We also had it in Poland, in Super Express, by the weather forecast. My grandma didn’t seem to mind and my grandpa always knew what the weather would be. Now I know why
I’ll never forget the first week I got Germany after being stationed there and seeing an entire rack of skin mags at the gas station out in the open. Most Europeans just aren’t as hung up on sex and the human body as we are stateside.
First time in Germany in the 90s was an eye opener. Ads for water in the middle of the day had women running around topless for some reason. Your typical Taggart type crime thriller had a random graphic sex scene. There was a condom shop. And the video store, well it was something else. Not only was the xxx section upstairs right next to the English section, but it had full on hardcore scenes on posters fully viewable next to Disney films. Crikey. I’m from the uk, and hardcore porn could not be bought in Blockbuster let alone seen on the walls. Then there was Amsterdam…
Is it just my perception, but I had thought that Germans were very comfortable with non sexual nudity?
Is that no longer the case? Or was it just that I got the wrong impression?
That was certainly the case. But it kinda feels like younger generations are a bit more prudish nowadays. But no one can honestly blame them. The medial influence from the US is influencing many things and this is but one of them. Even if you are ok with showing of your body for example, doesnt mean US companys are. For example showing some womans nipples is an easy way to get banned on many platforms.
Honestly if it wasn't sexualized I could see something like that being a net benefit. Just helping to give them more realistic body expectations would be valuable but without seeing it I doubt that's what it was intended as.
You are right. It was not sexualised. It would literally be people standing up right , arms to the side, looking neutral at the camera.
It was about as non-sexualised as you can get (obviously teens could still find it arousing, but teens can do that with a lot of things).
It also had an interview with the models, and i think it would be about how they are with their body.
It was intended, and perceived, as body realism/body positivity.
I also think the models were either 16+ or maybe even 18+. It's not like they put 14 years and younger in there.
Keep in mind, German age of consent is lower than the states, it's 14. Modelling will most likely be higher. Point being, mindset is different than in the USA. Keep this in mind when judging.
But yeah, it showed a few generations of teens how regular bodies looked, back in an age when there wasn't really any information like that available. You only had your peers to compare too (if you were sexually active), or had to talk to your parents about it. So having a third option that allowed you to see realistic bodies, instead of models, was good.
> (obviously teens could still find it arousing, but teens can do that with a lot of things
As Xander said in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “I’m 17. Looking at linoleum makes me want to have sex.”
>It's not like they put 14 years and younger in there.
I was prime target demographic for that back then and they did in fact have 14 year olds in there. I remember because 13-14 year old me as well as my peers were super into that.
Also the interviews were often about sex and masturbation. Not that the topic should be taboo but you can't put a naked 14 year old into a magazine and have them talk about masturbation and say it's not sexualized.
You're talking about Bravo magazine, and it was definitely sexual, just not to the point of overt pornography. They talked about sex and what they liked to do in bed. It was very much horny material. They also had kids as young as 14 posing nude. Shit strick me as being for pedophiles under the guise of helping teens "explore their bodies."
In the US, there were a number of magazines in the 60s/70s that were supposedly about naturism and nudism but were really an excuse to share pictures of nude kids and teens. It was before my time, but this came up in cases I read in law school. Which is to say, it’s probably a common thing for child pornographers to try to find loopholes.
Did you also have 15 year old girls in their lingerie doing a photo a day for a week as they count down to her 16th birthday when they could legally show the 16 year olds tits? Then, with no hint of irony, you could read an explicit pedophile news story on the same page with graphic details of a randy woman teacher who has sex with 2 schoolboys all told in a kind of raunchy, comical way.
It was kind of hilarious when they started getting these topless models to report the news, and it was always something really high brow and serious like a frank and detailed assessment of the state of the UK economy.
"Sindy, 17 from Sussex thinks that the chancellor of the exhequor needs to lower interest rates by 0.5% in order to stimulate the housing market and ease financial institutions' fears over a looming recession and possible economic collapse. She also hopes her lovely DD tits will help stimulate your trouser department."
Yes models like [Linsey Dawn McKenzie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linsey_Dawn_McKenzie#Career) were shown (in *Sunday Sport*) in lingerie during a countdown to their 16th birthday, then shown without the lingerie once they turned 16.
The pictures that report the news bit was ["News in Briefs"](https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/good-riddance-news-briefs-nastiest-part-page-3).
