Would you like some nipples with your news?

By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT

Would you like some nipples with your news?

It’s a question that for more than 40 years, English newspaper readers have answered with a cheery, “yes, please!”

I grew up in a world where it was totally normal for a story about, let’s say, murder, or rape, to sit snugly alongside a full-length shot of a smiling, topless woman on the third page of your daily newspaper. Because I grew up in Britain, where we have this proud tradition called Page 3.

The history of the page 3 girl (worth a watch for the 80s hair and bikini fashion alone).

And now, it seems that tradition is under threat, with the godfather of norks n’ news, Rupert Murdoch, admitting, on Twitter (how modern!) that perhaps Page 3 is a little “old-fashioned”.

Really? You think Mr Murdoch?

The owner of some of the biggest news outlets in the world also suggested that he might instruct his editors to keep the glamour girls – but cover them up a little bit – because “Aren’t beautiful young women more attractive in at least some fashionable clothes? Your opinion please.”

My opinion, (if you’re interested, Sir Rupert) is that even with a smattering of modesty, serving naked women up as purely decorative objects in a mainstream newspaper is never going to be okay.

Think about it. This is not a magazine that men buy specifically to look at breasts, like say, Zoo, or People, or Picture. This is the absolute equivalent of opening the first page of the Daily Telegraph or Herald Sun, and seeing a naked woman beaming out at you, next to a story about air missile strikes in Iraq.

I’ve been railing against Page 3 since I was in school uniform. An earnest little mini-feminist, raised by a mum who disapproved of Barbies, baby dolls and Brownies, I was never going to be the target audience for the mass-market tabloid The Sun, where Page 3 was born, nor aspire to be a “Page 3 girl”, a well-worn road to notoriety before anyone had even thought of reality TV.

The Sun, 1986. Photo: Reuters.

 The Sun, Page 3 – 2014.

But as a journalism student in London in the 1990s, encouraged by a savvy lecturer who ordered us to read one broadsheet and one tabloid newspaper every single day, I did read The Sun, and all the papers that had followed its lead into publishing nude pics in a bid to grab the “building site” market. And there are many brilliant things about tabloid newspapers. Tabloids break stories, they breed, fearless, relentless journalists, they read the public mood to a tee, and they are most excellent at punny headlines, for starters.

But I could never forgive Page 3.

The girls were terrifyingly young. Younger than ranty student me. Before the early noughties, you only had to be 16 to be a Page 3 girl, and some of papers would even countdown until a girl’s 16th birthday, when her beautiful boobs could be unveiled to the world with impunity.

A “Page 3 girl” is wholesome. And has a lovely, friendly smile. She is always topless. And sometimes, she has also misplaced her knickers. She is generally accompanied by some salient facts about herself.  “Andie (first names only on Page 3, please) is 18. She’s from Bucketsworth and loves Sheffield United, lager-shandies and real men…”

After a poll in the 1990s, they had to be able to prove that their “assets” were real. There was no silicon in The Sun. Not on page 3.

She was the absolute polar opposite of challenging, or complicated, or hard-to-get. She was (is) just a girl, inviting you to look at her breasts because they’re gorgeous, and don’t all women want you to look at them and assess their attractiveness and make a “harmless” comment about their boob size? Of course they do.

Page 3 has seen off many challenges: From female politicians who have been mocked for campaigning to ban it. From the “feminists” Rupert mentions in his Tweets. From celebrity-studded petitions.

And from the now-notorious female editor Rebekkah Brooks, who originally said she didn’t approve of Page 3 on commercial grounds (it puts women off buying the paper), but who later came to embrace it and even celebrate it as an almost feminist choice for the girls who chose to appear.

It’s true, we have Page 3 to thank for Katie Price, (formerly Jordan), who appeared in The Sun on Page 3 many, many times, and is now worth 45 million pounds.

But for every Jordan, there are thousands of girls who just saw Page 3 as a possible ticket out of a boring life, but found themselves right back where they started, only everyone had seen her boobs.

When I read the Tweets from Rupert Murdoch, I was shocked. Not because he is admitting that it could be time to move on from naked ladies as mainstream entertainment, but because Page 3 still exists.

I don’t live in Britain any more. I have lived in Australia for almost 20 years. And for all those years, people have enjoyed telling me what a sexist country this is. But we don’t have naked teenagers in our newspapers.

And the idea that in an era when anyone with Wifi can see a naked woman doing pretty much anything you could possibly imagine at the push of a couple of buttons, the notion that there’s still a market for Page 3 is almost quaint. Almost amusing.

Except it’s not. It’s ridiculous. And outdated. It’s damaging. And insulting.

So that’s my opinion, Sir Rupert. Thanks for asking.