Holiday blog/everyday sexism

I write to you from a sun-bed in Spain, it’s a particularly cloudy day so I’ve resorted to blogging as a pastime. Today I present to you everyday sexism, at its finest. 

I’ve always had a problem with magazines which aim themselves at women, but I specifically had a problem with one I picked up the other day. I was in the Supermarket and thought I’d have a browse over by the magazine section. Were the lads mags on full display to little children? Yep. Were there enough women objectifying themselves to sell more copies? Always. After doing the obligatory ritual of moving all the lads’ mags to the top shelf, quickly this time in hope of not being caught by the sales assistant, I saw the word “holiday” sprawled across a pink page with a woman standing in the middle, looking suitably miserable. I decided to pick it up anyway, and of course all it was telling me was how I can “lose 20lbs in a month- for that awesome holiday body!” (A more appropriate headline may have been “how to starve yourself for 3 weeks to become miserable and finally obtain that flat stomach all women want!”). After a quick skim through, I went back to the contents page to have a look at how the articles in the magazine were advertised at the start of the magazine. 

“get some  SEX tips for that holiday ROMANCE”

“get that SUMMER BODY for your beach HOLIDAY”

“8 BEAUTY tips for that effortless summer look”

I realise that magazines do this for money, as they advertise products that women don’t need by telling them they really need it, or they won’t be perfect for summer. There is obviously a market for this, the magazines are selling and the readership of these magazines tends to be fairly big. They’re still profiting from women’s low self esteem. I have to admit, I was immediately drawn to the “how to get that summer body” section, despite the twix, quavers and chicken triple sandwich pack already in my basket. I was intrigued by the apparent simpleness of it all, as if there is a clear, easy path in how to become the perfect woman. Starving was the answer, apparently. Maybe an occasional lentil if one is feeling particularly hollow. I then thought about the amount of girls I know who would jump on this idea and want to do this ludicrous diet. It’s not fair to sell these kind of diets as a way of getting a ‘nicer’ body. 

This industry is playing on young women’s insecurities and sacrificing their health to sell more copies.

What kind of man hating Nazi would want to get rid of Page Three!?

As I established in my last blog, I am not a man hater. I do not want to get rid of Page Three to spite men. It is awful how I have to defend my opinion in such an obvious way, but having been called a "man hating Nazi" I felt like I should probably clear that up- again.

I've always been amazed by the defences to Page Three. The arguments don't really make much sense to me. I usually get the response of "there's no harm in it". There is. There really is. It's harmed me specifically, as I continue to battle self-confidence issues which are a direct cause of Page Three. I said in "A few basics" that Page Three started to interest me aged 12. This is because I was 12 when I started to see Page Three on a regular basis.

 I was often called fat and ugly at school, and it always bothered me but I got used to it. Then one day, when I think I was 13, I noticed that the boys who called me these names were looking at Page Three, huddled around at the back of the classroom, hiding it from the teacher. They were laughing and openly perving over this woman. I then compared myself to this woman, who I remember to have bleached blonde hair and was particularly skinny. I immediately then realised that I didn't look anything like her, and this bothered me a lot. It set the standard for what I "should" look like and the battle with the word "should" is one I am still fighting. I told myself that if I looked like Michelle, 19, from Blackpool then I wouldn't be bullied. I blamed the behaviour of the boys around me on my body. I'm not asking for sympathy and you may think that I'm blaming my own low self-esteem on Page Three but for me, that's when I believe the low self-esteem really started. I still battle with body confidence, but I am so much more positive about my body than I was when I was younger. (I should note that if my teacher had seen the boys looking at Page Three, the boys would have been in serious trouble, as they would have been if I had reported how I felt. I come from an amazing secondary school which takes things like this very seriously, and any comments of "how did the teacher not do anything?" will be ignored).

This leads me on to the next Page Three defence, the classic "it's actually a celebration of women's beauty". I find this really hard to accept. It's such a specific, narrow-minded representation of beauty. In case it isn't obvious, skinny or slim women with big breasts aren't the only kind of beautiful women. They are beautiful, but other women are beautiful too. In an argument with an individual who calls themselves a "beauty defender", it was stated that the women are used because they are what is "generally regarded as beautiful". I argued that this could actually be symptomatic of Page Three, which arguably creates this false ideal sense of beauty. A response, further down the line of the argument was that I "could hardly expect Susan Boyle to be on Page Three". This comment really bothered me, and it was at that point I turned off my computer for the night. This comment confirms that Page Three is about a specific area of beauty. It doesn't "celebrate" women or "empower" them. The models are there to be looked at and visually enjoyed. Why doesn't Susan Boyle, or anyone who doesn't necessarily meet the specific criteria, belong on Page Three? Surely if it's the "celebration of women's beauty" that people say it is, it would celebrate all kinds of beauty. Furthermore, the idea of beauty being something which only the eyes experience has always seemed shallow to me. I may be on my own here, but I see beauty as a concept which goes further than just what someone looks like. If Page Three was truly a celebration of female beauty, then there is no reason why Susan Boyle doesn't belong there. She is an amazing and beautiful woman.

