelmingly because it was because they felt the alternative was stacking shelves or working in a call centre - jobs their friends were doing for crap pay and conditions. Until we address the problem of how to engage such girls in education and inspiring them to pursue careers where they wear more than a G-string then this is all a futile process. Page 3 is naff, for that reason alone it should go, but it will not address the fundamental problem that too many young women are not engaging with the education system. I'm not saying they are all lining up to be naked in newspapers, but I want to point out that Page 3 is a symptom not a cause of a greater problem.

How is it not the cause? If that option wasn't there and accepted in mainstream newspapers (which the Sun is still seen as by many) do you think so many young women would regard it as a good idea? A mainstream newspaper agreeing not to publish it will send a strong message. Do you think young women decided to get their tits out for the lads in a vacuum? This kind of normalising of naked tits being a passport to better things is why they choose it, it's not there because they choose it.

Blue73 - I disagree. I think that Page 3, and every other place where women are objectified, belittled and reduced to decorative function is the fundamental problem.

Where are the role models for boys? Why, they're running the country, they're playing sports for stupid amounts of money, they're running banks and huge corporations.

Where are the role models for girls? Well, most of them have their clothes off.

Jobs in which women dominate attract very low pay. Women's sports attract no sponsorship. Women who make it in "men's jobs" are still judged on appearance first and ability second, and are paid less than the men.

It's not about engaging girls in education - it's giving them a reason to bother with education. The message is still loud and clear, from Page 3 and everywhere else: "Women - your looks matter more than your abilities. And you abilities are worth less than those of men. So don't try to achieve anything meaningful, just look pretty and if you don't mind, get your tits out for the lads".

Well said, Annie!

Blue do you think women are particularly more interested in getting their kit off than men?

I am willing to bet that if the money were there for men, you'd find just as many males willing to sacrifice their dignity for an "easy" buck.

But no, the newspapers see a demand for tits, so they sell this idea to women.. the few women * who do this thinking there will be a real career (which rarely happens) doing this are not the ones hurting my children. It's the newspapers flogging it, it's the dirty perv on the train leering while sitting next to a girl the same age as the one on the page.

If the Sun were to put a racist comic every week taking the piss out of the same ethnicity and they managed to find a black model to go along with it.. Would you blame the black models or would you be disgusted by the paper and the people who buy it?

*(and I use the term "women" loosely as some of these have been as young as 16, girls really)

But again, Annie, the Page 3 is such a weak place to start here. Girls aren't sat in school pondering whether to stack shelves or strip for Page 3. They're dreaming about winning X-factor and marrying a footballer - all damaging dreams IMHO and much more insidious than Page 3.

I don't agree either that Page 3 is principally erotic like a porn mag. Men aren't wanking over Page 3. It's more an aesthetic appreciation like the educated prefer a Degas nude. In France (where I live) they understand this difference: a early evening family show parades topless models in the opening sequence and the Crazy Horse shows are a national treasure which men and women alike enjoy.

I found myself stunned to silence as my girlfriend waxed lyrical about Crazy Horse, how it was a celebration of sexy women's bodies. No wanking going on here, just an appreciation (not my cup of tea but there you go). Men's and women's bodies ARE different - curves are more attractive than straight lines. If I want sexual stimulation, maybe I'll look at a male nude, but aesthetically, I prefer looking at women nudes.

Blue73 I don't think your point has any relevance.
I don't object to women posing nude - or men for that matter, I like the naked form, in all its wonderful shapes and sizes.
However, I DO object to it in a newspaper. It is a completely inappropriate place and I hate the "perfect" body image it portrays.

Well, I reject the idea that because there are "bigger" issue, that any "smaller" issue isn't worth campaigning over and trying to change. I believe that the bigger issues are made up of all these smaller issues, and the more of them we deal with the better. Since these smaller issues are actually "doable", why not work on them?

And it is also possible to approach a problem such as the low self-esteem/aspirations of young women from more than one angle, and to campaign on more than one front.

So I do agree that encouraging young women to aspire to more career-wise is also a worthy cause, and as such, and as a scientist, I am actively involved in the promotion of STEM to young women.

It doesn't have to be either/or by any means.

As an aside, I completely reject the ideas that a) men don't wank over Page 3 or b) it has any artistic or aesthetic value whatsoever.

