This is just a comment, rather than a fully-fledged blog post; but it’s on the back of something that is currently happening on Twitter. This morning I read a re-tweet from Caitlin Moran, the Times columnist and author. Caitlin had re-tweeted a campaign link from a girl trying to get the editor of The Sun newspaper to stop printing pictures of women’s breasts on page 3. Of course I signed. I find it wearisome that nearly 42 years after it first appeared, it is still going. Using Moran’s own yardstick of feminism ‘are the men doing it?’ No, they’re not.
Or are they?
What about the low-level insidious objectification of both sexes that goes on without us seemingly batting an eyelid. To my knowledge, nobody ever went into acting to be a pretty face on a screen. I’m sure it isn’t in any actor’s career plan, that they stop at 25 because they’re not looking as fresh-faced as they once did. In the same way, it isn’t any music artists’ reason for doing what they do, to pack it all in once the calendar sales dry up and they’re no longer the centre spread in Mizz magazine. Actors don’t go into acting and musicians don’t write and perform songs to be nothing more than a pretty face on a TV screen.
It doesn’t seem that an actor or a musician’s ability to demonstrate their craft is the measure of success these days; but how good they look. They are hired or marketed on the basis of how sexually appealling they are to teenage girls, to young men, or to the massed-ranks of middle-aged women. We don’t judge on ability these days, we judge on looks and it’s to our detriment.
I have double standards. I am very happy to sign a petition to end Page 3, but I do not speak out about the pressure that young male actors / musicians are under to ‘look good’ and remain as bankable as they can for as long as possible. Inevitably, they will lose the fight with gravity and end up pushed aside. Or worse, they buckle under the expectation and end up being treated for an eating disorder, or some other stress-related side-effect of an industry that only values how they look. Never mind that they could be 5 years away from an Oscar-winning performance, or a Grammy-winning album. Why is it that the media are so obsessed with airbrushing everybody to within an inch of their lives, only to turn around and poke them with a sharp stick, if they leave the house without 3 inches of make-up or a six-pack?
I know, quite possibly that Dominic Mohan or News International won’t take a blind bit of notice of mine or anybody else’s wishes. But just stop yourself the next time you find yourself noticing how attractive someone looks. Is that all they are to you, a pretty face? Or do you know something of the person behind it? Perhaps it’s not just Page 3 that needs to change, but our whole attitude to people, as well.
Terrific Rachel. Spot on. Looks far outweigh talent these days. Age is another big issue. I actually heard a top tv producer once say, “Who the hell wants to look at wrinklies” That’s entertainment!
And not just actors. Weather forecasters, newsreaders and musicians. When was the last time you saw a middle-aged violin player on prime-time tv?
Let’s hope we get a new page three in the Sun. Talent of the day – as in gifts and skills.
Good post Rachel. And you’re right, as human beings we can all be guilty of judging people by their aesthetics. It happens. It’s not always entirely a bad thing. We are hard wired to make judgements based on appearance and first impressions. Being aware that we do it too often and sometimes get it very wrong is a good first step.
As for people in the music and film industries, I would argue that actually yes, there are people in those industries who are only there because they consider themselves ‘good looking’. They know they have a shelf life and will quite happily take what they can get before it all goes south. Again, I’d argue, what’s wrong with that?
I suspect what you’re calling for is a world of greater substance. A media that provides more substance. And the musicians and actors who have that substance to be given more coverage and to perhaps be celebrated a bit more. Many, many people agree with you, I certainly do and you only need to look at the ‘chatter’ around the Olympics to see that loads of people CRAVE exactly what you’re talking about. No co-incidence that straight after the London games X Factor immediately tried to align itself with our elite athletes. A desperate, calculating act and I hope Jess Ennis et al don’t go anywhere near it.
There’s an age old debate about whether the media imposes content on the audience, or whether it merely serves up the content the audience demands. I’m firmly of the opinion that the media imposes content. It has an agenda and it makes assumptions and it’ll go on like this until more people like you and the ‘No Page 3′ supporters make enough of a fuss. Part of the agenda, in certain circles, is to belittle women and keep them down. Imagine a mainstream national newspaper launching now and deciding they were going to feature a woman exposing her breasts on the first page as soon as you open it. Imagine if Facebook decided to insert a picture of a topless woman in the middle of your news feed. There would be uproar and derision and they would soon change their minds.
But look at the readership figures. Look at the number of women who read The Sun (far higher than you might think). Look at the number of women, and the number of men, who, given the choice between tutting about Page 3 as they flick past it and actually making a conscious decision to buy a different newspaper choose to stick with what they know. Consider the position of advertisers – supermarkets, retailers, big organisations who want women as customers and who pride themselves on being ‘modern’ all still tolerating something the vast majority of us don’t want. Instead of directing the ‘No Page 3′ campaign toward The Sun, why not direct it towards Unilever, Procter and Gamble and Coca-Cola?
I believe the media and our culture could change very quickly. But it relies on people actually doing something about it. Being aware of what’s going in is the first step.
We have been here before. Two decades ago, Clare Short MP complained about Page 3 and was ridiculed as a “killjoy”. These things seem to be generational. After Clare Short came a generation of young women led by Katie Price/Jordan who claimed they were empowering themselves by being on Page 3 and being paid vast sums of money for so doing. There are even serious feminists who claim Katie Price is a feminist trail-blazer.
As always I seem to be one step behind in Political Correctness (in which I am a firm believer). I also seem to be on the last but one page of the Sisterhood.
But surely its not just Acting where males are required to be good-looking. Take Politics? I am a very politically aware person but my Image does not match my Brain. Robin Cook would never have made Prime Minister. Thats how it is.
Dare I mention a little anecdote…..which might test Rachel’s patience? Oh go on……I will……whats the worst Rachel can do? Not approve it?
About ten years ago, we were watching a TV documentary of the sort Channel 4 do….it was about a Photographer who had published a book called Naked New York and was in London to do a similar book so it was about the characters men women young old who modelled for him. One was a heavily pregnant woman and it was incredibly beautiful and touching.
But from my perspective, the satr was a young petite but pretty blonde woman (32 years old) and she had almost died from anorexia on several occasions and had made a full recovery and she looked on being photographed as a kind of gesture of triumph over her body. And yes I could identify with that.
Nudity or near-Nudity has many contexts, sex, having a shower, sunbathing, or simply a form of Honesty. The pity is that it is not always in the gift of one person….the 29 year old sunbather is ok……the papparazzi with the zoom lense gets involved and its “different”.
I declare an interest. I have only ever seen one pair of breasts “in real life”. My own wife. And its a debate I cant feel part of. I wish that I was involved but unlikely to be ever involved. Perhaps if I journeyed to a Spanish beach, Id know what Im supposed to feel…………St Augustine style…..”let me not look……..but not just yet”.
Then I can be sophisticated and say “no big deal”.
But it never seems clear cut as it always involves more than one person, the liberated young woman on a beach, the pornographer, the “model”, the dirty old man, the recovered anorexic, the voyeur……..a mix of good and bad.
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