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If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
I do not see why there is an objection to women who are confident enough to voluntarily show their beautiful assets in public.
Of course negative stories about women - their bodies and behaviour in particular - are the choice fodder of some sections of the British press.
As both a woman and someone with boobs, I'm fully behind Lucy Holmes' petition asking Dominic Mohan to "Take Page 3 out of the Sun. But I'd argue that the newspaper which is far more damaging to women's self esteem - and equally if not more adept at portraying them as merely physical objects - is the Daily Mail. Day after day - and hour after hour on its website, the Mail Online - the Daily Mail continues to bombard us with 'stories' about women which revolve solely around how they look.
Step forward the No More Page Three campaign, which has recently exploded onto a laptop near you. It has already received thousands of comments from its signatories explaining why they have signed. They range from simple statements, such as ''Because boobs aren't news", to more disturbing ones like, "no male friends who look at these pictures say 'I respect her'"...
The ordeals imposed by police on journalists and their families caught up in the phone hacking investigations are unnecessary and disgraceful. And please do remember, we're talking about journalists here, not hardened villains with criminal records as long as their arm. Yet that is how they and their families are being treated in scenes the Stasi would be proud of. Yes, police must investigate all allegations of crime equally without fear or favour, but there simply IS a difference between dealing with a hardened criminal and a middle-class middle-aged white-collar journalist.
In their Braveheart tinged defence of their decision to publish naked pictures taken of Prince Harry in a Vegas hotel room, the Sun, and their parent ...
Umm, come on. This woman is a supermodel; do you really think she gives one hoot what some pro-ana blogger says about her? Let's get real. She's busy rolling in her SI cover girl gazillions and laughing all the way to the bank.
When did the Olympics turn bad? From reading headlines over the last week it would seem the Games have flopped even before the starting gun has been fired.
London's most important event, Gay Pride, was on last Saturday but Rupert Murdoch's The Sun dedicated just 57 words to it. Instead, on the opposite side, they published a full-page 'interview' with a woman who "can't hear telly" because her neighbour, Susan Boyle, sings too loudly.
It was Wednesday the sixth of July, 2005 - and as I recall, overcast but warm. "The International Olympic Committee has the honour of announcing", he said. "That the Games of the 30th Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the city of...LONDON!"
As much as we like to the sneer at the comic-like quality of The Sun newspaper, as many a Prime Minister has discovered, its status as the highest circulation daily newspaper in the UK means that you ignore its influence at your peril.
So, how can sexual liberation be measured? The concept of liberation is centred around the notion of freedom. In this case, it means the freedom to control who you have sex with. It refers to consciousness, knowing the decisions you wish to make about your body and having the freedom to act upon it.
With exactly seven months to go until the end of the world, I have got to thinking as to how it might manifest itself (I would've written this blog next month, when it was a round half year to go - but I'll be on a beach then, reading a book, with an umbrella-y drink in my hand, and thinking not a jot about universal destruction).
Whether or not Roy Hodgson himself is offended or not by this approach from the Sun the implications are much bigger than that. As a society do we want to send the message that if you speak in a 'different' way that you can be singled out because of this?
With Warhol-ian sarcasm, the sly and powerful 81-year-old media mogul told the Leveson Inquiry that he basically has nothing to hide, let alone fear from this farcical tirade against his corporate stranglehold on public opinion.
There now follows some snippets from my new one-act play, "Meanwhile, at The Sun". It features a journalist named Nick and his writing partner, Alex, as they attempt to keep up with the rolling snowball that is the news.
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