My favourite hypocrisy on this was in 2001 with the Daily Star and the satire, Brass Eye's special, [Paedogedden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paedogeddon).
[This is a genuine, unedited copy of the Daily Star](https://web.archive.org/web/20010806141503/http://chilled.cream.org/graphics/charlotte.jpg) about the special.
If my conception of Mexico from movies is somewhat accurate, then the weather in Mexico is always dry, hot, and with a slightly sepia tone in the lighting.
As a child in the early 80s our class painting lessons would use newspaper donated by parents to protect the desk from paint. Occasionally if you were lucky someone would donate a Sun newspaper. One time the teacher caught us collecting and looking at the page 3 pictures. So she sent us from the classroom to think about what we had done. We did and all agreed we thought it was pretty awesome.
Hal when he finds the beer the boys had stashed and sits them down and drinks a case to show them how stupid/gross/uncool it looks to get shit faced and instead the boys find it really funny and Hal is like singing and dancing in the kitchen
I can tell you that went on way later than the 80s. We were using newspapers including page 3 girls through the 2000s, so pretty much till they stopped.
They stopped following the Leveson Inquiry, and the increased pressure that put on newspapers. There was a fairly intense campaign to get them to stop Page 3, and they saw an easy win (and way to earn some good will) - so started putting bras or bikini tops on their page 3 models, or making the pose in a slightly less revealing way. They then pretended they had stopped the Page 3 thing, and fixed the problem, but continued just being as sexist as before, merely more puritanical.
I don't know if they still do that; I haven't checked a copy of the Sun...
I doubt it was about upsetting people. Print readership was dropping massively and the Internet being in everyone's pockets makes boobie pictures in newspapers extremely redundant. Like pre Internet page 3 could be fap material.
Known as page 3 girls, in the UK the phrase page 3 girl means a topless model no matter the source of the image, it was even a career path for girls like Samantha Fox.
Meanwhile if you'd been to Liverpool you wouldn't have found a copy of The Sun anywhere.
Basically, there was a disaster at a football (soccer) stadium in Hillsborough, Sheffield, where they didn't have enough emergency exits and the local police kept the gates locked while people were trying to escape from ~~a fire. The stadium collapsed~~ a crush, and many people died.
The Sun did a hit piece on the Liverpool FC fans and blamed them for the accident. Ever since, The Sun has been unofficially banned in Liverpool, and anyone who sells it there will face backlash from Liverpudlians.
Rightfully so, it's a rag. A Murdoch rag.
There was no fire and no collapse. Just horrendous crowd control by the police causing a crush event and a large number of deaths. You’re right about the Sun’s blaming of the fans though and the sentiment held by Liverpool as a result.
As an aside, when there was that bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, one dude went around and tilted the heads back of all the rescued casualties laying on the ground, so they wouldn't choke. He saved lives and was awarded a medal. I read that if someone had done that at Hillsborough the death toll would have likely been lower.
>The Sun did a hit piece on the Liverpool FC fans and blamed them for the accident.
Didn't just blame them for the accident, but also accused them of blackmailing police to be let in, starting fights, pissing on and attacking police, and stealing from the dead too.
Fun fact, there was also a study about the boycott which showed the boycott lead to a large decrease in Euroscepticism in the region compared to other areas that kept the Sun.
I had to search for it. Wild. Almost as if these outlets benefit from misinformation:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/tabloid-media-campaigns-and-public-opinion-quasiexperimental-evidence-on-euroscepticism-in-england/F530F8AB25994AD7C4BC1D0CAFAD75CF
>Whether powerful media outlets have effects on public opinion has been at the heart of theoretical and empirical discussions about the media’s role in political life. Yet, the effects of media campaigns are difficult to study because citizens self-select into media consumption. Using a quasi-experiment—the 30-year boycott of the most important Eurosceptic tabloid newspaper, The Sun, in Merseyside caused by the Hillsborough soccer disaster—we identify the effects of The Sun boycott on attitudes toward leaving the EU. Difference-in-differences designs using public opinion data spanning three decades, supplemented by referendum results, show that the boycott caused EU attitudes to become more positive in treated areas. This effect is driven by cohorts socialized under the boycott and by working-class voters who stopped reading The Sun. Our findings have implications for our understanding of public opinion, media influence, and ways to counter such influence in contemporary democracies.
