What to do with Page 3…

The No more page 3 campaign was started almost a year ago, in the 2012 summer of the Olympics, by Lucy Anne Holmes. For her, the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, was the fact that on the day after Jessica Ennis won gold, the largest picture of a woman in the Sun newspaper was a Page 3 girl.

Think about that for a moment.

Jessica Ennis had spent the last few years sacrificing everything to achieve that peak physical perfection needed to win gold : punishing training regime, restricted social life, huge amounts of self-sacrifice, self-discipline and determination… And it all comes good, and the whole country is ecstatic and she is a true modern heroine.

And in the Sun newspaper she is overshadowed by a woman whose main achievement is that she HAS BREASTS.

It is truly awful when you think about it, isn’t it, what the Sun thinks women are good for… And what they think about women’s achievements and where they stand in the pecking order. The editorial meeting that day must have gone something like this :

‘gold medal / tits…  *weighing it up in the balance*  … gold medal / tits,   gold medal / tits….  yep, let’s go with the tits…’

Another campaign currently in the news is the attempt by Caroline Criado- Perez to get the Bank of England to recognise women’s achievements in another arena – that of the depiction of national figures on banknotes. When Elisabeth Fry is replaced by Winston Churchill on the five pound note there will be no woman on a banknote except for the Queen, and she doesn’t count because she is THE MONARCH and the monarch is ALWAYS on the banknotes, gender notwithstanding. So what does this say about women, our achievements and our place in society? Or, more to the point, what does it say about what the Bank of England powers-that-be think about women’s value?

Not much it seems : their views sound very similar  to the views of the Sun’s new editor and editorial team. The Sun newspaper and the Bank of England –  These two out-of-touch, behind the times, male-dominated institutions have a lot in common. They should get together…

Oh hang on…

(And this is so obvious I’m surprised nobody’s come up with it yet)…

Here’s a solution :

I support the No More Page 3 campaign  AND the banknotes campaign – LETS GET TOGETHER! Lets think about the message these two venerable old male institutions are telling us! Take it on board! Embrace it! There’s a solution here to please everyone! We DON’T want sexist images in our newspapers but we DO want to celebrate the contribution of women in our society on a banknote! And we are all now aware of what that major contribution is, thanks to the Sun!  SO… LET’S TAKE THE PAGE 3 GIRL OUT OF THE NEWSPAPER AND PUT HER ON A BANKNOTE!!

Now – who wants to join my campaign…?

 

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/dominic-mohan-take-the-bare-boobs-out-of-the-sun-nomorepage3

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/bank-of-england-keep-a-woman-on-english-banknotes