Lori Anderson: Cover up naked exploitation

NO MATTER what kind of pornography is now available, half-naked women should not be posing in a national ‘family’ newspaper, writes Lori Anderson.

GET them off!” The words may be the same but the sentiment is entirely different. For almost two generations those three little words have become the clarion call of tanked up lads hell bent on crushing women down to the size of their breasts. When I cry “Get them off” I am imploring every one of you who is reading this to do the right thing: get topless women off the pages of the Sun.

If Edward Gibbon were alive today he would see this licentiousness as another nail in the coffin of the decline of Britain. He would, however, shower pages of praise on Lucy Holmes, a blogger and activist, who has launched a campaign to force News International’s most profitable newspaper to ditch the topless Page 3 girl. Frankly, her departure is long over due.

I still remember coming home from school on the No 38, and the creeping feeling of discomfort and awkwardness I would feel whenever I heard the rustling of a newspaper and spotted a man leering at a Page 3 girl. It brought sex into a public place where it had no right to be, and it reduced every woman within the perimeter to their mammary glands as if they were not worthy of being seen as a whole person. There was only ever one reason for page three’s existence: to give men an erection. After all, doesn’t sex sell? But in doing so it has demeaned every single woman in the country and continues to do so. It is as much an anachronism as Benny Hill’s lecherous milkman and leaves just as sour a taste in one’s mouth.

As a young girl Lucy Holmes would often look at her brother’s copy of the Sun and the busty girls on Page 3 and later grew up lacerated with self-loathing as she “failed” to fill out to what she had been conditioned to believe was normal. The editor of the Sun may attempt to portray his “all-natural” beauties (girls with breasts implants were “banned” a few years back) as a cheeky, but largely innocent British institution, like a saucy sea-side postcard come to life, but behind the bright smiles is a darker legacy.

The conception of “Page 3” took place in November, 1969 when Rupert Murdoch relaunched the Sun with Ulla Lindstrom, a Penthouse Pet posing provocatively in an unbuttoned shirt. It took 12 months, instead of the normal nine, for the sexist concept to become a daily mainstay when the editor, Larry Lamb, decided to spice up the paper’s first anniversary by printing a photograph of the German model, Stephanie Rhan, sitting in a field topless. Every day since the Sun has run a photograph of a semi-naked girl to titillate their male readership, with only the most serious disasters such as 11 September capable of pushing her off the Page 3 pedestal and send her tumbling further back inside the paper.

At the time of Page 3’s twisted birth Britain was a different place, especially for women. Women in the work place were not as common as today and routinely paid less than their male colleagues for doing the same job, with the equal pay act still five years from coming into force. Sexual harassment in the workplace was just a bit of fun and rape was probably the woman’s fault according to many police officers. I recently watched a British film, Night Watch, made in 1973, starring Elizabeth Taylor in which I couldn’t help but gasp during a scene where a secretary asks her boss why the police have paid him a visit. “I’m suspected of raping secretaries!” he quips, to which she emits a coy little giggle.

In the 1970s a topless girl drove up the paper’s circulation and was quickly copied by the Daily Star and the Mirror with the result that for two decades the nation’s most popular papers promoted the idea that a woman’s value was determined by what she carried right in front of her. We all owe Clare Short a debt of gratitude as she first launched a campaign against Page 3 girls in 1986 and was roundly mocked as a kill-joy though she did give the Mirror pause for thought and by the end of the decade the paper had dropped them, admitting they were sexist. When she renewed her campaign in 2004 the Sun ran a photomontage of her face on a Page 3 girl’s topless body and branded her “fat and jealous”.

I would like to see News International try that particular argument against a female Member of Parliament in today’s climate. The fear that this organisation once generated among our elected officials has evaporated. The newspaper empire of Rupert Murdoch is battered and on the ropes as a result of the phone hacking crisis, which is exactly why now is the time for us all to pile on and batter those remaining executives into submission. Rebekah Brooks was said to have opposed Page 3 when deputy editor of the Sun but then went on to write an editorial in its defence when she got the top job, and it appears clear from her behaviour during recent years that when it came to the pay off between principle and ambition there was only ever going to be one winner. So if a woman at the top of the company couldn’t bring herself to end Page 3, it falls to all of us acting collectively.

Looking back over the past four decades of Page 3 there are plenty of icky moments, such as Sam Fox and Maria Whittaker exchanging their school uniforms for a pair of bikini briefs and the bright lights of the Sun’s photographer studio as soon as possible after they turned 16. Imagine if it was not Britain’s largest newspaper but their next door neighbour offering them money to disrobe? Clearly this was viewed as morally wrong, if not strictly illegal, and in 2003 the new Sexual Offences Act raised the minimum age for topless modelling to 18.

I believe women should be free to do as they please with their bodies, which includes posing topless. My argument is not with the act but with the location. We live in a sex-drenched society where hard core pornography is now legal and freely available and by comparison, topless photographs could be viewed as harking back to a more innocent age, but I and 34,000 other women (and men), those who have signed up to the campaign, believe that the pages of a national newspaper are not an appropriate place for such a display.

I would urge every woman reading this article to take one minute out of their day and sign up to Lucy Holmes’ online petition at nomorepage3. Your voice is needed for there is still a long way to go but it is a worthwhile destination. The demise of Page 3 would send a powerful signal indicating that our nation has finally grown up and left behind such adolescent behaviour and the unsavoury example it set. Page 3 was part of an epoch that has now passed, along with KP nut girlie calendars, Denim aftershave and rape jokes. It is time for Samantha, 18, from Sheffield to button up and shift to the top shelf.