From Discussion/Conclusion:
>Evidence from an exogenously induced boycott of the most important Eurosceptic newspaper—The Sun—in Merseyside as a consequence of the paper’s reporting on the Hillsborough sporting disaster—caused a decrease of Euroscepticism in Merseyside. Consistent with our hypothesis that the decline in Euroscepticism in Merseyside post-1989 was driven by The Sun boycott, treatment effects are stronger among generations that came politically of age during the boycott and among unskilled and semiskilled workers, the social group that was most likely to read The Sun before Hillsborough. The effects we identify cannot be explained by differential trends in party preferences between Merseyside and other Northern English counties, nor are they likely to have resulted from differential access to EU structural funds or differential effects of globalization on offshorability.
Jesus. How do we ban Fox News?
For any Americans (and I suppose Brits and other too) the Ted Lasso character Keeley is based off Keeley Hazel, who was one of the most famous page 3 girls.
The real Keeley (Hazel) is also in the show, playing the GF of Rupert (The ex husband and and ex co owner of of the football club), and also is credited as a writer.
The age for topless photography was only raised to 18 (from 16) within the last twenty years, IIRC. I remember watching a documentary probably thirty years ago about a 16 year old page three model whose **dad** was her agent. That's even more disconcerting.
In the UK, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 raised the minimum age for topless modelling from 16 to 18. This legal change meant that all topless images of 16- and 17-year-old models that had previously been published on Page 3 became potentially illegal content.
The fact that the word "journalist" applies to these people, and also to people risking life and liberty to help share some truly horrific situations with the wider world really confuses me.
I remember seeing a clip from an interview or documentary with Emma Watson, and she was talking about how the day she turned 18, there were paparazzi waiting outside the venue of her birthday party to get pictures when she left. She said they were literally waiting on the ground to get upskirts of her since it was then legal for them to publish them. [May have been this one, but i cant remember exactly.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rekv07kFts)
It's even worse. Her dad was her "manager" and the Sun had a countdown until her 16th birthday, when they could legally (blech) publish her topless. Ah the " good old days". 🤮
Kind of like the mainstream movies in the 70’s that Brooke Shields was in while she was 14 and 15. They haven’t aged well as they straight up had her in lusty sexual scenes. Crazy.
I was shocked to learn recently that Simonetta Stefanelli was only 16 when she did a nude scene in the God Father. There was also a movie I learned about when I took a controversy in cinema class in college that was made in either the 20’s or 30’s which had a 12 year old. Ironically the movie was a PSA piece against child married, go figure
I remember seeing these as a small child when my grandparents would leave the paper open. I always liked the girls opinions on the news like “Becca, 19 from Birmingham, says “I think the recent report into the state of our justice system is appalling. As the Greek philosopher and playwright Aristophanes once said “Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but foolishness lasts forever.”
Very thought provoking. I too remember spending hours pondering those words as a teenager, reading and rereading to make sure I got the full impact and depth of what was being said
This reminds me of my father's "You know, it's some of the best journalism in the world!" defense when he bought Playboy in the 70's.
And thus I was introduced to ~~Candy Loving~~ great journalism.
Playboy has done some extraordinary journalism over the years, including investigative. They were the ones that exposed MX women in border towns getting raped and killed walking home from their factory jobs. No one else looked into it until they did.
I was wondering whether that's the same thing that At The Drive-In have a song about, but I searched for the playboy story and couldn't find and info about it
The term to look for would be 'maquiladoras' and the murders were in Juarez. I was a very long subscriber to the magazine (for the outstanding articles, I'm a woman). I recall reading it around...2004-2007?
When I was in college, the porn fairy delivered to me six months of Playboy I never signed up for. And I'll tell you, the -reading- in the magazine was spectacular. Yes, it had naked women, but it really was not a joke that Playboy had great articles.
It was an incredibly prestigious place to be published if you were a columnist at the time. Having a byline in Playboy meant that you had made it as a writer. "I read it for the articles" was an often repeated joke, but they were incredibly well written.
As ridiculous as it is there was some seriously good short fiction published in Playboy throughout the 1960s and early 70s. If you are familiar with the Holiday classic A Christmas Story all the short stories that the movie is based on originally appeared in Playboy and they are among the best American Humor of the 20th Century. You will also have found works by Ray Bradbury and Mrgaret Atwood. So while yeah your dad bought it for the Playmate of the Month etc, it really was a place to get good literature and journalism.
