The daily tabloid newspaper, The Sun, represents the female gender in a sexual manner and focuses on objectification of women over anything else they may achieve, creating an unfair representation.
The representation of the female gender has always received different views and beliefs when it comes to the media world. The Sun newspaper is just one of the newspaper’s that appears to represent the majority of females, it includes, in a certain way and I believe that way to be negative and simply unfair. I believe the paper uses the female gender in a sexual manner to attract more male readers and try to expand its popularity. The Sun has used its Page 3 feature in order to do this since being published and has expanded it further to online for their readers. Page 3 will be the focus of my essay as I believe it to be the largest representation of women that The Sun newspaper uses and create small links to other articles of other newspapers that I believe also use the same representation. The Sun newspaper’s tagline is “news, sport, celebrities and gossip”. These headlines do not need to represent females sexually under the label of gossip or news and should simply report their data without provocative photographs being used alongside. All headlines also include a mixture of both genders under those headlines they label, so surely their representation should be equal to the genders they are writing about and not sexualise one over the other.
The Sun newspaper was first published in 1969 and was done so as a daily tabloid newspaper. Only a year later came the Page 3 feature, in December 1970. The Page 3 feature is commonly known as “a large photograph of a topless, bare-breasted glamour model which is usually published on the print edition’s third page” (see figure 1 in appendix). The feature was not strictly a daily feature when the paper was first published in the early 1970’s (Greenslade, 2004) and only gradually began to include models in more overt topless poses with more female sexual parts being revealed. Page 3 is credited, partly, for The Sun being stated as one of the most popular newspapers in the mid 1970’s. In an effort to gain more popularity and compete with The Sun, other tabloid newspapers also started to post photographs of topless females (see figure 2 in appendix). Although the Daily Mirror stopped this feature in the 1980’s deeming the images demeaning to women (Keeble, 2009). Page 3 expanded from being published on print, to being published online where there is an official Page 3 online website which has been live since June 1999. The page 3 feature, both printed and online, ran freely until August 2012, where Lucy Anne Holmes, writer and actress from Brighton, began the social media “no more page 3 campaign” (Holmes, 2012). The campaign began with a petition asking the editor of The Sun newspaper, Dominic Mohan, to remove images of topless females from the third page of their paper (Cochrane, 2013). As the petition started to gather signatures, in February, the campaign ran a “Tweet Murdoch Day”. This event asked supporters of the campaign to flood Rupert Murdoch, proprietor of The Sun, with messages to remove Page 3. By January 2015 the petition had reached 215,000 signatures (O’Carroll, Sweney and Greenslade, 2015) and by mid of the month the feature appeared to have been dropped from the printed edition of the paper. However, the feature seemed to re-appear less than a week later, but simply for a one off, with the feature now completely absent from Page 3 of the Sun newspaper. Despite the success within the printed Sun newspaper, the online website of Page 3 carried on featuring shots of different females topless on a daily basis. The site (Page3.com) however, does not appear to have been updated sine 27th March 2017. Many were happy about the dropping of the topless photographs such as Labour Party MP Clare Short, who came under attack from the newspaper in 2004 when renewing a different campaign against the feature. The newspaper superimposed Short’s face (see figure 3 in appendix) onto a topless image of a female and accused her of being “fat and jealous (Byrne 2004). When the “no more page 3” campaign was reigned victorious Short stated, “It is an important public victory for dignity” (Short, 2015).
The “no more page 3” campaign, however, wasn’t the only controversy against The Sun newspaper and their representation of the female gender, especially with the Page 3 feature specifically. Mary Braid, critic of Page 3, considers the feature to “demean and objectify women, as softcore pornography” (Braid, 2004). Ceris Aston, who was a part of the “no more page 3 campaign” and also a journalist, wants an equal representation of all genders within the media now that we are within the 21st Century. She states, “Page 3 is endured as though stuck in a sexist time warp” (Aston, 2015). Despite Page 3 no longer featuring within the newspaper, photographs of females, often celebrities, posing erotically in lingerie/swimwear still appear with the paper (see figure 4 in appendix), quite often being published on the third page of the Sun newspaper. A “YouGov” survey carried out during the “no more page 3” campaign found the attitudes towards the Page 3 feature gave out marked differences in readers of different newspapers. The results stated that 61% of The Sun’s own readers wished to retain it is a feature. 86% of the Guardian however, stated that the feature should be abolished. This, I believe, creates a link to the targeted audience of each of the newspapers. The Sun is “aimed towards the working class of the younger generation with the Page 3 feature targeting the male demographic” (Spears, 2011). It wasn’t, however, just the newspaper readers that gave a difference in answers but also the genders that took part within the survey. The majority female gender stated that the feature should not be retained, with only 17% stating the opposite. Despite the evidence given through the survey, Rowan Pelling, feminist columnist, is “not concerned at all with the deception of women on Page 3” (Jukes, 2013). Alison Webster, photographer for Page 3, agrees with Pelling, stating, “people should be able to make their own choices” (Jukes, 2013).
