Oh, Tits!

In a plot twist we never saw coming, today boobs actually are news. After a short holiday, Page 3 has retuned to it's usual spot on erm, Page 3 and tits for breakfast are back on the menu.

Up and down the country people celebrate the fact that The Sun has taken this galiant and defiant step to defend a great British institution (I've honestly never understood that, tea and crumpets are a British insitution, soft porn in a family newspaper? Far less so). I can practically hear them dancing around jabbing their pins into voodoo dolls in No More Page 3 t-shirts. This is, surely, a victory against the jealous prudes who were offended by boobs and wanted to banish all glamour models... Right? 

I mean, yes. The Sun has got what in wanted. Print journalism is dying, so if you'd had everybody talking about you for days you'd cash in on it too. The Sun have never exactly gone about making their money through good, well balanced journalism so we can't expect them to start now. Old habits do die hard, after all.

It's just that, this doesn't feel like a loss. It feels like a speed bump. For the first time in a long, long time people were focused on how women are presented in the media. Whilst some debated whether Page 3 was the place to start, one thing that did become clear was that people were uncomfortable with the way things are right now. Magazines like Heat & Now make their money from body-shaming, magazines like Vogue make their money by filling their pages with models who's weights are achievable. Victoria's Secret make their money by flaunting the exclusive beauty and bodies of their models and The Sun makes it's money by sexualising women. In the meantime, the male body only appears to be flaunted whenever David Beckham strips into his H&M undies or David Gandy has dipped into the blue Sicilian waters for his latest campaign. The male body is flaunted no where near as often as the female body - it's just normal for a woman to have all these different publications tell her how she should look and what her worth is.

It's funny, I'm writing this whilst on my lunch break at work, where I have spent the morning combing through our twitter feed (I'm social media intern, not a mega skiver). Last night the Department of Health announced that it would take Standardised Cigarette Packaging (where all cigarette packs would have the same colours and font, in a way to remove attractive packaging the way they have in Australia) to a vote before the next general election. Some people are NOT happy that health freaks are our to ruin free speech...

I'm starting to think there's no pleasing some people. If we're going to argue over how powerful cigarette branding is, then we're OBVIOUSLY going to argue over whether or not Page 3 is a bad thing.

The Sun had the opportunity to be seen as progressive for the first time in it's circulation. Whether they'd been planning to bring the page to an end or not, they could have never printed tits again and people would have been none the wiser about if it was their plan. Instead it is still acting like a small boy on the playground playing a game of 'show me yours and I'll show you mine' because 'We had a mammary lapse' - really?!?

I've seen more wit come out of a three year old. 

So, I was wrong. We did not win the battle and that's ok...

Winning the war has always been more satisfying anyway.

-xo

We May Have Won The Battle, But The War Rages On

Today, #Meninists everywhere are in mourning. No, not for their sanity, dignity or humanity but for Page 3 (or so I imagine). It seems as though media Mogul and long term fan of breasts, Rupert Murdoch, has decided to rather quietly pull the feature from The Sun, it only took him 46 years. Well done, Rups! 

The reasons are unclear and a spokesperson from The Sun is yet to comment, but their sister paper, The Times, has respoerted that it's over - and I'm pretty sure that's as close to an answer as were ever going to get. 

 

There's no denying that the No More Page 3 Campaign had something to do with it. Murdoch may have been tweeting that he thought it was old fashioned, but the campaign was a platform. It was a spring board for those, up and down the country, from all walks of life, to come forward and share their stories. I don't think anyone expected the impact Page 3 could have. Women and men came out in their hundreds of thousands to sign the petition. Hundreds of thousands. If you think that this was work of some group of 'fucking feminists' then you, my friend, are wrong. This is a battle that has been won by everyone. 

As for those wonderful people at NMP3 HQ - thank you. Thank you for your hard work and dedication. Thank you for your loyalty to the cause. Thank you for waking up every morning and still believing in this. Whilst 3rd Year and being a graduate took over my life and my involvement sadly became less and less, that awe-inspiring group haven't rested. They developed and they've grown. They've adapted their stance. They created a movement. 

I'm not sure what happens next. The media is still horrible at portraying women properly. You've only got to glance at a magazine wrack to figure that out. Chances are, they'll just show celebs in their bikinis or in their latest underwear collections. It'll be called progress (and in so many ways it is) but women's bodies will still be the only thing of inportance. Young girls will still grow up being catcalled, my friends and the millions like us will still walk into bars all over the world and have their arses pinched by those who wrongly believe it's theirs for taking. Our mothers will still worry if we walk home alone at night. But it's a start. 10 years from now, no one will think it's normal to have half naked ladies in the paper, no one will be sitting awkwardly on the Tube with boobs in their face. It's a tiny drop in a massive ocean, but drops create ripples, and some ripples are infinite. 

This has, in no way, eradicated sexism. It in no way means that the stigmas around sexual violence that affects both it's male and female survivors have disappeared or that we've solved the global pay gap. 

It's 2015. You can catch a commercial flight to space and for now it seems, there is No More Page 3.