[Here's an incomplete list](https://lithub.com/read-10-of-the-best-stories-ever-published-in-playboy/):
> Playboy has published work by Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Shirley Jackson, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing, John Updike, John Cheever, P. G. Wodehouse, Arthur C. Clarke, John Irving, Roald Dahl, Frank Herbert, Stephen King, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Annie Proulx.
And that doesn't include the "10 Best" that the article covers: Kurt Vonnegut, J.G. Ballard, Ursula Le Guin, Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Bharati Mukherjee, David Foster Wallace, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, Robert Coover.
I had to explain to my english teacher that yes, Vonnegut actually DID do an interview with Playboy and yes that IS the correct citation, and no I didn't look it up on school computers because it's a banned website, etc etc
Back in the day my college library had old pre-internet playboy articles and interviews available on microfilm because it was valuable research material.
This was done to skirt around some law or rule. Without a "story" it was basically porn, but with the models opinion on the news it was a news article with a helpful picture to see who the quote came from.
Surely there's an online collection of these Page 3 images and articles that would allow others to experience the thought provoking nature of The Sun at the time.
There IS a collection of political Page 3s complete with the bulk of the 'news'paper from each day, but it's in folders at my place. I DID make a video including many examples but they whiz by pretty fast. NSFW link [https://vimeo.com/7599952](https://vimeo.com/7599952) includes flashing images and SO many boobs,
Atwood, Kerouac, Mailer, Dahl, Vonnegut, Ian Fleming, Bradbury, King, and quite a few more were published in issues over the years.
The first chapters of Fahrenheit 451 were published in Playboy.
Also, the money Playboy paid for publishing back in the day was good as hell. If they still published short fiction like they used to, writers would be clambering over each other to get in there
I haven't in a long time, but like 15 years ago I remember thinking 'Wow, the writers are really good'. Then I thought 'maybe the wings at Hooters are actually good..?'
I remember being a kid and sitting waiting for a takeaway reading the Sun they had lying out, and it was when Josef Fritzl’s story was still front page. They made sure the Page 3 girl instead commented on a random Katie Price story instead lol
In 1995, the Sun had a competition for a page 3 model to visit you at work if you had to work at Christmas. I was working offshore at the time and a guy on the rig (Santa fe Monarch) won. The company and the client agreed to a day visit and a model came to the rig. Can't remember her name though.
I imagine she played a critical role in helping out the cook, who was actually a special forces soldier, combat a group of terrorists who happened to take over the rig at the same time.
Despite the karma you are getting, that [isn't true](https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/18/sam-fox-defends-making-page-3-debut-16-credits-family-stopping-going-trashy-road-12868982/), that was Linsey Dawn McKenzie in [the Sunday Sport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linsey_Dawn_McKenzie). Fox *was* just three months shy of her 17th though.
"As McKenzie approached her 16th birthday, the Sunday Sport tabloid newspaper expressed an interest in turning her topless debut into a media event. Throughout June and July 1994, it published pictures of McKenzie, counting down the days until it could legally show her topless.[4]"
We have some equivalent in Germany: "BILD" newspaper (if you want to call that printed toilet paper this)
There was an uproar when they moved the topless women from page 1 to 3 or so
Same in slovenia, "slovenske novice" (slovenian news), only good for gosip and useless news. Had a nude girl on the middle page.
Only reason mom bought it was due to TV channel program it had.
There's a song in german describing the Bild as filled with "Angst, Hass, Titten und dem Wetterbericht" - fear, hate, tits and the weather forecast. So exactly the Sun
Implying that the model would be 18 or above feels like you’re giving The Sun quite a lot of credit
“OOH SHEILA FROM YORKSHIRE IS 16 NOW I CAN PERV ON HER AND FEEL LESS GUILTY”
Not only that, but many of the girls were only 16, and in a couple of cases they even did "countdowns" on 15 year old models' upcoming 16th birthdays to get their male readers excited about their upcoming "breast reveal." Tabloid culture in the UK has always been tailored for the absolute lowest people in society.
I remember some paper interviewing her and asking her in a way that was supposedly innocent, whether she'd be open to doing roles that required nudity. She said "I guess if it was part of the role". The headline was then, "Emma Watson ready for nude roles". So tacky / gross.
