Thursday, January 29, 2015

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Page 3: enough is enough

Posted: 28 Jan 2015 01:35 AM PST

The Sun, sexism, No More Page 3, The very purpose of Page 3 is clearly to 'humiliate, chasten and bully women'.

Last week The Sun, in its infinite wisdom, published a picture of a topless woman on its page 3 after widespread rumours that it had 'quietly' abolished the sexist tradition.

It is impossible, as Sarah Ditum pointed out in the New Statesman, to tell whether the repalcement of a topless young women with bikini-clad women for one day was a deliberate PR stunt to spread the rumours that the topless images were no longer to be run before 'returning' the feature, or just a clumsy two fingers up at the campaigners who rejoiced at the topless image’s demise.

However one thing is for sure: The Sun has exploited the publicity to its fullest.

Its PR head, Dylan Sharpe, wasted no time tweeting the 'return' of the topless Page 3 image – 'Nicola, 22, from Bournemouth' – to Harriet Harman, QC, MP, the UK’s Shadow Deputy Prime Minister, and other women who had campaigned against the feature.

Proving, as Ditum wrote, that the very purpose of Page 3 is to 'humiliate, chasten and bully women' and to try and make them look stupid.

However, while The Sun’s editor David Dinsmore and his boss Rupert Murdoch’s last ditch attempt to show that they are still in control by sharing 'Nicola' with the world on 22 January may well have intended to avoid alienating Page 3-loving readers, it was such a pathetic attempt at retaliation that they have merely enraged even more of the public.

The No More Page 3 (NMP3) campaign has now collected more than 230,000 signatures online.

And it has inspired similar campaigns in other countries; and there is now, for example, a petition against the German newspaper Bild's use of hypersexualised imagery.

The Sun's miscalculated decision has encouraged a multitude of women to share personal stories about how they suffered from Page 3.

Ditum told of having to listen to punters at her bar job debate aureole, and there are many stories of objectification, humiliation, grooming and sexism linked to Page 3. Some of these stories, posted as part of the Everyday Sexism campaign, are highlighted  by Laura Bates in her recent open letter to David Dinsmore.

Whatever its intentions, the Sun has gained few friends with its unwelcome 'surprise'.

Because, as the NMP3 campaigners wrote in The Metro, opposition to Page 3 is not a campaign of the few, but of 'generations of women and men tired of the disrespect and degradation'.

It is a campaign supported by the teaching unions, Rape Crisis, nurses, midwives, breast cancer charities, and young men and women in Britain who do not think the concept is funny.

Young women from the Girl Guides have spoken out about wanting better images of women in the press, and have supported the NMP3 campaign for almost two years.

On 21 January they released a poster which read 'I backed the No More Page 3 campaign and my voice made a difference'.

On the 22 January, The Sun effectively told those young women that their appearance and sex appeal was still more important than their voice and anything they might do with their lives.

So this week Girlguiding members have written to the Editor of The Sun. They want, they say, to see women's achievements, not their breasts, on the most prominent page of his ‘family newspaper’.

But the picture of ‘Nicola, 22,’ has in fact proved what campaigners have said all along: this is not about sex, but about power, about putting women ‘back in their place’.

And it will not work.

It is the pathetic last cry of a dying ‘tradition’ that is outdated and alienating more readers than it will gain.

The public knows it, and now The Sun just needs to admit it once and for all.

As the NMP3 petition so rightly says: 'David, stop showing topless pictures of young women in Britain's most widely read newspaper, stop conditioning your readers to view women as sex objects. Enough is enough.'

You can sign No More Page 3 campaign’s petition here.