Gender theories, linking to Page 3, however, would not agree with critics of any controversies towards Page 3. Laura Mulvey, feminist critic, makes reference to the male gaze theory during an essay she created in 1975 and developed the theory further. Mulvey states that the world of media depicts women from a masculine point of view, meaning that the female gender is presented as objects of male pleasure (Mulvey, 1989). This theory can be portrayed onto the feature of Page 3 as the feature is there for the male demographic to look upon and enjoy. However, the original male gaze theory is now 44 years old and could be considered as too old of a theory to link towards sexuality within the 21st century. John Berger, media critic, makes similarities to Mulvey’s view on objects. Berger states that women are only there solely for objectification across all media platforms (Berger, 2008). The objectification of the female gender, within the Sun newspaper, is done so sexually and is done so for the male gender to receive scopophilia from the photographs that have been printed for them to observe. As well as individuals, the theories of stereotypes and feminism are highly and acceptably linked towards Page 3. Feminists aim to create social rights for women, creating equality (Thornham, 2007), and banning images such as the topless photographs, included within the Sun newspaper, is a step in that direction.
Page 3 is the first feature we naturally think about, in The Sun, when we image women being sexualised. However, The Sun have printed other articles, using sexualised images of a female where inappropriate or unnecessary. Reeva Steenkamp was a South African model who was murdered by her boyfriend, Oscar Pistorius on valentine’s day in 2013. The event became worldwide news with a range of articles being published on the event that happened. The Sun newspaper was one of the paper who covered the story, publishing an article the very next day that caused a spark of outrage. The Sun decided to cover the story without even naming Reeva herself, they never mentioned her name once but instead used a full page image of her provocatively wearing a bikini to show who she was (Writer, 2013). Her death was described as “3 shots. Screams. Silence. 3 more shots.”(see figure 5 in appendix) “Eaves” is a support group for women who have experienced violence in their lifetime, whether it be in a relationship or not. The group feel strongly about how The Sun portrayed Reeva’s death and have written to Dominic Mohan demanding him to re-print their coverage of the story in a more appropriate term along with demanding a full front page apology. The group also demanded Mohan to print extracts from the Levseon Inquiry (Leveson, 2011) which states that “the treatment of women by some tabloids degrades and demeans women” (Writer,2013). Eaves is not the only group to voice outrage on The Sun’s coverage of the story. A change.org petition (Change, 2013) has been set up by Hannah Curtis of Aylesbury, calling for the newspaper to apologise. The petition currently has around 3,500 signatures. During her creation of the petition Curtis writes “By printing this picture of Reeva, The Sun are sending out a message to its readers that women are a piece of meat, who aren’t safe from objectification even after their death” (Writer, 2013). Due to The Sun representing Reeva as a sex object people forget, as blogger Sian Norris point out, that “she was a woman, a model, a law graduate, a woman who spoke out against violence against women. She was not just a sex object in a bikini” (Norris, 2013). Following the outrage a hashtag emerged on twitter to call out The Sun on their ‘decision’ not to include Reeva’s name. The hashtag “#HerNameWasReevaSteenKamp was created. The Sun’s representation of the female image in this case was shocking, however, they were not the only ones to cover the story in this way. The New York Post reduced the death of Reeva to say “Blade slays Blonde” (Harris, 2013). However, The New York is owned by News Corps, which is the same company that own The Sun (Writer 2013). The Daily Star was another newspaper to print the news in the same manner as The Sun (see figure 6 in appendix).
Although I believe The Sun to be the worst at representing females in their newspaper, The Daily Mail also came under attack recently, in March 2017, with their report over Theresa May’s meeting with Nicola Sturgeon. The meeting between the two powerful women, was to discuss the latest on the results from Brexit, an important future life event for the UK. The headline that came from the Daily Mail was “Never mind Brexit, who won Legs-it!” (see figure 7 in appendix). This shows that The Sun are not the only tabloid newspaper to represent the female gender inappropriately and unfairly, referring to bare skin being shown from wearing a skirt. Women can still be sexualised and linked to objectification just from wearing clothing that does not completely cover them from head to toe. From the theory of feminism’s point of view this shows that women still do not have equal social rights to the male gender (Thornham, 2007). The controversy quickly took to the social media site of Twitter, with members of the site taking things into their own hands and posting the same coverage and headline, however with the use of a picture of male MP’s and stating this type of article would never be printed with a male image (see figure 8 in appendix). Nicola Sturgeon, herself, also commented on the matter, accusing The Daily Mail of “taking Britain back to the 1970’s” (Martinson, 2017), whereas the newspaper itself hit back stating the printed article was “light-hearted” and people need to “get a life” (Martinson, 2017) seeming as though they are not concerned with how their article has been linked to sexism (Corbyn, 2017).
