Topless shots go down... then up again
Reports of the death of The Sun's Page 3 topless shots have proved unfounded.
But for AMRIT DHILLON, they brought back memories of a vile, degrading feature that used to make her go crimson with shame. (Photo: Rupert Murdoch; credit: www.abc.net.au)
I know it’s premature because it seems it was only a cheeky publicity stunt by The Sun to give the impression that it was stopping its infamous Page 3 shot of topless models, but I’m celebrating with some champagne (okay, prosecco) anyway because, stunt or no stunt, its days are definitely numbered.
On some days The Sun has already stopped showing topless women. This week, it was reported that News International chief Rupert Murdoch wanted a picture of a pretty woman to continue but with her breasts covered as he thinks the topless shot looks “old fashioned.”
Whenever that picture finally ends up in the dustbin of history, I will be jubilant; that wretched shot marred my otherwise idyllic childhood, punctuating it with moments of gut-wrenching embarrassment when my parents were around and those breasts would suddenly burst out of the page like torpedoes.
What a way to start the day, with breasts leaning over your tea and toast, as millions of Britons have done for decades – an ultra-primitive sociological phenomenon that will no doubt fascinate future anthropologists.
The psychological scarring I sustained came not merely from the nudity but from the stark contrast between my life at home as a young Indian girl growing up in England in a conservative family with a flamboyantly patriarchal tyrant-father who forbade me to wear skirts, make up and tight tops, and my excursions into the wider world such as the newsagents where I encountered the topless nudity of The Sun.
Other anguished moments used to be if we were travelling on a crowded bus. Standing in the aisle, you could not help but glance over a man’s shoulders to find him turning the pages to Page 3. I used to die a death every time, with poor Mummyji at my side not knowing what to do with her facial expression.
The odd thing was that this dichotomy extended beyond my life to the wider society. In those days, in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, before binge-drinking, before low-waist jeans and plunging necklines, before the vulgarity of reality shows and the proletarianisation of popular culture, the British populace was fairly conservative.
If you wanted nudity, you had to make a real effort and go out and buy pornographic magazines or, later, videos. Pictures of nude women were not easily available. And yet…Page 3 bare breasts fell through the post box every day.
At least France was more consistent as I discovered on my first trip abroad. There, nude women and salacious images were all over the place, on hoardings, in shops, on television, in commercials. The French, libertine to their core, are utterly blasé about full frontal nudity, as they are about any sexual configuration.
But the Brits? I used to wonder (the thoughts of an Indian ingénue) how a father could sit at the breakfast table in the morning alongside his teenage daughter and look at Page 3? Or how a father could let his daughter pose for it?
As I grew older, I saw the class angle to the consumption of female nudity. In my house, we read The Times and The Telegraph. But my sister was married to a factory worker and in their home, to my consternation, I sometimes saw my brother-in-law "reading" (if that’s the right word for the Thomas the Tank prose) The Sun with what appeared to be an astonishing degree of equanimity.
It wasn’t hurriedly pushed under the table mat when I appeared. It was left out in the open for all to see, including yours truly. It was a matter of class and when it came to class, it didn’t matter if you were Asian or white British, it was your lack of education that determined what you read rather than your ethnic background.
As I grew up and became a feminist, naturally the topless shot became a nauseating example of capitalism commodifing a woman’s body parts to sell anything from cereal to soap.
But now another dichotomy emerged. Feminism grew by leaps and bounds, analyzing and dissecting society and culture and the media with a razor sharp tools and came up with blinding insights into how patriarchal society oppressed women and how tabloids like The Sun (The News of the World, another title in the Murdoch stable was equally toxic), demeaned women. Yet despite these excoriating critiques and irrefutable arguments, there they were, some of these oppressed women, on Page 3, happy to be seen as a pair of disembodied breasts.
Even worse, sales of The Sun remained steady, feminism or no feminism. The paper’s editors, who called their rag a ‘family paper’, remained unaware of the irony of running stories of rape or sexual abuse alongside a pair of naked t..s.
Then, the "No More Page 3" campaign was launched in Britain in 2012, led by Lucy Anne-Holmes and, sitting here in New Delhi, I thought ‘finally , now it will go’. But the campaign failed to get enough traction.
It is deeply annoying that Murdoch was not compelled, by the force of public revulsion, to stop the topless picture. It seems that, when it finally ends, it will be because he chose to do it himself, for his own obscure reasons and on his own terms. So irritating…
As for The Sun editors, they were clearly having a laugh at the euphoria that broke out in England over Page 3’s death. It had only been a "mammary lapse" they chortled and "apologised" on behalf of all of those who had reported the story.
This is a paper which, when British ships sank an Argentine ship during the Falklands War with a huge loss of Argentine lives, had the headline “GOTCHA”. When a compromise in the war seemed a possibility, it was “Stick it up your Junta”. What the stunt over Page 3 meant was “‘Up Yours’.
I am slightly disheartened, naturally, but looking forward with confidence to having the last laugh.
(Amrit Dhillon is a freelance journalist in New Delhi and can be contacted on amritdylan@gmail.com).
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