No More Page 3

The first responsibility that needs to be accounted for is to acknowledge that there is power in these images in a national newspaper.  Advertising, magazine covers and editorial spreads all have power.  There are people who have dedicated their lives to studying, researching and understanding how people will have an emotional, intellectual and moral response to an image, sound, voice or text.  This is what people have researched, and this is why they are paid such large salaries.  But to pretend that all this knowledge and the outcomes of research means nothing morally, that these people are servants of the people and seek to reflect back what the people want, is ridiculous. 

Mainstream media still regularly portrays women as meek sexual wallflowers in need of objectification by men.  The media is a tool of social control which nobody seems willing to take responsibility for: it can create a degree of passivity or a reluctance to take action on social problems, numbing our response to violence and maintaining a view that the world is a corrupt, evil and negative place.  Consequently, our consumption of such media forms casts a vote for the type of world we wish to live in, solidifying representations of groups in society based on traditionally accepted roles as inherent truths.  This perpetuates gender stereotypes in the media.  Such blatantly unequal treatment and subjugation of women undoubtedly aids the development of a warped and perverted perspective on gender equality. 

We should not be spreading the message that sex sells or that a woman’s naked body is her entire worth and that young boys should be judging women by their physical appearance.  Page 3 has been perpetuating rape culture for far too long; there is still too much misogyny and sexism in our supposedly westernised civilised society.  We must halt the over-sexualisation of the female form.

Page 3 disseminates the vile myth that women are to be objectified, dehumanised and treated as a tradable commodity, all for men to be sexually aroused by.  We do not need a publicly publishable route to access pornography because this is degrading to women and suggestive of their availability to men, possibly resulting in the contribution to sexual assaults and rapes.  It is time mainstream media outlets took responsibility for the image they are putting out to the world; they need to acknowledge their moral responsibility in the way they represent the role of women in our society.

Furthermore, Page 3 is not just demeaning to women, it’s patronising to men.  It assumes that the only way they will read the news is if there is soft porn pasted throughout.  It suggests that men seek solely to view women as objects.  Men can choose to question the inherent sexism in societal institutions.  They can challenge misogyny, assault and rape wherever they see it.  They can take risks to support their fellow peers to create a fairer society.  They can make good use of their male privilege and redefine the negative connotations for the better.  The first step to making society more equal is gaining the support of men to remove Page 3.  It should not be the struggle of individual, previously persecuted minorities to deconstruct the nature of societal institutions such as The Sun.

And if these are not valid enough reasons for taking the bare boobs out of The Sun, perhaps the 202,397 people who have signed the change.org campaign* can convince you otherwise.

When the value of women is continuously reliant on whether a woman fits the ideal of sexual beauty and whether she fulfils what society has socialised us into expecting from her sexually, we create a society in which the goal of a woman is to be sexually appealing.  The feminine contribution to society is reduced to looking or being sexy. 

Oversimplified and inaccurate (sexist) portrayals of these groups have profoundly affected how we perceive and relate to one another and how we value ourselves.  This is why we still need to fight for equality and the removal of Page 3 from a national newspaper.

If you wish to sign the campaign, follow this link

* (at time of publishing)