I often ask myself why I used to get so angry about page 3 of The Sun back in the '70s when I was in my late teens and twenties and yet today if I happen on page 3 of this publication it just leaves me completely unmoved one way or the other. When I look back I think it was all to do with the very sexist climate that prevailed at the time. One of the offices I worked in, there were occasions that men would leave "girlie" magazines lying around from time to time. I reacted to them in several ways. I found them not only debasing but I know I wasn't alone in saying they made me feel uncomfortable and we were expected to shrug it off. Page 3 had the same effect and I can remember rowing with one boyfriend who had a page 3 calendar on his bedroom wall. When these issues were raised in the media, the response from the air head women who posed for these publications was usually something along the lines of "women who criticize us are obviously jealous" I remember at the time thinking they are so way off the mark, the reason we hate these publications is because the reduce the whole of women kind to sex objects and they must be thick if they chose not see that. Jealousy didn't come into it. I also hated the way women were used in say motor exhibitions, draped half naked across the bonnets of cars etc. Much has been written since about this kind of thing since and I think in retrospect most now agree it was indeed an awful era for the blatant sexism. Having said all that when I was reading about that horrible old sleaze bag Stuart Hall, the reporting about this case and others, the inference seemed to be this behaviour reflected a bygone era and everything is different now. Different yes, but better no. I would absolutely hate to be a teenage girl these days the pressure they seem to come under from their own peer group to perform all manner of sexual acts often caught on film is horrific. The internet as wonderful as it is, has opened the most awful can of worms as far as pornography is concerned. Reading about the two recent murder cases, Tia Sharp and April Jones, both the men convicted of these horrendous crimes had viewed child pornography. Why is it that the government can't or wont block these sites. I believe I read China blocks sites it doesn't want it's citizens to access, clearly it can be done. Google's complicity in this is far more shameful than their tax evasion. Why as a society do we tolerate it?
Going back to "lads' mags", yes I would like to lose them, but I think in the great scheme of things they are merely distasteful rather than pernicious. I wonder if our attitude to these magazines differs based on whether we are the mothers of sons rather than daughters. I am not trying to defend them, but they were something I had to get my head round when my boys were in their teens. Luckily my husband was very good at arbitrating between my annoyance and my older son having these publications lying round his room. He did this by pointing out that his nieces, my husband's older granddaughters, who are frequent visitors to our house might stumble upon them and would He want his little nieces looking at these half clad women in provocative poses and that usually got him to remove any calendars or pin ups off the wall at least. At the same time reminding me that teenage boys think about sex all the time and that they will look at this type of things and that was something I had to come to terms with. We always removed the worst of the "under the bed" publications, and they never asked where their stash had gone. I really liked Frank's post and again my husband's views on this subject are close to Frank's. He always told me he was embarrassed by a business partner who made salacious remarks about teenage girls when they both had teenage daughters themselves.
It's always been a problem for me to come to terms with the fact that there are women around today, some very successful, who delight in objectifying themselves. There was a concert at Twickenham at the week-end which was supposed to have something to do with the empowerment of women and therefore it's somewhat of a paradox to have Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez strutting around with very little on. What the hell has that got to do with the empowerment of women? I do not buy into that concept that their record company expects them to dress like this, I'd say those two singers mentioned along with Rhianna, Lady GaGa and Madonna before them have always micro managed their own image and they present themselves like this because they want to. To dedicate a concert to the empowerment of women whilst performing half naked strikes me as being pretty disingenuous, particularly when there will be girls who will be dressing like this against their will because they are trafficked and forced to work in the sex industry.
In conclusion I'd be happy to get rid of lad's mags and whilst we are about it perhaps we could get rid of some of these lap dancing clubs that proliferate ordinary high streets these days, maybe there is a place for them but not in our faces please and neither this government or the last did anything about getting these establishments re classified and off our high streets.