Just to clarify, I am not 'blaming' the women who pose. I am pointing out that Page 3 is part of a wider and far more complex issue. I agree that Page 3 should go, but even if it does there are so many other magazines and publications that print semi-naked images of women, including high end magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair. No one batted an eyelid when Kate Moss had her baps out over five pages of Vanity Fair, and that's not just read by men! The question no one appears to be asking is why young women pose for glamour shots? And it's not just because men like looking at boobs. As I say, Page 3 is a symptom not a cause of a far more complicated issue of how as a society we raise and engage with the female gender. Unless that becomes part of the debate then getting rid of Page 3 is a hollow victory as many of the reasons it existed in the first place will remain. I'd like to see the no more Page 3 to be seen as the start of a wider debate rather than just a single issue that once resolved is then forgotton about.

I seriously doubt it will be a single issue then forgotten about moment.

I'm delighted to see Mumsnet support this campaign. I created a website to collect examples of when people have been bullied / intimidated or otherwise made to feel uncomfortable using page 3 as I know it gets used by groups of boys to intimidate girls and that lots of people hate seeing it on public transport. It's here if anyone would like to add a story:

www.page3stories.org

Thanks!

Blue73, one of the great things about this campaign is that it has reached young women who had never had any contact with feminist ideas before so it's also helping to raise consciousness and create a new generation of campaigners. So I think it very much is part of a wider debate. There is a group called Child Eyes who are campaigning against other sexualised images of women and have had some great victories - the Sport have stopped doing their grim "bums in the air" front cover photos and lots of supermarkets have or are in the process of changing how all these images are displayed.

Yes please. Page 3 is incredibly offensive it is an awful relic from the sexist past and I cannot believe it still exists.

It's more an aesthetic appreciation like the educated prefer a Degas nude

Right, wow. You've never actually seen page 3 then have you? The blurb next to the girl woman (which I believe they have now done away with thanks to this campaign)

They give her a little blurb that says something along the lines of:

"EMILY was reminded of engineers' genius when she heard that the Forth Bridge will not have to be painted for 25 years.
She said: "The bridge is possible the most famous example of the balanced cantilever principle, and a monument to mankind's ingenuity."

or

"SAM quoted the Micawber Principle when she heard about soaring interest rates.
She said: "Annual income £20, annual expenditure £19/19/6d, result happiness. Annual income £20, annual expenditure £20/0/6d, result misery."

Geddit? It's funny, cause girls with boobs don't really have anything clever to say! Ha fucking ha.

page-3-girl-quotes.blogspot.co.uk/

Oh and something for you all to think about it.

Before 2003, British tabloids could legally feature 16- and 17-year-old girls as topless models. Samantha Fox, Maria Whittaker, Debee Ashby, and others began their topless modelling careers in the Sun when they were 16, while the Daily Sport was even known to count down the days until it could feature a girl topless on her 16th birthday, as it did with Linsey Dawn McKenzie in 1994. In 2003, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 raised the minimum legal age for topless modelling to 18.

Why do so many young women want to be Page 3 models? Because Page 3 is a full page ad for the job on the most prominent page of the newspaper every single day. For 43 years.
In the Seventies footballers wanted to be seen with a Page 3 model, getting your tits out was the quickest way to bag yourself a celeb. This powerful message to young women has been sent out for two generations now.
The purpose of fashion shoots and Art is not titillation (even if that's a by-product for some) but titillation is the only purpose of Page 3, nothing else, certainly not the appreciation of female beauty. Beauty involves personality and individuality, Page 3 strips that away and presents only a body. If you see how men look at Page 3 in public it's clear that it provokes contempt for women not appreciation.
We absolutely have to look at other opportunities for young women, but while so many flock to do Page 3 the government actually doesn't have to think about it quite so much.

I'm really glad mumsnet is backing this campaign. I think it's really important. I've seen a lot of people argue that there are more important issues out there but you've got to start somewhere and having topless women in an everyday 'family' newspaper gives out a terrible message, to children and adults. Saying 'just put topless men in there to even it out' is ignorant. They aren't remotely the same. Also having the 'amusing' comment next to it, is just men laughing that an attractive women couldn't possibly have an intellectual opinion. Its sexist and hugely outdated.

Page 3 equated to a Degas nude. Hahahahahahahahaha.