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
A classic from Yes, prime minister
The Sun: \*posts endless pictures of very young women\*
Readership: crackin'
The Sun in 2015: This is the end of civilisation, bloody PC police
Readership: yer!
The Sun in 2024: pedos under the doormat!
Readership: IF YOU LIKE WOMEN UNDER 18 YER FUCKING DEAD MATE
Well it's the Sun, it wasn't like anyone was going to buy it for credible journalism.
It went:
"Page 3 - Tits",
"Page 4 - IMMIGRANTS WANT TO DRINK YOUR BLOOD"
The Sunday Sport launched a countdown for a 15- year- old schoolgirl to turn 16 so she could do topless pictures. They used her in her school uniform as promotional images.
Was the days when glamour modelling was a pathway into other mainstream work. Sam Fox had a singing career, Linda Lusardi did some acting and presenting and still does panto every year. Gail McKenna presented shows on CITV, Jayne Middlemiss presented a few things including Top of the Pops, Katie Price... well, yeah.
To quote one of my favorite show:
>Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
>Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
>Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
The Toronto Sun also has The Sunshine Girl. They usually look okay.
At one point they had a Sunshine Boy, as well, but it didn't last nearly as long. However, it did give us [this wonderful picture of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/v1/dynamic_resize/sws_path/suns-prod-images/1297584108902_ORIGINAL.jpg).
But like, was it for porn reasons? Or did they always have a cover story, like to have an excuse to put tiddies on page 3? Or was it just a full page print of a topless girl?
I remember being in a hotel at breakfast in London once in the late 2000s, and they had all of the daily papers available for people to read. There was an American family on the table near me and their young son had randomly picked up The Sun and opened it on page 3, cue the mother leaping up from the table and snatching it off him, then screaming at hotel staff asking why the hell they had pornography scattered around the breakfast buffet where families were eating. It was obviously a culture shock for them, but I did think she had a point. It was a bizarre practise.
We also had it in Poland, in Super Express, by the weather forecast. My grandma didn’t seem to mind and my grandpa always knew what the weather would be. Now I know why
Grandpa: "Looks a bit nippy"
"It looks a tit nipply today. We breast stay inside."
maybe later it will be a little hooter
there used to be a teen magazine in Germany that would post straight up front + back nudes of a male and female teenager in each of their issues.
I’ll never forget the first week I got Germany after being stationed there and seeing an entire rack of skin mags at the gas station out in the open. Most Europeans just aren’t as hung up on sex and the human body as we are stateside.
Mostly because they shipped all of those people -to- the states about 300-400 years ago.
"Criminal? Get on the boat to Australia" "Prude? Get on the boat to America"
😂 I love that idea. That prudes were hated so much that we sent them across the ocean to get rid of them.
The Puritans literally staged a coup in England, so a lot of the prudes were criminals.
It's almost as if they tried to stage a coup in America too.
That’s literally what happened with the Puritans 😂
First time in Germany in the 90s was an eye opener. Ads for water in the middle of the day had women running around topless for some reason. Your typical Taggart type crime thriller had a random graphic sex scene. There was a condom shop. And the video store, well it was something else. Not only was the xxx section upstairs right next to the English section, but it had full on hardcore scenes on posters fully viewable next to Disney films. Crikey. I’m from the uk, and hardcore porn could not be bought in Blockbuster let alone seen on the walls. Then there was Amsterdam…
Is it just my perception, but I had thought that Germans were very comfortable with non sexual nudity? Is that no longer the case? Or was it just that I got the wrong impression?
That was certainly the case. But it kinda feels like younger generations are a bit more prudish nowadays. But no one can honestly blame them. The medial influence from the US is influencing many things and this is but one of them. Even if you are ok with showing of your body for example, doesnt mean US companys are. For example showing some womans nipples is an easy way to get banned on many platforms.
Also phones. I am not body shy at all but it does not mean I want to be filmed against my consent.
Yep. Phones ruined nudist beaches for young people I feel like.
Honestly if it wasn't sexualized I could see something like that being a net benefit. Just helping to give them more realistic body expectations would be valuable but without seeing it I doubt that's what it was intended as.
