A Modest Proposal for the Page 3 Debate

For Preventing the Feminists of the World from Being a Burden to Men or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public

For those not familiar with the UK’s tabloid the Sun, the Page 3 Girls are topless women whose photos appear in the daily paper. There have been numerous attempts made by women to rid the Sun of these women most famously by the campaign No More Page 3. 

With the latest headline news coverage of a tweet and its response I feel it is time to put an end to this matter of the Sun’s Page 3 Girls. I am referring to the article on The Huffington Post The Sun'sPage 3 Girls: Has Rupert Murdoch Hinted The End To Topless Feature? by Jessica Elgot.

In a Twitter response to Karen Mason, @Kazipooh, who said “@rupertmurdoch #nomorepage3 Seriously, we are all so over page 3 - it is so last century!”, Rupert Murdoch, @rupertmurdoch, said: “You maybe (sic) right, don't know but considering. Perhaps halfway house with glamorous fashionistas.”

With apologies to Jonathon Swift, who is so three centuries ago, I believe I may have an answer to the problem.

It is quite tiresome to turn on the news and listen to all the bedraggled, overweight feminists raging on about how photos of topless women in the media lead to the degradation of women and even possibly domestic violence.

I think we can all agree that the aging and let’s be frank, shall we, ugly women who think women should not expose themselves in newspapers are tedious and so out-of-touch with what young, beautiful women want. It is not even just these so-called “feminists” that I have a proposal for, but in fact, all women of the beauty ideal age that society deems pleasing to look at.

I have thought long and hard on this subject and believe that for women to truly learn their correct position in our society that not only should the Page 3 Girls not be removed from the Sun, but that they should, in fact, be added to every print publication in existence.

The number of women deemed attractive enough for print will dictate the number of pages needed to be added to publications, hence possibly causing the need for Page 4, 5 and 6 Girls at times.

I am assured by the number of tits-and-ass-loving gentlemen of our current society that there will be ample space for all women of the correct age to be photographed, which I will go out on a limb and suggest to be between the ages of 18 and 24.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

Every woman who comes of age in our society shall have to pass through a screening process of pre-selected men who will choose which women will be deemed attractive enough to be photographed topless and shared with popular culture for the betterment of male-kind and also for helping to concretize women’s proper place on the totem pole of gender hierarchy.

Many other advantages for our society will include: the reordering of our gender identities back into their rightful places, the reminder to women that men are the ones in charge of deciding who and what is considered beautiful, the monetary reward for the models who might go unemployed otherwise, the reassurance to men everywhere that their urge to see women half naked at their convenience is not only a right but a necessity.

I can think of no objection that could be raised to this proposal other than some incessant Twitter chats begun by uppity and uncooperative womyn who may argue that this proposal is sexist and degrading and that they cannot be made to strip for others’ enjoyment. To them I would say that any other recipes for redressing women’s complaints about sexism and female degradation have failed, often at the hands of women themselves: women cannot agree even that they themselves are beautiful, but rather write endless blogs of how to boost body image and self-esteem; feminists fight amongst themselves as to what is actually “feminist” or not; women wish to be seen as equal to men, but still insist on being the ones to bear children; the beauty industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that proves women are concerned about one thing and one thing only—becoming a Page 3 Girl.

I confess that I have no personal gain to be made from this proposal as I am way past the age of ideal beauty and would most definitely not pass muster with a pre-selected male committee deciding the value of my beauty.