After the Co-op supermarket chain dropped lads mags Front, Nuts, Zoo and the Sunday Sport after they refused to cover their magazines in modesty bags, Jodie Marsh has waded into the Lose The Lads Mags campaign debate.
Marsh took to Twitter, denouncing the move and the campaign, but here's the twist - rather than criticising her viewpoint, some feminists have commented that she raises a valid point.
On her Twitter page, Marsh posted several comments saying that banning magazines with women on the front cover smacks of double standards:
She also posted a picture from Vogue, asking how it was different from the work she undertakes for men's magazines:
She sort of has a point, don't you think?
She then went on to say:
The tweets then continue, with Marsh adding "live and let live, old farts' and "Being a real modern day feminist means CELEBRATING women & encouraging them. Not trying to cover them up & hide them & stop them being paid."
Marsh's main issue is that by banning lads mags, not only does it harm an industry that is already flagging in sales, but that it's presumptous to assume that the women posing on the covers are somehow being coerced or aren't aware of what they are doing.
Several people said on Twitter:
Writing for The Telegraph, Dr Brooke Magnanti (formerly Belle de Jour) said that the ban shouldn't be seen as a victory, because "Campaigns like Lose the Lads’ Mags have consistently failed to make any appeal to the women who are involved in glamour modelling, and this is a problem. To many, this signals that the people who run the campaigns are perfectly willing to throw women whose jobs they don't approve of under the bus.
"They also ignore the successful efforts of women in these highly gendered areas of work to secure good pay and working conditions, and offer no viable alternatives for earning a living. It's slut-shaming on the economic level."
Some of the support for Marsh also ended up in a backlash against Vagenda Magazine, who had initially highlighted Marsh's tweets.
However, not everyone agrees with Marsh.
In an email to HuffPost UK Lifestyle, Lecturer at East Anglia University and HuffPost blogger Dr BJ Epstein said: "Human bodies are beautiful, and that's definitely something we should celebrate in the media. However, there are clear double standards in our society regarding how women are portrayed versus how men as well as in regard to the opportunities men and women have more generally.
"It's easy for a women such as Jodie Marsh -- a successful celebrity of sorts who can choose how much of her body to show and where to do it and for how much money -- to support lads' mags. Unfortunately, many women don't have the kinds of opportunities and choices she does and don't command the respect a more well-known person does. It's time we stop focusing on women's bodies and instead consider their minds, their skills, their talents, and their rights. But perhaps some celebrities would be out of a career if we did that."
Lose The Lads Mags campaign was started by UK pressure groups UK Feminista and Object to get lads magazines off the shelves of supermarkets. The website states: "Lads’ mags promote sexist attitudes and behaviours. They normalise the idea that it’s acceptable to treat women like sex objects. Yet despite widespread criticism over the years, high-street supermarkets and newsagents have continued to display and sell these degrading and harmful publications. But customers and shop employees don’t have to put up with it any longer."
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