Boobless.


It seems like, after 44 years, The Sun will finally excise topless women from page 3. If they could fix their content from pages 1-2 and 4+ too, I’d be happy.

It’s not much of a newspaper if we’re honest; more a collection of pictures loosely tied together by a few trashy, tabloid-style headlines. Its outlook is childish. The emphasis isn’t so much on news as celebrity lifestyle, based on the simplistic assumption you can guess what’s going on in someone’s private life from a few hastily snapped paparazzi photographs. You can’t, by the way.

(Bang goes my chance to appear in one of their adverts.)

There’s something archaic about The Sun. It’s attitude is firmly rooted in the 1970s. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see in Fletcher and Godber’s cell, or poking out of Rigsby’s back pocket. The semi-nude girl dominating its immediate innards is a major factor of this. Page 1 becomes a cover story in more ways than one: a way of saying "we’ll keep up the pretense of bringing you a news for bit, but turn the page and you’ll get what you came for". No pun intended.

It’s always made me embarrassed. Any time I flick through the paper in a café or on a train, I alway skip quickly to page 4. The paranoia is there before I open it.  Linger too long and people will think I’m a pervert. Worse still: a pervert who won't buy his own salacious material.

The inclusion of those knowing, intentionally wry captions attributing apparently incongruous quotes to the model doesn’t help. We’re supposed to find it hilarious that a woman looking like that could say something intelligent. That's one for Everyday Sexism.

Perhaps I sound too soapboxy. There are worse publications (*cough* The Daily Mail *cough*). There’s nothing evil about nipples, except for when they chafe. We shouldn't need to banish them from sight. I'm not Nigel Farage (thank God). It’s when a person is treated as an object that I start to baulk.  

Let’s face it: based on their obsession with Z-list celebrities, even if The Sun gets rid of page 3, it'll still be full of tits.
 

 

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Image
Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...
Read more

Stevenage: A (Tiny) River Runs Through it.

If ever a river was mis-sold, it’s the Roaring Meg in Stevenage. I just walked past it on my way to the retail park that has taken its name. They’re similarly uninspiring. The river is less of a roar and more of a dribble; cystitis sufferers produce greater flow. The retail park is soulless. What was once a thriving enterprise is nearly devoid of atmosphere, save an underlying essence of emptiness and despair. With a Toys R Us. When it was first built I was excited. Back then, the thought of a bowling alley, an ice rink, a Harvester and a Blockbuster Video within a small surface area was enticing. I celebrated many birthdays on site. There was an indoor cricket pitch there for a while where I once had a joint party with a friend. Why someone with an almost pathological fear of sport would agree to such a venture is beyond me, but I did it. Now, there’s very little at the Roaring Meg of note. The river would be a metaphor for the shopping ce...
Read more

Hoo-ray and up She Rises.

So much has happened since my last post in March that this blog risks sounding like an itinerary. The main news is that Hitchin Mostly Comedy will return in the summer at a new venue, the Queen Mother Theatre . The road to this decision was convoluted, though enough fell into place en route to leave me optimistic about this new start. The catalyst was a survey I ran via our mailing list a few months back, in which I asked, "If the club returned in the current climate, with tickets still around £15 (and with similar line-ups), would you still attend?"; the response to which, in simple terms, was a resounding yes. Nearly 250 mailing list subscribers responded in a single week, with around a hundred also taking the option to leave some feedback. And only two people were abusive, which counts as a win when you consider they posted their comments online anonymously. Imagine how many more insults we would have received if the comedy club was a woman. Particularly if she was Diane ...
Read more