--- title: The 'Sun': Why Taking a Page Out of a U.K. Tabloid Is Good for Women description: Britain's biggest tabloid, Rupert Murdoch's the 'Sun,' plans to retire its regular feature showing topless women canonical: https://time.com/3674684/sun-page3-is-no-more/ author: Catherine Mayer article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-20T20:29:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:54:49.684Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The 'Sun': Why Taking a Page Out of a U.K. Tabloid Is Good for Women og:description: Britain's biggest tabloid, Rupert Murdoch's the 'Sun,' plans to retire its regular feature showing topless women og:url: https://time.com/3674684/sun-page3-is-no-more/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The 'Sun': Why Taking a Page Out of a U.K. Tabloid Is Good for Women twitter:description: Britain's biggest tabloid, Rupert Murdoch's the 'Sun,' plans to retire its regular feature showing topless women twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Why Taking a Page Out of a U.K. Tabloid Is Good for Women > Sponsored content. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. by [Catherine Mayer](https://time.com/author/catherine-mayer/) ## Catherine Mayer Jan 20, 2015 8:29 PM UTC by [Catherine Mayer](https://time.com/author/catherine-mayer/) ## Catherine Mayer Jan 20, 2015 8:29 PM UTC [Across the globe only 24% of people featured in the news are women.](http://whomakesthenews.org/) Of those women who do feature, a significant portion appear in unhappy circumstances, as victims of violence or discrimination. Women with more positive messages to convey sometimes [find themselves airbrushed out of the picture](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/14/israeli-newspaper-hamevaser-merkel-women-charlie-hebdo-). So it may seem counterintuitive that feminists are hailing the decision by Britain’s red-top tabloid, the _Sun_, to drop [a feature that for 44 years guaranteed women near-total exposure across the whole of its third page](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30891939). Yes, this Friday’s Page 3 Girl may be the last, and that’s — reasonably — good news. The _Sun_ has not confirmed the move but its stablemate the _Times_ of London [reported that their mutual proprietor Rupert Murdoch had signed off on the decision](http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4328253.ece) to retire the photographs of bare-breasted models from the print edition of the tabloid. “It is about time, really,” as Yas Necati of the No More Page 3 campaign told the _Times_. She added: “When you open up the _Sun_, which is Britain’s biggest-selling family newspaper, you see images of men doing things — running the country, achieving in sport — whereas the most prominent image of a woman is one where she is sexually objectified.” The _Sun_’s skewed representation of the sexes was laid bare-naked in [this film _The Experiment_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNlKjUfmaUA), shot for the campaign. But the film doesn’t entirely convey the pernicious genius of Page 3 or why Page 3 has been quite so damaging to women. Page 3 intends to be provocative, not just in the obvious sense, by titillating male readers, but in trying, and often succeeding, in provoking women into reacting against the _Sun._ Every complaint — and there have been many — served to foster a narrative equating feminism with joylessness, sexlessness, humorlessness and the ammonium stink of political correctness. The actual Page 3 items, by contrast, have often been funny, in the manner of British seaside postcards or [the long-running movie franchise _Carry On_](http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/group/carry%5Fon/), in which bra straps twang and wide-eyed nymphets serve up double entendres. One Page 3 conceit provided each woman featured with space for a quote on a current-affairs issue of the day, under the punning headline “News in Briefs” — briefs being all the model in question would be wearing. And if joy is not now unconfined among feminists at the departure of the Page 3 Girl, that’s partly because she isn’t actually leaving. She just seems to be putting on a wet T-shirt for appearances in the newspaper and will continue to disport herself topless on the _Sun_’s website. This is hardly a stride towards equality in the mold of [the 1928 Equal Franchise Act](http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/overview/thevote/) or [the 1970 Equal Pay Act](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1970/41), more of a tottering baby step on painfully high stilettos by a news organization that is just as liable to reverse direction if its bottom line suffers as a result. Meanwhile bright individuals have rushed to act as the _Sun_’s useful idiots, decrying the disappearance of Page 3 as censorship and reinforcing the notion that a monstrous regiment of monstrous women are out to sabotage a nation’s innocent fun. [Among their number, inevitably, are Page 3 alumnae](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11356808/Decision-to-drop-Page-3-cautiously-welcomed-by-critics.html?WT.mc%5Fid=e%5F3849078&WT.tsrc=email&etype=frontpage&utm%5Fsource=email&utm%5Fmedium=Edi%5FFPM%5FNew%5F2015%5F1%5F20&utm%5Fcampaign=3849078) including “international lingerie model” Rhian Sugden, who tweeted this: > [](https://twitter.com/Rhianmarie/status/557455199695298560) Sugden is part right, except that the day has long arrived when people in comfy shoes and without bras determine the way the world is run and represented in the media. They’re called men. So if Britain’s leading red-top even slightly moderates the hostility towards women it cloaks as a bit of a laugh, that’s to be celebrated. 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