What's In A Page Three Girl?

11 September 2014 | 3:48 pm | Hannah Story

Rupert Murdoch To Kill Off Topless Tradition

Our supreme media overlord Rupert Murdoch has been under fire for the long-standing British tradition that is publishing pictures of topless women in tabloid newspaper The Sun. (NB: topless women are published in other British tabloids too, but we’re talking The Sun). Take it away Twitter:

It all goes back to the moment when Murdoch started The Sun in 1969 and declared Page Three the place for pretty women for the staff and readers of the paper to ogle at. And then in November 1970 someone had the bright idea: “make ‘em topless!” and a legacy was born. And now it’s 2014 and we still have topless girls on page three because change is hard and political correctness is the end of freedom of speech and yada yada yada people are still titillated by tit pics. In Australia, the tradition was canned in the ‘80s, but some people still look fondly back on Melbourne’s The Truth and sigh, remembering their first print sighting of tits.

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So let’s take a look at this. Because I think the argument that should be made for canning the feature is pretty simple: WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE NAKED BREASTS IN THE NEWSPAPER?

Because it’s not news. And if you’re getting your kicks out of grainy images of young bare-breasted women we need to talk for a second about this thing called the internet, or, if you’re a traditionalist, this thing called a lad’s mag. You can find hundreds, thousands, millions of images of this ilk on the internet. Heck, you can watch video. You can look at tits until your heart is content in the forum where they belong: porn websites, in Zoo, in Vogue in the context of a serious fashion editorial, wherever.

Which is completely different to checking them out in a newspaper. Maybe that’s why it’s appealing, the incongruence of having on Page Three a picture of a topless woman, and then on the next page an article about high crime rates or education policy, like slipping a lad’s mag in your Math textbook and bringing it to class. Maybe it’s that. I don’t know. What we do know is that people like them, as David Dinsmore, The Sun’s editor says. They’re what the readers want (nevermind the female “readers” who are made uncomfortable by the feature).

Let me be absolutely clear: it is fine to spend your time looking at pictures of breasts. There is nothing inherently wrong with topless photographs. It’s also fine for women to want to take pictures of their breasts and share them with whoever they damn well please, whether that be a lover or the entire internet. So long as it’s consensual, it’s all gravy, baby.

What’s not okay is when these breasts continue to be a feature of a newspaper. Heck, even the Irish edition of The Sun replaced them with clothed models. What “news” is has already mutated into something it isn’t, into endless pieces of opinion, into thinly veiled entertainment, good vibes, human interest garbage (look at this puppy, isn’t it cute and heartwarming?). It doesn’t need to be further diluted by pictures of topless women for no discernible reason other than the old adage that sex sells.

The biggest picture in the paper is of a topless woman, while the number of female journalists getting bylines remains small.

Because let’s get one thing straight: the representation of women in newspapers is important. Media representations do affect how people think and feel about issues, and about themselves. It’s important to note that the biggest picture in the paper is of a topless woman, while the number of female journalists getting bylines remains small. It’s important to remember that girls and teenagers can easily access these images and can begin to conflate their self-esteem, their self-worth, with the way they look, with the size of their breasts (because they already have), rather than recognising that they are not just sex objects existing only through the male gaze.

Here’s the scoop: women are people. The Page Three girls are people. The people running the Murdoch press are people. And we all have thoughts and ideas and interests that are worth finding out about. We’ve also all got naked bodies that may or may not be worth sharing with the world. The point is that those bodies don’t belong in a newspaper.

And it’s funny, y’know, that it’s okay to have these images in the newspaper, but people still complain about women breastfeeding in public or going around topless on a 40 degree day. It’s funny that bare breasts are gross or inappropriate or vulgar except in contexts where they offer men gratification (and only within certain parameters: only natural breasts are allowed in The Sun). It’s just funny, y’know?

Not laughing.