Ever since Lucy Anne Holmes started the No More Page 3campaign there’s been mounting antagonism towards The Sun's daily topless picture – think 136,481 petition signatures and counting. Even Russell Brand recently added his support. So it’s not a huge jump to think that the front page of today's edition –* *announcing the fact that Page 3 has joined forces with cancer awareness charity CoppaFeel to promote breast cancer awareness – might be an attempt to revive it’s brand.
The Sun has announced that the weekly campaign will encourage readers to #checkemtuesday – ie, feel their breasts for irregularities on a weekly basis. ‘Our famed Page 3 will be dedicated to remind readers to be “boob aware” and to check for signs of the disease,’ they write. ‘Readers can also receive free text messages reminding them to check themselves once a month.’ *
The paper has also made a video where Coppafeel founder Kris Hallenga says, ‘For us it’s a brilliant platform to get across a life-saving message – [Page 3] are the most famous boobs in Britain.’
A survey carried out by the paper found that only 18 per cent of women are confident enough to check their own breasts for signs of any changes, and only 23 per cent feel confident that they would notice any change in their breasts. So it makes sense that ‘Check’em Tuesdays’ has been launched. And teaming up with Kris Hallenga – a 28-year-old breast cancer survivor who talks about the disease with frank candour – also makes sense. (Sample: getting used to the mournful ‘head tilt’ she receives from stranger hearing the story of how she discovered a lump aged just 23). Her Coppafeel campaign to get young women to check their breasts – inspired by a joke she made about the men on a crushed Bejing train (she was diagnosed with the disease in China while travelling) ‘copping a feel’ – is no-doubt a brilliant cause. It's something that *The Sun'*s editorial has already raised the public profile of – there's a lot to be said for sugar-coating ideas to make them more palatable for a wider audience.
But, isn't there something a bit iffy about The Sun – which has been using Page 3 girls since 1970 – being the paper to launch this campaign? After all, we weren’t really aware that female readers had any interaction with Page 3. And it’s still leaving four out of five Page 3’s in a month there simply for titillation. Also, despite the paper pointing out that alongside the 50,000 women – around 136 a day – who are diagnosed with breast cancer there are over 400 men who also get it. But there are no plans to put a man onto Page 3 as part of this campaign.*
All of which also begs the question: what is* The Sun*, with five out of eight readers being men, going to do when it comes to testicular cancer?
Update:
We've just had this update from Lucy-Ann Holmes, who is behind the No More Page 3 campaign:
It can be exciting when newspapers back important issues. We've seen recently how powerful they can be, Fahma Mohamed's campaign on FGM in The Guardian, Yas Necati campaigning with The Telegraph to get the sex education curriculum updated. Today The Sun uses the platform of Page 3 to highlight the important issue of breast cancer awareness.
Many of the No More Page 3 team have been affected by breast cancer in the lives of people they love dearly. We really hope that this campaign succeeds in encouraging women to check their breasts who otherwise wouldn't - and we love the notion of women supporting other women.
We applaud the models for doing what they feel is right to help and congratulations to the founder of Coppa Feel for securing this partnership with a powerful platform like The Sun. That said, we can’t help but feel that it’s a real shame The Sun has decided to use these sexualised images of young women to highlight breast cancer. They will say that they want to use the power of Page 3 as a force for good - we say that a society in which sexualised images of young women are seen as that powerful has to change.
It’s good that The Sun is responding to pressure on Page 3 in different ways - and it would be wrong to wish the campaign anything other than success.
But together, if we keep fighting against the sexist representation of women in the media, maybe one day we’ll look back and wonder why it was thought necessary to fight this horrific disease with images of young women in just their pants.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.