Page 3 is Dead

At long last Page 3, The Sun's long-running big-breasted totem is to be shelved ... and replaced with scantily clad young women covering up that little bit more. A victory? I suppose it is one, of sorts. It's clearly a pay off for the No More Page 3 campaign. I wonder if the rest of the left will emulate its example and realise that taking a hectoring, berating tone is not always the best way of going about things? However, when Uncle Rupert said Page 3 was old-fashioned, the writing was on the wall.

There are a couple of things about this that need noting. First of all, the dirty digger was right. The number of people who still buy The Sun to ogle some boobs must surely by now be a vanishingly tiny minority. The ubiquity of porn and its ready availability absolutely everywhere, provided you have the appropriate technology, rendered that selling point obsolete well over 10 years ago. What purpose did it serve between then and now from a commercial point of view, apart from content filler? Nothing, though it hasn't stopped some idiots from trying to get a Je suis Page 3 meme going.

Second, one should always be careful of what one wishes for. Whatever one thinks of Page 3, it is a consensual, commercial transaction between the paper and model/modelling agency. Some of the women who have posed, such as Jodi Marsh, have said they felt empowered by the experience and, indeed, for some it has been a passport to better things and a privileged lifestyle they may never have known otherwise. That the problematic messages Page 3 conveys does not negate this. As Stavvers rightly points out, its replacement so far has been more pernicious and far more problematic. It has made way for candid shots, of (female) celebrities snapped by paparazzo in swimwear and perhaps less without their knowledge or consent.

I'm not going to repeat what Stavvers said. Except to say from The Sun's point of view, this makes more commercial sense than persisting with baps out unknown wannabes. The Daily Mail is the peeping Tom's paper of choice and has built the most successful media website in the world on creepy voyeurism. No woman is safe, even underage teenagers. And, unfortunately, this has been the way celebrity media has been going for some time. In this regard the Murdoch stable have somewhat dropped the ball. A big exclusive page 3 splash of some starlet caught in the altogether on the other hand ... that might do something to arrest the collapsing circulation figures.

Page 3 is dead. Long live page 3!