It’s time to bin Page 3
Route’s operations manager, Holly Stead, laments some of the deeply ingrained misogyny in society and culture and asks if the Sun’s Page 3 really has a place left in today’s media.
No doubt you will have heard of the No More Page 3 campaign, which celebrated its first birthday last week. It’s still a hot debate across the country, for a variety of reasons.
The campaign’s ardent supporters — including Bridget Christie, who recently won Best Show at the Edinburgh comedy festival — wear t-shirts to reinforce and repeat their message.
I support the campaign, because my simple personal belief is that it degrades women and is a bad influence on children, who have easy access to it. And going a bit deeper than this, you may also take the view that it is a ‘normaliser’ of a type of attitude towards women, putting one world view in a generalist context. Because what sort of values does it espouse?
However, rather than getting into the nitty-gritty of the discussion, I thought I’d look at some other related happenings and media stories in respect of the debate. The more you look, the more you learn, as the phrase goes.
I hear that recently in Ireland a law has been passed to allow abortion to take place in the country, albeit in very limited circumstances. (If pregnancy threatens the health of a woman, or she is suicidal, she may have a termination; unfortunately it does not extend to cases of rape).
It has been 21 years since an abortion was allowed in the country – for a teenager who was raped. 4,000 women a year visit Britain from Ireland for the procedure. Interestingly, during the long debate on the issue in the Irish parliament, Irish MP Tom Barry pulled his female party colleague Áine Collins onto his lap against her will.
The video footage makes very uncomfortable viewing. What a challenging environment in which to argue over reproduction rights.
Interestingly, in other quarters of the Irish media, Page 3 has been removed from the Irish Sun.
And I read with interest about the case last week of a Muslim woman being ordered to remove her burqa in court, because the judge believed it allowed the opportunity for an impostor to take her place. Even though the defendant’s barrister said that she could identify the woman, the judge stated that the ‘principle of open justice’ required her face to be seen.
This puzzled me. I had, perhaps naively, thought it was the words that mattered, not the face. In any case, I find the interloper scenario that the judge suggested faintly comical – and also notice that women are again being asked to take their clothes off. Coincidence..?
The case has been adjourned until the 12th of September. Joking aside, I await news of its progress, and the associated legalese, on tenterhooks.
The news also that in Pakistan, a new cartoon called Burka Avenger featuring a burqa-clad heroine was launched, is a happier story. She takes on her enemies with books and pens. This is a good thing, I think. She certainly isn’t using her body as a weapon. “Don’t mess with the lady in black, when she’s on the attack!”
It seems there is a groundswell of interest in feminism again, and a new, post-‘girl power’ culture. This year is the centenary of suffragette Emily Davison Wilding’s death, and movements such as the Everyday Sexism project are finding ample fuel.
Thinkers are turning their attention to a wider milieu: Dr. Jackson Katz, an American anti-sexism educator, who gave a speech at a recent TEDx event, believes that men are the key to activating anti-misogynist messages, because, to put it simply, misogynist men would be more likely to listen to men. There is much work, thought and action taking place.
And what I return to time and again is how compelling I find the real life experiences – the burqas and the abortion campaigners, as well as the records of everyday tensions. If a teenage girl is branded a ‘booty whore tramp’ by her father, it seems there is still something to be tackled.
It’s out there in the real world – and so it is in the media. So yes, I believe in and back the No More Page 3 campaign – because Page 3 is a part of many people’s everyday lives. What might a double page spread look like if the court story or the Irish MP-grabbing story were sitting next to an image of a young topless woman? I wonder if that context is an uneasy space for those real life stories.
Conversely, this is why something like Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance does not bother me so much. It is fleeting; it (ab)uses a tone of fun and entertainment; it is clearly stagey and ‘unreal’. Its context is not the real world. Compare it to the institutional contexts of a court and a parliament where there is clearly still tension, and I think it’s a far less troubling phenomenon.