SOCIETY has a problem.
Children are waking up to newspapers open on the table baring breasts.
The All Seeing Eye is certainly seeing all. Children and teenagers are growing up surrounded by "the perfect body". It is degrading and generally just unnecessary.
I was thrilled recently to hear of the No More Page Three campaign regarding and surrounding a large national newspaper. The portrayed use of the female body is wrong. Women are not objects, and we certainly do not wish to be regarded in such a way.
Newspapers have been producing texts for as long as we can remember. They circulate news and provide us with necessary information. Though why, I wonder, do perfectly wonderful admirable newspapers and magazines find the need to cheapen their product with "free breasts and eye candy"? A newspaper is for providing news, not for bringing children up in a world obsessed with the human body.
The body is personal. We cannot avoid sharing our beliefs, opinions, interests and even our private data with the general public. Yet there is one thing that truly belongs a secret, if we so allow it. Our body.
We were all born different. We love independently, uniquely. Therefore the images we see on our papers should not be clones of one another. No two bodies are the same, so why use photo editing techniques to produce this outcome? It is misleading. Offensive. It is degrading to the rest of society with a sense of privacy. The editing software produces a robot reconstruction – take the images away completely and we not only erase public humiliation, but size 0 obsession.
We find ourselves complaining about young adults posting images onto social networking sites, or the new pastime of "sexting". Yet what kind of example is being set when their parents have been openly peeking at breasts in the newspaper since before they were crawling? Hypocritical nonsense. There is so much open access to images in this modern day society, there just simply is no need for it to be among news articles.
Dead is the day when the gentleman would hold open the door for the lady. Why? There is a lack of ladies. I am troubled to see an increase in foul-mouthed, short-skirted young women, flaunting themselves on our streets. The meat is being thrown to the lion. Bad messages are being taught. The gentleman no longer expects a lady to cross his path and the lady no longer expects a gentleman. What a disappointment.
What harm can come from covering up? People are failing to see the links in this truly challenging world between young people and old ways. I find it uncanny that the public are quick to judge a young person of which they have helped to create.
I am a young person protesting against bare breasts so that the generation to come will be of a high class ranking, considering only attitude. You may be of another generation, wishing to argue against me. So I ask you this; shall I place you within a stereotypical category too?
Rapists have claimed that their victims "asked for it", by wearing short skirts. Abusers have claimed that women and men were "flaunting themselves, so why should they be treated any differently?" Murderers have claimed that they are "ridding the world of bad people". Extreme cases in an extreme world.
One bad name leads to another. She did it, so he certainly will. We need to go back to the start. Begin teaching the new generation that we are not the same. Unless you want us to be …
Times are changing, and so are we.
It is a wonderful surprise to see 82,798 signatures on the petition for No More Page Three. Perhaps, I hope, we have a chance of a classical society, bringing with it a following line of less rapes and abuse. Followed then by less drug abuse and violence. In a nutshell of course, but everything has a beginning.
Page three is unnecessary. Help the new generation to value themselves, and maybe they will value you. Join the campaign on http://nomorepage3.org/