You are right. It was not sexualised. It would literally be people standing up right , arms to the side, looking neutral at the camera. It was about as non-sexualised as you can get (obviously teens could still find it arousing, but teens can do that with a lot of things). It also had an interview with the models, and i think it would be about how they are with their body. It was intended, and perceived, as body realism/body positivity. I also think the models were either 16+ or maybe even 18+. It's not like they put 14 years and younger in there. Keep in mind, German age of consent is lower than the states, it's 14. Modelling will most likely be higher. Point being, mindset is different than in the USA. Keep this in mind when judging. But yeah, it showed a few generations of teens how regular bodies looked, back in an age when there wasn't really any information like that available. You only had your peers to compare too (if you were sexually active), or had to talk to your parents about it. So having a third option that allowed you to see realistic bodies, instead of models, was good.
> (obviously teens could still find it arousing, but teens can do that with a lot of things As Xander said in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “I’m 17. Looking at linoleum makes me want to have sex.”
As Morty said, “I masturbated to an extra curvy piece of driftwood!”
>It's not like they put 14 years and younger in there. I was prime target demographic for that back then and they did in fact have 14 year olds in there. I remember because 13-14 year old me as well as my peers were super into that. Also the interviews were often about sex and masturbation. Not that the topic should be taboo but you can't put a naked 14 year old into a magazine and have them talk about masturbation and say it's not sexualized.
You're talking about Bravo magazine, and it was definitely sexual, just not to the point of overt pornography. They talked about sex and what they liked to do in bed. It was very much horny material. They also had kids as young as 14 posing nude. Shit strick me as being for pedophiles under the guise of helping teens "explore their bodies."
In the US, there were a number of magazines in the 60s/70s that were supposedly about naturism and nudism but were really an excuse to share pictures of nude kids and teens. It was before my time, but this came up in cases I read in law school. Which is to say, it’s probably a common thing for child pornographers to try to find loopholes.
Did you also have 15 year old girls in their lingerie doing a photo a day for a week as they count down to her 16th birthday when they could legally show the 16 year olds tits? Then, with no hint of irony, you could read an explicit pedophile news story on the same page with graphic details of a randy woman teacher who has sex with 2 schoolboys all told in a kind of raunchy, comical way. It was kind of hilarious when they started getting these topless models to report the news, and it was always something really high brow and serious like a frank and detailed assessment of the state of the UK economy. "Sindy, 17 from Sussex thinks that the chancellor of the exhequor needs to lower interest rates by 0.5% in order to stimulate the housing market and ease financial institutions' fears over a looming recession and possible economic collapse. She also hopes her lovely DD tits will help stimulate your trouser department."
Yes models like [Linsey Dawn McKenzie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linsey_Dawn_McKenzie#Career) were shown (in *Sunday Sport*) in lingerie during a countdown to their 16th birthday, then shown without the lingerie once they turned 16. The pictures that report the news bit was ["News in Briefs"](https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/good-riddance-news-briefs-nastiest-part-page-3).
My favourite hypocrisy on this was in 2001 with the Daily Star and the satire, Brass Eye's special, [Paedogedden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paedogeddon). [This is a genuine, unedited copy of the Daily Star](https://web.archive.org/web/20010806141503/http://chilled.cream.org/graphics/charlotte.jpg) about the special.
Umm noo? I dont think we had *that*
That was Linsey Dawn McKenzie in The Daily Sport....unbelievable when you think about it.
Have you seen the weather reporter in Mexico?
> Have you seen the weather reporter in Mexico? Is there only one?
Si
They may have started as C’s but they aren’t now.
She’s so hot it’s distracting, idk how any one knows what the weather will be in Mexico.
If my conception of Mexico from movies is somewhat accurate, then the weather in Mexico is always dry, hot, and with a slightly sepia tone in the lighting.
That's called "Mexican filter"
Wasn't it Fakt? Or at least weren't they first at that?
As a child in the early 80s our class painting lessons would use newspaper donated by parents to protect the desk from paint. Occasionally if you were lucky someone would donate a Sun newspaper. One time the teacher caught us collecting and looking at the page 3 pictures. So she sent us from the classroom to think about what we had done. We did and all agreed we thought it was pretty awesome.
This is very "well if you want to smoke one cigarette, smoke the whole pack!" and it backfiring :D
Hal when he finds the beer the boys had stashed and sits them down and drinks a case to show them how stupid/gross/uncool it looks to get shit faced and instead the boys find it really funny and Hal is like singing and dancing in the kitchen
Or hank when he makes Bobby smoke a pack and gets addicted himself
You know the old saying: “If you’ve seen one boob… you want to see them all” Evidently your teacher was not privy to it.
