The Sun’s Page 3 girls could be putting on shirts and looking for alternative employment as an online petition calls for The Sun editor Dominic Mohan to ‘Take The Bare Boobs Out Of The Sun’.

The petition received a boost in signatures (at the time of writing it has 25,000) after the headline-making topless pictures of Kate Middleton were printed by magazines in France, Italy, Denmark and Ireland, bringing boobs, and the appropriateness of their use as a means to sell magazines or newspapers, to the forefront of public consciousness.

A well-hashed argument used against both the The Sun’s Page 3 and the publication of the Middleton photographs is that these images are degrading to women.

“Stop conditioning your readers to view women as sex objects,” reads the Page 3 petition.

Of course, no one is pretending that the Duchess of Cambridge’s case is the same as that of a Page 3 girl.

The pictures of Middleton should not have been published because they were a gross invasion of privacy. However, they were not inherently degrading.

Likewise, why is a Page 3 girl with her tits out an “object” in a way that any other photograph of an unknown person is not? Why do naked breasts change the game?

There is nothing demeaning about being photographed with your kit off if the picture is being taken with consent. In fact, the power in that transaction lies in the hands (or breasts) of the one who is being photographed.

It’s the male readers of The Sun, not the Page 3 girls, who I feel vaguely embarrassed for.

There’s something immature and unsophisticated about the need to have a daily dose of 21-year-old tits with your news.

One woman with her boobs out does not negate another, who chooses to don a suit and work in an office.

Human beings are quite capable of understanding that their fantasies about half-naked women in pictures don’t mean that every female they meet is a “sex object”.

It’s the idea that breasts are somehow humiliating in themselves that needs to be questioned.

Agree or disagree? Is Page 3 a good thing? letters@tntmagazine.com

 

Yes, the high street is hell

A “shock” poll published last week revealed that women do not, after all, love shopping. According to the study, a third of women positively hate the experience, citing queues, clothes that don’t fit and rude staff as the main reasons for their failure to adhere to the “retail therapy” stereotype.

In fact, not only does shopping do little to soothe furrowed brows, but for many it is downright torturous; 15 per cent of women said they had cried on a shopping trip, usually because they felt fat.

It’s funny the things we feel surprised (or guilty?) about not liking. Of course shopping’s not fun. It’s the perfect storm, really: body image obsessions are highlighted, money we don’t have is spent and precious free time is wasted.

Not many will take the brave step and stop shopping altogether. But I at least will feel heartened that one in three of my fellow shoppers would rather be in the pub.

 

Photos: Getty