The Round Up: The Sun's Page 3: Revolting or Revolutionary?

To round up this week, I wanted to take a look over this week news. Due to my lack of political knowledge and diplomacy, I decided to write about the supposed demise of The Sun's famous page 3 model. From last Friday, the 44 year legacy of the topless model was apparently removed with mixed reviews. Liberal Democrat women's and equalities minister Jo Swinson and The No To Page 3 campaign group were among those to express their delight at the apparent change. Some claimed it to be a victory for feminism. 
However, no more than a week after this alleged removal of the page 3 model, The Sun published 'Nicole from Bournemouth’ modelling little more than a necklace and a cheeky wink. Titled 'Clarifications and Corrections’, the Sun stated ‘We would like to apologise on behalf of the print and

broadcast journalists who have spent the last two days talking and writing about us.’ It seems as though this page 3 tradition is yet to be extinguished but is the page 3 girl really revolting or (dare I say) revolutionary? 

Personally, I do not like the idea of 'the feminist'. The bra burning, man hating stigma has embedded itself too deeply into what society declares is 'the feminist' and now has made women look past equality toward slightly more superiority, something which we should be avoiding. I'm not saying all feminists fit into that category, in many ways I am a feminist, but feminism can take simple statements too literally. The notion of the pin up girl has been in our society for decades, World War 1 soldiers keeping their favourite pin up in the back pocket of their uniform for some degree of comfort. I find it hard to belief that we can completely remove the page 3 girl, some traditions, no matter how more modern our society is, simply cannot be avoided. 

These models know what they are doing, this is the career they have chosen and good on them! What's wrong with showing a bit of skin? Absolutely nothing. The female breasts are not sexual organs so why do we treat them like they are? These girls are showing off the female body and showing us that we should be confident in how we look. The problems only begins when people are provocative about this particular type of modelling. There is a fine line between flashing a bit of boob and full blow pornography, something I find the general public struggle to distinguish. Should we be shaming these young ladies for posing without a top on? Of course not, they are beautiful young women being proud with their bodies and we should respect that.

I think the majority of people who oppose the page 3 model believe that it's objectifying women to men, something us ladies struggle with. It's not the modelling itself that is the problem, it's the attitudes men have been exposed to. Men can appreciate the female body on the page 3 of The Sun and still respect women, however others can't. Removing the famous pin up will not solve men's  attitude towards women in our society, that is something we have to expose them too, the idea that men can find women attractive and yet still respect them as human beings. That is were this belief that the pin up girl is degrading to women, it's all about men's reactions. Maybe we should spend less time hiding them from it and more time educating them about appreciating and respecting women.

So is the page 3 pin up revolting or revolutionary? I would go with the latter, we as women shouldn't be shaming the exposer of our biology but embracing it. We are all human in the end and eventually society will catchup with that equality in mind.