The argument "but the women want to do it" also is one I find myself arguing almost on a daily basis. I'm glad that the women want to do it, I really am. This doesn't make Page Three OK. The women who want to do glamour modelling still can. All No More Page Three is saying is that glamour modelling doesn't belong in a newspaper. It isn't news. The women have the choice to model in other places, it wouldn't be taking away food and water from the model's families, as often suggested. There's a massive market for glamour modelling outside of Page Three. This doesn't mean I support lads mags or anything like that at all, I just think it's ludicrous to suggest that NMP3 is taking away the freedom the models have to work. 

I have loads more reasons why I disagree with the defence for Page Three, and I imagine that I will be getting some lovely suggestions coming my way shortly.

Thanks for reading anyway, please comment and share!

Jess x

A few basics

I would like to clear a few things up before I start with my feminist ranting blogging, and I think why I call myself a feminist is a good place to start.

I don’t hate men. Feminists do not hate men. I love men. There are men I dislike, yes, but there are also women I hate too, which doesn’t make me anti-feminist. I think most people would say they hate Katie Hopkins but I like to think this just makes me anti-Katie rather than anti-women. Feminism isn’t about trying to make it so women are seen as better than men at all. It isn’t about trying to get female superiority, or having a women-led society. All feminism is is the radical thinking that women should be equal to men.

That’s it. Equality. Simple.

A lot of people get offended when I suggest that they in fact are a feminist, as if I’ve just told them they can’t speak their own language. They deny it “I think women should be equal to men but I’m no feminist”... well you kind of are. It’s not a dirty word at all. You either are a feminist or a sexist, there really is not some grey area in between. You either believe women are equal to men or you don’t. It’s that simple.

I guess now a few of you may be thinking “but women are equal to men?” and suggest that modern feminism is pointless. I get that a lot, too. Yeah it’s great that I have the vote, but I want more than that. I want equal representation in Parliament. Currently (according to 50/50 parliament) the figure in Parliament stands at 503 men and 147 women. Parliament is 77% male. I think women deserve more than that. I want women, apart from the monarch, to appear on banknotes and I want women to be represented by the media in the same way as men are.  

Hang on now Jess, women ARE represented fairly in the media. There's loads of stories about women in the Daily Mail! 

Well, no, unfortunately. I now invite you to google “GQ magazine covers”. Click on images and you should see the front pages of various GQ magazines. Have a really close look. Can you spot the difference between the men and the women?
The men look great, don’t they? Dressed up in suits, tie and all, with just their smiling faces showing. Now look at the women- over sexualised, often naked. It’s not fair. It’s not an equal playing-field. The man is presented as being intelligent, a business man, whereas the woman is just being shown as a sexual object, her purpose is to look sexy. You may have also noticed how the word “sex” appears a lot around the picture of the woman on the front page. It’s this underlying assumption within the media which really annoys me. These beautiful women, many of whom have amazing careers, are presented to be valued purely for their physical appearance. It’s really unfair to women. Yes, the women choose to model for these magazines, but that doesn’t make it right. It’s fairly obvious that the only choice these women have is to strip off, whilst the man’s choice is to wear a nice suit. This can be seen from how every single woman on the front page is sexualised and every single man is fully dressed.  It’s unfair. It shouldn’t be that publicity for women means standing in your knickers. Women are worth more than that. 

I’ve had to stop myself going on a rant about Page Three in this blog, but I believe that’s going to be the subject for another day.

Thanks for reading,  
 Jess x

Hello

Helloooo

I guess I should start this blog with a basic description of who I am. My name is Jess and I campaign for No More Page Three. It's an awesome campaign and you can find out more about it (and sign the petition) here: http://nomorepage3.org/ . I am 16 years old and a feminist. I started writing online aged 14 and most of my work has revolved around the media's portrayal of women and the steps which can be taken to change the often misogynistic depiction. I became interested in Page Three aged around 12, when I noticed some boys bringing it in to School. I couldn't believe it still existed! In my mind Page 3, like perms, had been left behind in the 80s. I immediately signed the petition and am now actively campaign for No More Page Three. So that's about it. I guess most of my blogs will be about the media's representation of women. Now to promote this blog so I'm not the only one reading it.

Jess x