It bears repeating: page 3 is still an ugly institution
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Version 0 of 1. What, other than tweet and plot his succession, does Rupert Murdoch do all day? Recently, it emerges, the 83-year-old has been turning his mind to fashions in soft pornography, specifically as they affect his own contribution to the genre, Page 3 in the Sun. Are naked breasts, Murdoch puzzles aloud, still as potent a marketing tool as they were in 1969 when the BBC's high-ranking gropers were learning their various trades, and he began grooming tabloid readers with risqué glamour shots? As the Sun historians Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie record in their brilliant Stick It Up Your Punter!, no previous proprietor had presented sex bait so unceremoniously, without any coy pretence of fashion or show-business significance. This innovation made for steady progress from health and efficiency-ish images to unabashed lewd. "The models slowly evolved from girl-next-door types towards the visual cliches of the soft porn industry," they write. As in contemporaneous dressing rooms at the BBC, this 70s sleaze could easily be passed off, by its beneficiaries, as healthy sexual liberation. Until the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, Murdoch and his bawds could see nothing wrong in exhibiting 16-year-olds, such as Samantha Fox, a schoolgirl when she first went on display. In the first of two tweets that have been interpreted by some experts as questioning the future of Page 3, Murdoch notes, presumably to emphasise the irrelevance of such views: "Brit feminists bang on forever about Page 3. I bet never buy paper." Correct. Today's feminists, many of whom will have signed the admirable No More Page 3 petition launched by Lucy-Anne Holmes, are, typically, no less intolerant about sexual commodification than feminists were in 1986 when Clare Short introduced her indecent displays (newspapers) bill. In return, the Sun persecuted her freely, a project it resumed in 2004 under Rebekah Brooks's editorship. Asserting the ancient right to study young women's breasts in the Commons library, a Tory MP delighted the house with his summary: "This bill deserves the booby prize." As we know, Mr Cameron recently re-affirmed this view; Mr Miliband raised him a Sun photo-opportunity – subsequently apologising to Merseyside. As for feminists not buying his product: again, Mr Murdoch knows us all too well. We do prefer to steal it. British feminists being as niggardly in the Sun's respect as they are about subsidising lap-dancing clubs, visiting Formula One brothels and subscribing to the late men's magazine, Nuts, a periodical brought to its knees by jealous harpies. In any case, given the Sun enjoys a circulation of millions and is prominent on newsstands, copies of the paper still, somehow, find their way into the parallel world of British feminism, along with millions of offices, buses and waiting rooms, where one discovers that the basic degradation formula is intact, minus puns, porno props and younger teenagers. Not that you would be sure, on that score, if the paper didn't supply the age of each model in the caption that fills readers in on her character and interests: "Mellisa, 21, from Kent." The news, for any feminists who may have missed recent issues, is that naked, effectively anonymous, female flesh remains key to the Sun's offer and, hence, to Murdoch's treasured contribution to British public life. Defending routine objectification, the Sun's editor, David Dinsmore, calls it "a good way of selling newspapers". Without the stimuli of women such as Mellisa, 21, from Kent, we might now be spared Mr Murdoch's views on Scotland; this clear-headed deployment of secondary sexual characteristics must have been critical in building the warm relations between the Australian breast-fancier and a queue of doting politicians, latterly Alex Salmond (who thinks Murdoch a "remarkable man"). The collaboration of worthy, family men – Cameron, Miliband, Brown, (pre-Deng) Blair, Campbell – has in turn contributed to normalisation of Page 3's soft porn, even as pressure grows for other allegedly polluting influences to be controlled. No one in recent times has complained more loudly about children and premature sexualisation than David Cameron, that sworn enemy of inappropriate bras and commissioner of the 2011 report, Letting Children be Children. He particularly welcomed a recommendation on "reducing the amount of on-street advertising containing sexualised imagery in locations where children are likely to see it". And the sexualised imagery on Page 3, the Sun's assiduously preserved relic of the era of Miss World, Jimmy Savile, the late Benny Hill's "angels"? By some still unexplained oversight, Page 3 was not even mentioned in the report fulfilling Cameron's manifesto pledge, to "tackle the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood". When pressed, he says that the Sun, unlike girls' underwear, is for parents to police. This complacency, it turns out, is not even shared by the Sun. Promoting a new child reading campaign, the paper acknowledges that it is normal (as opposed to feminist) not to want its tit-fest anywhere near children. Stories by celebrities will be published only, it emphasises, in its "Saturday (non-Page 3) editions". Save the Children's Justin Forsyth and the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, are among big names applauding this highminded initiative from the creators of the ongoing female arse contest, or to use the correct, phonic-friendly title: "ref-rear end-dum". And what of its top breast man, the agonised proprietor? "I think [it's] old fashioned", Murdoch tweets, of the genre he founded. "But readers seem to disagree." Is it just him, he wonders, soliciting more up-to-the-minute responses, or mightn't some judicious accessorising make the raw material more stimulating? "Aren't beautiful young women more attractive in at least some fashionable clothes? Your opinions please." Well, it's flattering to be asked by an expert – how one would love to help – but as his younger daughters, aged 12 and 10, may have told Murdoch by now, he needs to define his terms. "Attractive", as in pretty, or sexually gratifying, or is he asking for a friend? Any thoughts, Nicky Morgan, Justin Forsyth? "Fashionable" as in, say, Wendi Deng-style gowns? Would men go for that? Or does the new objectification require more Dita Von Teese burlesque? Or just, not coral satin pants with suspenders, like the ones Sam Cooke, 28, from Manchester, was wearing in the Sun last Friday? It's a pity, at least from his perspective, that the Murdoch/Deng girls are not of an age to get a few beautiful friends over to model some options for their dad. Unless anyone has a daughter they'd like to volunteer, an A* in suspenders an advantage? Acquaintance with a teenaged girl of roughly qualifying age is not essential, but probably helpful, when it comes to appreciating the degree to which Uncle Rupert's views on women, as still reflected in Page 3, have not progressed since his executives started perving over snaps of their favourite teens. At least he can protest that Rebekah Brooks, quondam chair of Women in Journalism, reassured him it was harmless. But what is his collaborators' excuse? |