For 44 years, The Sun newspaper has printed a toplesspage 3 girl; her smiley friendly face has cheered up many a worker on theirlunch break, entertaining them with her outstanding pert take on current affairs. However, thelast two days has supposedly seen a turnaround in the fortunes of the page 3 career girlwith The Sun failing to print it and its sister paper The Times declaring thetabloid would no longer feature Page 3 girls.
On Channel 4 yesterday Jon Snow interviewed page 3 girlChloe Goodman, Feminist Germaine Greer and Harriet Harman MP.
It was a wonderfullydebated piece with Harriet Harman only managing to convince that the mainreason it should be banned now was because it is outdated and in 100 years timewould give a misleading view of how our society saw women. To which Miss Goodmancounteracted this view by rightly stating that society’s history is one of thenude; that statues of nakedness have always appeared as a celebration of thehuman form. Rather contrary to how Snow expected the feminist Greer to answershe said ‘page 3 cheers up her odd job man’.
With some glee in their tone The Sun returned today with apage 3 girl winking away with the caption below reading “further to recentreports in all other media outlets, we would like to clarify that this is page3 and this is a picture of Nicole, 22, from Bournemouth.
“We would like to apologise on behalf of the print andbroadcast journalists who have spent the last two days talking and writingabout us.”
And the sister paper, The Times cheekily replies that theSun had “made a clean breast of it and admitted there’s still some nudes toreport”.
It appears to be an excellent PR stunt by the media giantand one that has generated fantastic topical discussions about whether thisshould be included in the press.
Rightly pointed out during the Channel 4 newsdiscussion was the fact that dominant stories in broadsheet papers are still ofmen and not women. However, this is not page 3’s fault. For surely an equal andfair society would show the same emphasis of powerful women to men in media; as well as awoman choosing to pose topless. A power play of the female form.