It is apparent that The Sun newspaper are not afraid to use provocative or sexual photographs of the female image in any article type they create under their headlines of “news, sport, celebrities, gossip”. However, they do so unnecessarily and because of this appear to show the female image in one way and that is as sexual objects, who are still under objectification from The Sun newspaper even during a serious media matter such as a murder being printed or simply just for the pleasure of their male audience. The Sun newspaper, although, are not the only tabloid newspaper to be guilty of this, with other newspaper also representing the female image in the same way at some point in their media history as well as this representation possibly being shown over a range of media platforms and not just newspapers.
References:
Aston, C. (2015). No more Page 3: Our grassroots campaign took on a hug corporation and we won. [Internet]. Available from http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/no-more-page-3-our-grassroots-campaign-took-on-a-huge-corporation-and-we-won-9992371.html [Accessed 7th March 2017]
Berger, J. (2008). Ways of seeing. First edition. London. Penguin.
Braid, M. (2004). Page three girls- the naked truth. [Internet]. Available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3651850.stm [Accessed 7th March 2017]
Byrne, C. (2004). Sun turns on ‘killjoy’ Short in Page 3 row. [Internet]. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/jan/14/pressandpublishing.politicsandthemedia [Accessed 7th March 2017]
Change (2013). Apologise for the distasteful front cover of Reeva Steenkamp. [Internet] Available from https://www.change.org/p/the-sun-newspaper-apologise-for-the-distasteful-front-cover-of-reeva-steenkamp-bf38a4aa-d9f4-402f-98bc-5446e74c7f64 [Accessed 20th March 2017]
Cochrane, K. (2013). No More Page 3 campaigner Lucy-Anne Holmes on her battle with the Sun. [Internet]. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/mar/10/anti-page-3-the-sun-campaigner [Accessed 7th March 2017]
Corbyn, J. (2017). Tweet. [It’s 2017. This sexism must be consigned to history. Shame on the Daily Mail]. Available from https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/846491928120250369?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F2017%2F03%2F28%2Fdaily-mail-tells-bbc-get-life-sexist-legs-it-story%2F [Accessed 20th April 2017]
Greenslade, R. (2004). Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits From Propaganda. P250. First edition. London. Macmillan.
Harris, P. (2013) New York tabloids duplicate The Sun’s Reeva Steenkamp cover photo outrage. [Internet]. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/15/new-york-tabloids-sun-reeva-steenkamp [Accessed 10th March 2017]
Holmes, L. (2012). Exclusive: We’ve seen enough breasts – why I started the No More Page 3 campaign. [Internet]. Available from http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/exclusive-weve-seen-enough-breasts-why-i-started-the-no-more-page-3-campaign-8159600.html [Accessed 7th March 2017]
Jukes, P. (2013). The end of Rupert Murdoch’s Page 3 girl? [Internet]. Available from http://www.thedailybeast.com/ [Accessed 10th March 2017]
Keeble, R. (2009). Ethics for journalists. Media skills. P205. Second edition. London. Routledge.
Leveson, J. (2011). Leveson inquiry: culture, practice and ethics of the press. [Internet] Available from http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/ [Accessed 7th March 2017]
Martinson, J. (2017). Nicola Sturgeon criticises Daily Mail over ‘Legs-it’ front page. [Internet]. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/28/theresa-may-refuses-to-comment-on-daily-mail-legs-it-front-page [ Accessed 4th April 2017]
Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual and other pleasures. First edition. USA. Macmillan.
Norris, S. (2013). Her name was Reeva Steenkamp: a letter to the Sun. [Internet] Available from http://sianandcrookedrib.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/her-name-was-reeva-stankamp-letter-to.html [Accessed 10th March 2017]
O’Carroll, L. Sweney, M. Greenslade, R. (2015). The Sun calls time on topless Page 3 models after 44 years. [Internet]. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/19/has-the-sun-axed-page-3-topless-pictures [Accessed 7th March 2017]
Short, C. et al. (2015). Is the Sun’s scrapping of Page 3 topless models a victory for women? [Internet]. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/20/sun-scrapping-page-3-topless-victory-women [Accessed 7th March 2017]
Spears, G. (2011). Journalism Now Article – The Sun’s target audience. [Internet]. Available from http://georgiamayspears.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/journalism-now-article-suns-target.html [Accessed 10th March 2017]
Thornham, S. (2007). Women, Feminism and Media. First Edition. Media topics. [Internet]. Scotland. Edinburgh University Press. Available from https://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/Product/Index/71153?page=0 [Accessed 7th March 2017]
Writer, S. (2013). Her name was Reeva Steenkamp. [Internet]. Available from http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/2013/02/her-name-was-reeva-steenkamp/ [Accessed 10th March 2017]
YouGov. (2012). The Sun survey results. [Internet]. Available from http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/6jyst3v95o/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-021012-Page-3-girls.pdf [Accessed 20th March 2017]
Appendix:
Figure 1 below
Figure 2 below
Figure 3 below
Figure 4 below
Figure 5 below
Figure 6 below
Figure 7 below
Figure 8 below