Tabloids don’t represent women that well. Well, that’s what we’re told… but sometimes the red tops have pictures of topless men, right? And sometimes they have pictures of women all dressed up, in clothes, right?
Well, to show just how imbalanced the representation of men and women are in The Sun, the paper which continues to show, as a regular feature, a naked woman on Page 3 every single day, NoMorePage3 got together 10-15 volunteers aged from 13 to 83 in a room (with a big white wall) and cut out every single photo of every single person from every issue of the paper from the past six months. They then put all of the images of the women on the left hand side of the wall, and all the images of men on the right. You can see what happened here:
As 'The Experiment' observes, the difference between men and women in this paper is ‘The men are nearly all active, doing things. Not posed… the women are passive. It’s all about how they look.’
One caption is a quote from poet Allen Ginsberg: 'Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.'
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We spoke to Katie Hardie, the woman who directed the video on behalf of NoMorePage3. And this is what she had to say:
The Debrief: The images on the wall in the video, are they every image of a person in The Sun for the past six months – or were some left out?
Kate Hardie: Lucy [Ann Holmes, the founder of No More Page 3] is really strict. When she laid out the experiment, she wanted to go through the paper and cut out every image you could find. She said: ‘Don’t just cut out the pictures of women’ and you had to finish every single issue of the paper. It was interesting because of all the pictures of women they weren’t doing anything but they were huge.
DB: Were there any images of women who just aren’t by-the-book tabloid-style sexy?
KH: The pictures of women that were unattractive were usually pointing out how un-attractive they were. Like Marina Navratilova – in their opinion she was older and had let herself go, or Theresa May who’d been morphed into Thatcher.
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DB: What about normal women, everyday women?
KH: After those two British people were killed in Thailand, the girl’s photo was blown up because she was attractive. The sport one got us – the only picture we found of a woman doing sport was one who’d raised some money for charity.
DB: Why did this video go after The Sun specifically – a lot of other tabloids have bad images of women?
KH: Lucy is still very passionate about getting rid of Page 3 and I think that she is right. This insidious imagery is bad.
DB: Is our eye meant to be drawn to the fact that there are so many topless women on the left-hand side there? What would you say to someone who just said this is an attempt to bring down The Sun rather than Page 3?
KH: Everybody doing the experiment that day noticed that Page 3 is out-of-date for a family paper. If you look further into The Sun’s images of women, it’s talking about the way they look. They’re passive. I can see that there is an argument for them re-thinking their whole take on gender and there would be no damage done by them doing that.
What was @TheSunNewspaper's response to such a visual demonstration of their sexism? Via @thei100 pic.twitter.com/Qyk9RgWwvJ
— NoMorePage3 (@NoMorePage3) December 2, 2014
DB: You used to work primarily as an actress, did you ever see any images of yourself used in a disrespectful way?
KH: Yes of course. I wasn’t interested in acting over a certain age because the representation is just boring and the complete pre-occupation with the way that you look. It had a huge impact on me, that’s why I don’t really do it anymore. People sit at home and make websites where they edit together bits of your work – really serious dramas – just to get a clip of your boob.
DB: Do you think these DIY perves feel like they can get away with this because the papers do on a daily basis?
KH: I think we have to be really broad-minded and brave about looking at these links. People Tweet me saying: ‘Come on, there are women being raped and all you care about is Page 3’ but, actually, if there is a picture of a woman with her boobs out as if she is just there on a plate for you, I see that as a direct link between how women are treated on the streets, in society and in schools.
DB: I find images across the tabloids can be equally as bad - do you have enough wall to do them all?
KH: Yes! Me and my partner wer saying 'let's do it with The Guardian next week, it would be interesting to look at. You need wall space - a brilliant artist loaned us his wall, at first he said he’d take [the montage] down because it was making him sad, but now he’s inviting people in to look at it. There are some brilliant men involved in the No More Page 3 campaign.
The Sun today issued a statement to respond to this: 'Some people have too much time on their hands. Although we're glad they were one of more than two million who buy and enjoy The Sun every single day.'
Looks like there's still some work to be done… but this is a start, right?
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.