Page 3 isn't about sex, but it's not innocent either | From the Guardian | The Guardian
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Dominic Mohan told the Leveson inquiry this week that Page 3 was just clean, healthy fun or, to put it precisely, "an innocuous British institution". Anna van Heeswijk, representing a collection of feminist groups, told the inquiry: "Page 3 tabloids contribute to a culture in which the value of women and girls is reduced to their appearance." Obviously, Mohan can take his "What, me guv?" shtick and stick it up one of his fully clothed areas, but having spoken to former Page 3 girls, van Heeswijk's line doesn't completely do it for me, either.
Stacey M modelled for Page 3 for two years between the age of 20 and 22 (she's now 23). She was an estate agent in Plymouth, lost her job, came to London for a meeting with the Samantha Bond agency and got a modelling job the same day. "I think people overestimate how glamorous it is. It's like a job, really, just a really good job. It's like being an estate agent." She described what the shoots were like: "It's really fun, everyone's really family-oriented. There wouldn't be any men involved. Not that it would have mattered if there were, but the photographer's always this one woman [Alison Webster], who's like your mum. All the girls get on with each other …"
Obviously, female photographers aren't constitutionally unable to create pornographic images, but something Stacey says really hits me between the eyes: "You're not doing a raunchy pose, you're smiling. You're not pulling a sexy face. It's just like you're stood there, smiling. You're meant to be happy." Peta Todd, the first and so far only Page 3 girl to go back to work having had a baby (also the first person I've heard say a nice thing about Rebekah Brooks), elaborated: "You'd struggle to find anything very sexual on Page 3, it's quite kitsch. If the picture is too sexy, if it's not smiley, the people who get the most upset are the Sun readers."
Not only is the whole thing the opposite of the pornified image – the sight of a happy woman is, I think, taken to be an active turn-off in pornography – it's the opposite of the modelling image. Catwalk models always look depressed, which may originally have been the unintended consequence of being on a diet, but has become a cultural ideal in its own right – true femininity as a state of mysterious, disengaged misery.
This is what makes Page 3 look dated, not the fact that a naked 20-year-old is incongruous, opposite what might be a photograph of a female head of the IMF, but rather, that sexism has moved on.
Todd says: "Out of all the jobs that you could be doing now, Page Three might be a bit out of touch. But compared to the shock and taboo factor it used to have, it's paled into insignificance." She demonstrates this with a story about her deeply religious grandmother (there are a lot of missionaries in the family). "She dropped me off to my first job in her Nissan Micra. I'd had the conversation with her, I was really nervous, and she said: 'As long as you're safe and you're happy, I don't really want to look at it, but I don't mind' … very, very soon, it had just become like a normal job. She'd come back saying: 'So and so from church wants you to sign a calendar for her son.' "
Many women say it's not the toplessness they object to so much as the "hilarious quote" from the model, always carefully strange. This week, a woman had the speech bubble: "Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, pigs treat us as equals." They'd call it post-irony, I bet, but it's intended as bathos – the juxtaposition of the exalted Churchill against the commonplace woman. (Ha! – she probably doesn't even know who Winston Churchill is. She probably thinks he does insurance.) But if this were about systematically undermining women, then surely the women themselves would notice, and they would talk about that?
This is what I think: Page 3 isn't about sex, but it's not innocent either; it's not about misogyny – in so far as it's not aimed at insulting all women – but it's not harmless. This is about baiting feminists. What we're really looking at is this stubborn, immovable position: feminists suck all the fun out of life, they take your jobs and grow their underarm hair and make you eat lentils. "This far and no further, ladies: you cannot have our naked daily treat, even if we're not enjoying it like we used to, because we realise it's a bit weird." What we're really looking at is not a pair of breasts as sexual objects, but breasts as the hand grenades in a battle of self-assertion.
Stacey M says that, before he died last year, her grandfather used to get the Sun delivered. Laughingly, she says: "That sounds wrong, doesn't it? But he was really proud of me." If he'd seen it as remotely sexual, that would be beyond weird, but he didn't and, I'll hazard, neither does anybody else. It's just there to yank the feminist chain. So, sure, I'm against it. Grrr! This damn patriarchy. It really yanks my chain.
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Reminds me of a bit from
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This is what it is like to be a philosopher of perversion. My opponent is naked but I have on a suit. (How can I think if I’m busy fucking? I have to keep my clothes on, I deliberately have to uphold the very thing that troubles so many other philosophers — the separation between body and brain...) It’s a game, sexuality facing off with an artificial restraint. Will I craft some endgame of understanding? Will sexuality assert its fundamental irrationality and triumph over my best attempts to comprehend? On the surface, it’s a rigged match. Like reason, chess has its rules. “Gosh,” says sexuality, “you’re sure to win. You’re Duchamp and I’m just a set of tits.” Meanwhile sexuality works around the rules, raises a foot under the table, pushes it into my crotch, distracts me, invites me to lose, offers me a reward for losing. “Beat me,” sex seems to say, “and there won’t be anything in it for you but the sterile abstract joy of a mental victory. Why don’t you capitulate already, darling. I can be very nice, you know, and I would love to show you other games that two can play when one is dressed and one is not.”
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