Britain’s The Sun newspaper has decided to remove the topless women from their controversial page 3 spread as a result of a years-long protest and fierce debate from around the globe.
The newspaper has featured semi-naked women on page 3 since it was bought by Rupert Murdoch in 1969. The paper was struggling to stay afloat but became Britain’s top-selling newspaper after it was taken over by Murdoch’s News Corp.
The topless women have been a source of tension since their initial installment as a regular feature of the paper, but the campaigns against it solidified in 2012 with the creation of the No More Page 3 campaign. The campaign was started by a British woman named Lucy-Anne Holmes and has since gained support from several MPs and other advocacy groups such as Everyday Sexism.
The campaign argued that the use of semi-naked women to sell news amounted to unacceptable objectification and contributed to a wider perception of the role of women in Britain.
Rupert Murdoch has responded to the campaign at various points on Twitter, hinting he may drop the feature. Late last year, he tweeted: “Page 3 again. Aren’t beautiful young women more attractive in at least some clothes?” and in 2013 he tweeted “page 3 so last century!”. Despite these reservations, he has repeatedly pointed out that the feature is popular with readers and sells newspapers, and one stage in 2014 saying he thought page 3 is “old-fashioned, but readers seem to disagree.”
On Friday, sister paper The Times announced that as of this week, the topless women would be officially removed from the paper’s print edition but would still be appearing online. In print, they have been replaced with women in bras or bikinis.
British Labor MP Stella Creasy welcomed the decision.
“It wasn’t about Page 3 being offensive but about the impact on our society of judging men and women by different standards, and basically saying that we didn’t need boobs with our breakfast tables. The objectification of women in this way was basically saying to all of us what matters frankly were our breasts not our brains,” she said.
Former page 3 model Laura Lacole, disagreed: “This isn’t a triumph for feminism. This is a triumph for prudishness,” she said.
But anti-page 3 campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez said this attitude misses the point entirely: “This has never been about nudity. Feminists are not scared of breasts. The issue is one of how we perceive women – what we believe they are capable of. Featuring a topless woman on Page 3 of a newspaper populated by images of powerful – and fully-dressed – men perpetuates the idea that men do things and women have things done to them.”
Based on this argument, many campaigners have said the removal of nudity itself does not go far enough, and that including bikini-clad women in the feature is equally damaging.
“Replacing topless women with women in bras only illustrates that the Sun doesn’t understand what’s wrong with its general approach to women and why so many people object to it. It’s not breasts that are the problem with Page 3. It’s the attitudes to women that are promoted by presenting young women as sex objects in a current affairs publication,” columnist Deborah Orr told The Guardian.
The decision has also caused a stir on Twitter, with users across the world hailing the end of page 3.
