I’m a big supporter of the No More Page Three campaign. I have no issue with women who want to take their clothes off for an audience, but I don’t believe page three of a newspaper is the right place for it. The Sun finds its way into two million homes every day, where it is seen by thousands of children. And what’s the message we’re giving them? Here are lots of men in clothes, doing important things like running the country, and here’s a girl with her breasts out. It’s not an example I want to set my children.
That said, I get far more het up about women’s magazines. Objectifying and sexist though Page Three is, it is at least celebrating women. Have you seen the covers of women’s mags recently? Red pen circles around ‘shameful’ cellulite; dieting tips for losing 7lbs in a week; sobbing women dumped by their ‘true loves’. The overall message here is that beauty is thin, and happiness is a relationship with a man. Nothing else matters.
On Saturday I had to make an emergency detour to the garage, when the exhaust dropped off my car. The children and I waited in reception while men in overalls crawled under our beaten-up Galaxy and shook their heads worryingly. Somewhat distracted by what I could see through the glass, I hadn’t noticed the children poring over the magazines laid out on the coffee table.
‘Mummy, why is that woman’s bottom on the cover?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I didn’t.
‘It’s e-nor-mous,’ read Georgie.
‘Is it?’ Evie said.
‘That’s what it says.’
So we had the discussion that shouldn’t be necessary at all. About how society propagates the myth that women should only come in a size 8 (but still have breasts and hips), and about how magazines make money from the insecurities of women who believe it.
‘How stupid,’ Josh said, ‘it doesn’t matter what people look like, does it?’
It doesn’t, but as long as we publish this rubbish I’m afraid it will. I will continue to back the No More Page Three campaign, but perhaps we should come out from our glass house before we throw stones at The Sun. Women will struggle with self-esteem as long as there are multi-million-pound businesses built on making them feel worthless, and glossy magazines have got that covered.