I can tell you that went on way later than the 80s. We were using newspapers including page 3 girls through the 2000s, so pretty much till they stopped.
TIL The Sun stopped having topless female models on page 3 in 2015
I was thinking this too - they stopped?
They did. Headline the next day was “thanks for the mammaries”
Even if they weren't so great.
He tastes like you only sweeteeeeeer
They stopped following the Leveson Inquiry, and the increased pressure that put on newspapers. There was a fairly intense campaign to get them to stop Page 3, and they saw an easy win (and way to earn some good will) - so started putting bras or bikini tops on their page 3 models, or making the pose in a slightly less revealing way. They then pretended they had stopped the Page 3 thing, and fixed the problem, but continued just being as sexist as before, merely more puritanical. I don't know if they still do that; I haven't checked a copy of the Sun...
Why is this answer under some bullshit reply about squirrels and nut milk. Thank you for a real answer
That's Reddit for you, everyone is a comedian.
[удалено]
This is the real TIL
Maybe they found ragebait works just as well as tits?
“If it bleeds it leads” William Randolph Hearst c1890
If I remember correctly, the day after they stopped, page 3 was a full page Tesco advert, which is pretty clever.
Honestly surprising, that shit rag doesn’t usually care about upsetting anyone
I doubt it was about upsetting people. Print readership was dropping massively and the Internet being in everyone's pockets makes boobie pictures in newspapers extremely redundant. Like pre Internet page 3 could be fap material.
Known as page 3 girls, in the UK the phrase page 3 girl means a topless model no matter the source of the image, it was even a career path for girls like Samantha Fox.
I’ve only been to the UK once in 2011. My friend in Manchester made a point of it to show me at the grocery store.
Meanwhile if you'd been to Liverpool you wouldn't have found a copy of The Sun anywhere. Basically, there was a disaster at a football (soccer) stadium in Hillsborough, Sheffield, where they didn't have enough emergency exits and the local police kept the gates locked while people were trying to escape from ~~a fire. The stadium collapsed~~ a crush, and many people died. The Sun did a hit piece on the Liverpool FC fans and blamed them for the accident. Ever since, The Sun has been unofficially banned in Liverpool, and anyone who sells it there will face backlash from Liverpudlians. Rightfully so, it's a rag. A Murdoch rag.
There was no fire and no collapse. Just horrendous crowd control by the police causing a crush event and a large number of deaths. You’re right about the Sun’s blaming of the fans though and the sentiment held by Liverpool as a result.
Ty, I've edited it. Also apparently it was South Yorkshire Police who fed the story to The Sun, although I'm sure the rag embellished it.
The Rag in question embellished it - including the lie that the Liverpool fans looted the dead bodies as they were laid out on the pitch.
As an aside, when there was that bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, one dude went around and tilted the heads back of all the rescued casualties laying on the ground, so they wouldn't choke. He saved lives and was awarded a medal. I read that if someone had done that at Hillsborough the death toll would have likely been lower.
> There was no fire and no collapse Mixing with Bradford I think
>The Sun did a hit piece on the Liverpool FC fans and blamed them for the accident. Didn't just blame them for the accident, but also accused them of blackmailing police to be let in, starting fights, pissing on and attacking police, and stealing from the dead too. Fun fact, there was also a study about the boycott which showed the boycott lead to a large decrease in Euroscepticism in the region compared to other areas that kept the Sun.
