No More Page 3!

[Whoreandpeace]

No big announcement but apparently The Sun featured its last 'bare breasted beauty' on Page 3 last Friday. If so, well done to the No More Page 3 Campaign, which I signed when MNHQ first made me aware of it.

The cynic in me tells me that this 'surrender' will just be a test. If sales go down then those babes will be back in all their pouty nakedness, I'm sure.

But for now I am celebrating, even though those naked images will most likely be replaced by young women in underwear and swimwear, because fully clothed women are still not doing anything newsworthy enough for The Sun.

"Can we have a page 3 dedicated to topless men now?"

I think they did try a Page 7 Fellas once.

Here you go Readaholic, he's a dish.

I've never seen anybody wank over page 3. And I think given what's freely available on the internet it's a bit disingenuous to pretend that page 3 is the problem as far as 'wank' fodder goes.

I've never found it disempowering. I think the main times I've been disempowered as a woman were when I was made redundant for having a baby and found that being a mother automatically dented my career prospects. I never felt the fact a woman was topless on page 3 of the Sun disempowered me or made me be taken less seriously.

I also think it's a terrible example of tokenism which has allowed some people to feel triumphal when in reality it will make fuck all difference to the lives of women in this country and it's like putting a sticking plaster in a severed leg when you compare it to the really nasty stuff freely available on the internet. It might have mattered in the 70s but the abolition is absolutely irrelevant now. They know nobody is going to stop buying their paper because you don't have to buy a tabloid to get a glimpse of a pair of naked breasts these days. Or a naked anything else you care to think of.

Incidentally I strongly suspect it's a publicity stunt and they will engineer an outcry which leads to it's reinstatement in a couple of weeks along with a nice bounce in sales. I would be more surprised if that didn't happen than I would be if Katie Price and her current husband were still happily married living in a bungalow in Bournemouth in their 80s.

MoanCollins, you don't see a link between women appearing topless on page 3, with the clear implicit message that women are only useful as sex objects, and women's intellect and ability being so undervalued in the workplace that it was possible for your employer to push you out when you had a baby? You don't see a link between you being taken less seriously as a woman in the workplace than a man would be and the daily drip, drip, drip of topless women happy to make themselves available as wank fodder to anyone who could afford the price of the 'newspaper'?

It's not really for its effect on women that page 3 deserves its place in a hall of shame. It's the effect on male employers and male colleagues, namely the encouragement of male chauvinism.

(And I don't think you are likely to come across people wanking over anything, let alone page 3, wanking generally being a private activity, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.)

For those who think there is no problem with "Page 3", then please imagine that Page 3 was a page where every day a topless picture would appear of "a person": a man, a woman, any ethnic origin, any age, any ability, any job, including breastfeeding mothers. The point would be to celebrate the diversity and beauty in the whole of the human race not just in a very narrow minority.

The fact is that Page 3 only celebrates the sexual-ness of very young women, all pouting and posing in a 'do you want to do me?' type of way which is not relevant in a family newspaper available everywhere and anywhere with no censorship for those too young to understand that message. This kind of image is available in many other places so no-one is being deprived if Page 3 changes.

Many people find nudity embarrassing and feel uncomfortable seeing it when they least expect it. They choose not to buy The Sun, but the fact is that The Sun is everywhere, in cafes, in supermarkets and on trains. If people want to look at pictures of nude girls there are plenty of places to find them. Let's respect the wishes of those who don't.

Excellent posts Math & W&P - agree with every word.

If people want to look at page 3 pictures, buy one of the other papers who haven't stopped publishing pictures of topless young women.

I can't believe how many of you are comparing page 3 with porn. A picture of a topless woman isn't porn, it's just a picture of a topless woman and nothing more. It doesn't imply she is about to have sex with anyone, least of all the reader. These women are just making the most of their assets, much like an intelligent woman might do in any other career.

So the only "assets" they have are their breasts? Because they aren't intelligent?

And we wonder what effect page 3 has on how society views women.

Agreed Moancollins

I was expecting a raft of 'ugly feminists put me out of a job, now I have to work on the checkout for min wage' type articles.

Absolute bollocks. To say that I was made redundant after having a baby because of page 3 is absolutely laughable. I was made redundant after I had a baby because they were worried I'd have another one and they didn't want to pay me on maternity leave again. And the law as it stands allows companies to offer a relatively small pay off that people in precarious financial positions (like women who've just returned from maternity leave) have to take otherwise they won't be able to pay the rent next month in return for signing away any right to legal redress.

