Want to end misogyny? Bring back Page 3

At the age of 31, I don’t truly believe I can start an article with “Back in my day…” but, when you think of it, my day was the late 90s/early 00s, which now feels far enough away that it’s the past: and the past, in all its forms, always seems more remote, romantic and quaint.  

Sure, nostalgia allows us to soften and rose tint the edges of memory, but I did love it: it was a time of lad culture, of Oasis having beef with Blur for no reason at all, of cutting-edge journalism where a Loaded employee did cocaine during a Sunday League football match just to see what that’s like.

It was the heyday of the tabloid press, when The Sun used the headline ‘I’m A Mind Bender’ for a story about Derren Brown coming out as gay, while a cracking pair of breasts sat proudly on Page 3.  

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I remember sitting at my nan and grandad’s when I was nine, reading The Sun from cover to cover, pretending I was really interested in what was written on Page 2, sneaking covert glances at the hypersexualised female anatomy opposite. For those too young to remember, a beautiful woman would sit topless with a box of text next to her which would be labelled ‘the news in briefs’.

Then would follow an incredibly specific analysis of something that had happened that week, as though the topless woman had said it. Something like: “Lauren, 23, from Kent thinks that not only has Tony Blair ignored the humanitarian implications of invading Iraq but the fiscal ones too”, the gag being that Lauren, 23, from Kent couldn’t possibly have said this because god forbid a woman has tits and an opinion. 

Back then, I didn’t know about the partiality of written media, about the sexism and corruption of these publications, I was just a horny child that enjoyed reading salacious stories and sensationalist headlines, while looking at boobs. I now see that one of the problems with intrinsically linking the female anatomy to news consumption is that it allows misogyny to seep, untrammelled, into all of society. 

Getting rid of Page 3 was an important beginning in conversations around how we present women’s bodies in the media. I’m concerned, though, that we haven’t really changed at all: and I’m far more concerned that things have just gone covert and underground. Woman haters are able to exist in the far flung recesses of the darkest corners of the internet, totally unchecked.

Now is the age of incels and Andrew Tate: whether you be a soft, beta boy who can’t get women or an alpha one who has a right to do whatever they please with these deceptive womenfolk, all of your troubles are never your own; they are always the fault of the opposite sex. 

Read more:

• Comedian Chloe Petts: ‘Wake up! Cancel culture doesn’t exist’
• Andrew Tate is the worst possible example of being a man
• ‘The gap is worrying’: Young men and women are increasingly split on gender and politics, study finds

But it’s more ubiquitous than these alt-right woman haters who exist at the far end of misogyny. In a recent survey made by Amnesty International, they found that “an overwhelming 73% of Gen Z social media users have witnessed misogynistic content online with half encountering it on a weekly basis”. 

The misogyny that was whacked around my face when I was a child was confined to the limited telly that I watched and the snatched glances of the tabloids at my grandparents’. It’s not the place of a dumb comedian to solve an issue that has existed virtually throughout all human history but I do wonder if bringing back Page 3 might actually make life more simple again and give our kids some reprieve from the algorithm thrusting its grubby and perverse ideas in their faces. Hear me out. Here’s my manifesto: 

If we bring back Page 3, you’re only allowed to include quotes from the girls of things they’ve said. I’d love to hear Abi Titmuss’s opinion on a two-state solution. 

Apparently people are more impressionable when in a state of sexual arousal so I think Page 3 should only exist in progressive publications. Spend some private time with the third page of The Guardian and spaff yourself into believing in higher tax brackets for the rich.  

If Page 3 exists then I think make everything analogue. Sure, this is pie-in-the-sky thinking, but imagine if no one was able to access any content about women or their bodies online, it all had to be printed. Imagine if a young man had to go to a newsagent, slide 30p across the counter, look someone in the eye and say: “This is what I think of women.” Or, even better, make them read it at their nan and grandad’s. 

If you don’t like that, then here’s something more pragmatic. Just like I didn’t know what I was reading when I was a child was wrong, they don’t know what they’re being fed is anything other than normal. Let’s legislate against hateful, misogynistic speech and algorithms that can feed this to them, and instead properly educate them on what it is to be a human with a body. 

Chloe Petts’ new show, Big Naturals, is showing at the Pleasance Courtyard (Forth) as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 30 July to 24 August (excl. 13 August) at 7pm and then on tour.

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