The latest campaign from feminist group No More Page 3 reveals a shocking disparity in the way in which men and women are represented in the media.
Over a six month period, No More Page 3 campaigner Katie Hardie and her team collected every picture of a man and a woman that appeared in The Sun to produce a gender-split collage, revealing a “manufactured” portrait of women in one of Britain’s biggest selling newspapers.
While the men were largely pictured in action shots, celebrating achievements and wearing clothes, the women were often showed in passive states, posed or naked, and with the focus on their physical appearance.
“When I look at the men’s side I see real life,” said Hardie. “But when I look at the women’s side, it doesn’t seem real. It’s all manufactured.”
Since being founded in 2012 by Lucy-Anne Holmes, No More Page 3 has set out to reduce sexism in the British media, with the group lobbying for the removal of topless glamour models from The Sun’s Page 3 – a tabloid with a national circulation of almost 2 million.
It has since garnered over 40,000 likes on Facebook and 213,000 signatures in support of the campaign, which asks Sun editor David Dinsmore to “drop the bare boobs.”
The latest project also points towards the tabloid’s underrepresentation of older women and women in sport.
“This is a newspaper renowned for sport and there’s not a single picture of a woman doing sport,” said Hardie, adding that the only older women to appear are a woman on a mobility scooter, the Queen and Mrs Brown.
Rupert Murdoch has described The Sun’s Page 3 as “an innocuous British institution,” however, the project raises questions not only about how women are viewed in the media, but in society as a whole.