Honestly, it makes me despair that people can make such spurious connections. If depictions of all naked women were banned tomorrow it wouldn't stop things like that happening. It's entirely driven by money. It's nothing to do with page 3.

I really think it's an absolute joke that people think this is going to make any difference. It's just an opportunity for a bit of mutual backslapping over something which in reality is going to make bugger all difference to anybody.

Totally agree with you MoanCollins. Stopping Page 3 achieves nothing.

& keeping page 3 achieves what exactly?

Page three has never bothered me, but I do wonder if their profits will start to fall!?

MadeMan I know what you mean about how some people's hair colour, make-up etc. depresses you. It does me too. It's the fakery involved - they look fake, but 'normal', and I find that curious, that such a look should be seen as normal. In fact I'd go further - I like looking good and I put on a bit of slap for a night out. But I find it a shame that being made up is a default position rather than something special and that people's natural looks are no longer good enough, and that some are 'enhanced' for everyday to an exaggerated degree with make-up, orange foundation & long fake lashes, thick painted brows, etc.

I know I'm probably in a minority here and it's also hard to explain in writing.

Stopping Page 3 achieves nothing

Not today. But tomorrow? Next month? Next year?

As society changes bit by bit and inches more towards proper equality this moment will be seen as a defining one. Another step in the road to society thinking of women as human beings with something of value to offer.

A picture of a topless woman isn't porn

Technically correct. A picture of a topless me would not be pornographic as I'd be looking a bit uncomfortable and I certainly wouldn't be pushing my chest out so that the camera could have a good look at my titties.

Porn is about what the picture suggests. And all of those pictures suggest 'sex' which is why all those poor drooling builders like to look at them, presumably. They need to have a 'whoar' moment in their day, I'm guessing. They don't look at them and say 'what a pretty lassie, I bet their mum is dead proud of them. I really hope that my daughter has a chance to strip her clothes off and gets published in the Sun/Star for my work colleagues to get a hard-on when they look at her'.

It's porn - the pictures are sexualised and provocative. End of.

Porn is about what the picture suggests. And all of those pictures suggest 'sex' which is why all those poor drooling builders like to look at them, presumably. They need to have a 'whoar' moment in their day, I'm guessing. They don't look at them and say 'what a pretty lassie, I bet their mum is dead proud of them. I really hope that my daughter has a chance to strip her clothes off and gets published in the Sun/Star for my work colleagues to get a hard-on when they look at her'.

Exactly. What is it then, if it isn't porn? It's not an article about the girl is it? It doesn't discuss her or her actual thoughts. No, otherwise she'd probably have clothes on and men would be spitting feathers about why the paper was giving girls all the time and not boys.

It's literally just there for male readers (hetero ones at that) and it's just there so they can see a bit of titty, when let's be honest there is so much fucking boob available in this world we're tripping over it. Why does it actually have to be in our newspapers?

Why not advertising orange juice? Why not have a lady on TV topless doing the hoovering to see a new vac powder?

Why not let your children be exposed to girls as viewing objects in a paper that advertises free lego.

I sit there and I listen to the constant whiners, and I know why the men do it. Obviously. They want women constantly available. fine it makes sense form their point of view. But it's the women who are determined that men DESERVE constantly voyeurism of teenage girls that makes me want to fucking puke. What are you teaching your children? What are you telling them women are for? How do you see your self?

YAY at ^^ RoyallyFuckedOff's post.

Constantly whining that women are perecived as sex objects just reinforces that fallacy.

Perhaps you need to surround yourslef with people who dont see women in such a negative manner.
Art galleries next on the list then? Those poor exploited female life study models. Abused by having to get their tits out for an artist and then have people oggling at their image for years to come.
So sad that the full force of feeling on here is not directed towards other much more damaging behaviour: child abuse, grooming etc and that any energy is devoted to ban Page 3.

Don't worry Wet - all of those are on the hit list too. One step at a time. Those problems are discussed elsewhere. This is the "Hooray No More Page 3" thread.

Yawn.

WetAugust. It's not just the picture it's what's written too, that was sexist beyond belief!
But yes, this is a victory thread so I'm happy.

OK, MoanCollins, so you don't see any link between the rights of employers to effectively discriminate against women and the fact that many newspapers see women's bodies as a commodity useful to boost sales? Do you not see the complete lack of respect for women as three dimensional members of society that is common to both the discrimination and the purveying of images of boobs?

And yes, it is young girls we are talking about. Sometimes very young girls. In the past there was a countdown until one particular model turned 16 (Lindsey Dawn McKenzie I believe).

And we wonder how horrors like Jimmy Savile got away with what he got away with for so long.