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If you’re a chesty, pretty young woman, there are plenty of media opportunities for you in the UK. Most British tabloid newspapers and lads mags relish praising females for their pins and curves, while ignoring (at best) or hating (at worst) women for their professional or personal achievements.
Unlike the Internet, there is no trigger warning or parental control tools for these mainstream publications. From the Sun’s iconic Page 3, to magazines like Nuts or Zoo, scantily clad women populate the bottom shelves of press stands at a childs eye level in high-street supermarkets.
But now a large number of British citizens have decided that enough is enough. The increasing success of projects like Spot the Sexism, No More Page 3, or Everyday Sexism shows the shift in public opinion towards portraying women as sex objects.
Most recently, the UK Green MP Caroline Lucas decided to challenge gender stereotypes and to bring a debate about media sexism to the British Parliament.
“Our media routinely sends out damaging messages about the place of women and girls in society,” said the MP on her website. With violence against women taking place on such an alarming scale, the Government and the industry must now take action to challenge the cavalier attitudes within the media industry which often lead to the trivialisation of sexual violence and abuse”.
However, any attempt of media regulation may quickly spark outrage amongst British press publishers who are still recovering from the aftermath of the Leveson Inquiry. “Before voting any press regulation laws, politicians need to be able to identify and give name to the harm that is being done,” said feminist and writer Soraya Chemaly. “In the case of the campaign we just ran with Facebook, it was very important that the major media company acknowledges the word misogyny and acknowledges the fact that misogyny and sexism cause harm and they have to do something about that.”
Feminist activists argue that portraying women as sex objects in the media fuels sexist attitudes and behaviors, particularly harmful for children and young people.
The recent Just the Women report issued by the coalition of British women’s rights advocates, revealed some shocking facts. According to the report, one in two boys and one in three girls believe that in some circumstances it is okay to hit a woman or force her to have sex. Also, research found almost one in three girls have experienced unwanted sexual touching at school.
But women’s rights groups don’t seem to call for new legislation. No More Page 3 campaigner Lisa Clarke makes clear they are not asking MPs to ban the Sun’s topless page feature. But it is perfectly reasonable to bring some guidelines about the way the sexual violence and violence against women should and shouldn’t be portrayed in the media, Lisa said.
Providing more information and specialist training for journalists on the reporting of violence against women and girls is expected be one of the main measures proposed in the Parliament debate. Any other attempts to regulate the media content is very likely to upset the defenders of free speech.
“I think [we need to] change cultural attitudes,” said Soraya Chemaly, “and that’s different from passing laws about speech. We need to confront sexism when we see it as we need to confront racism when we see it and I think we have to make people think about their assumption and their norms.”
Whatever the outcome of the Parliament debate, British MPs cannot avoid addressing the alarming situation of violence against women in the country anymore. Women’s rights activists expect the politicians to recognize the crucial role that the newspapers and magazines play in perpetuation of gender stereotypes and to propose concrete measures that will lead to equal representation of women in the media.
Photo: Marcela Kunova/Newsmodo