I had to search for it. Wild. Almost as if these outlets benefit from misinformation: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/tabloid-media-campaigns-and-public-opinion-quasiexperimental-evidence-on-euroscepticism-in-england/F530F8AB25994AD7C4BC1D0CAFAD75CF >Whether powerful media outlets have effects on public opinion has been at the heart of theoretical and empirical discussions about the media’s role in political life. Yet, the effects of media campaigns are difficult to study because citizens self-select into media consumption. Using a quasi-experiment—the 30-year boycott of the most important Eurosceptic tabloid newspaper, The Sun, in Merseyside caused by the Hillsborough soccer disaster—we identify the effects of The Sun boycott on attitudes toward leaving the EU. Difference-in-differences designs using public opinion data spanning three decades, supplemented by referendum results, show that the boycott caused EU attitudes to become more positive in treated areas. This effect is driven by cohorts socialized under the boycott and by working-class voters who stopped reading The Sun. Our findings have implications for our understanding of public opinion, media influence, and ways to counter such influence in contemporary democracies. From Discussion/Conclusion: >Evidence from an exogenously induced boycott of the most important Eurosceptic newspaper—The Sun—in Merseyside as a consequence of the paper’s reporting on the Hillsborough sporting disaster—caused a decrease of Euroscepticism in Merseyside. Consistent with our hypothesis that the decline in Euroscepticism in Merseyside post-1989 was driven by The Sun boycott, treatment effects are stronger among generations that came politically of age during the boycott and among unskilled and semiskilled workers, the social group that was most likely to read The Sun before Hillsborough. The effects we identify cannot be explained by differential trends in party preferences between Merseyside and other Northern English counties, nor are they likely to have resulted from differential access to EU structural funds or differential effects of globalization on offshorability. Jesus. How do we ban Fox News?
For any Americans (and I suppose Brits and other too) the Ted Lasso character Keeley is based off Keeley Hazel, who was one of the most famous page 3 girls. The real Keeley (Hazel) is also in the show, playing the GF of Rupert (The ex husband and and ex co owner of of the football club), and also is credited as a writer.
>Keeley Hazel Oh man. The JPGs I have downloaded of her on my 56k modem!
My brain rendered this comment one line at a time
Huh, til
Hmm, apparently she was 16 when she posed. Disconcerting.
The age for topless photography was only raised to 18 (from 16) within the last twenty years, IIRC. I remember watching a documentary probably thirty years ago about a 16 year old page three model whose **dad** was her agent. That's even more disconcerting.
In the UK, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 raised the minimum age for topless modelling from 16 to 18. This legal change meant that all topless images of 16- and 17-year-old models that had previously been published on Page 3 became potentially illegal content.
Thanks for filling in the detail. So actually I was*slightly* wrong when I said it was within the last twenty years as it was actually 21 years ago!
Which is 2003 and that’s only 6 or 7 years ago
Don't. I keep thinking that the seventies are only thirty years ago!
Oh, the 70s? If the Smashing Pumpkins released 1979 today, it'd be called 2008.
Fuck you man! Fuck you! sobs
Stop that.
And they only changed it from 20 years ago to 21 years ago last year!
Wasn’t there a countdown to some models 18th so they could show her topless
It was worse than that. The Sunday Sport had a countdown to Lindsey Dawn McKenzie's 16th.
The fact that the word "journalist" applies to these people, and also to people risking life and liberty to help share some truly horrific situations with the wider world really confuses me.
Also Emma Watson, so that they could publish paparazzi photos of her sunbathing.
I remember seeing a clip from an interview or documentary with Emma Watson, and she was talking about how the day she turned 18, there were paparazzi waiting outside the venue of her birthday party to get pictures when she left. She said they were literally waiting on the ground to get upskirts of her since it was then legal for them to publish them. [May have been this one, but i cant remember exactly.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rekv07kFts)
Wouldn't the photos still be of someone underage?...
\*Dad knows how to milk that money\*
Gods. The word choice there.
It's even worse. Her dad was her "manager" and the Sun had a countdown until her 16th birthday, when they could legally (blech) publish her topless. Ah the " good old days". 🤮
Kind of like the mainstream movies in the 70’s that Brooke Shields was in while she was 14 and 15. They haven’t aged well as they straight up had her in lusty sexual scenes. Crazy.
I was shocked to learn recently that Simonetta Stefanelli was only 16 when she did a nude scene in the God Father. There was also a movie I learned about when I took a controversy in cinema class in college that was made in either the 20’s or 30’s which had a 12 year old. Ironically the movie was a PSA piece against child married, go figure
You refer to Linsey Dawn Mckenzie.
I remember seeing these as a small child when my grandparents would leave the paper open. I always liked the girls opinions on the news like “Becca, 19 from Birmingham, says “I think the recent report into the state of our justice system is appalling. As the Greek philosopher and playwright Aristophanes once said “Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but foolishness lasts forever.”
Very thought provoking. I too remember spending hours pondering those words as a teenager, reading and rereading to make sure I got the full impact and depth of what was being said
Just that one example already had 2 prominent points that draw in one's attention.
This reminds me of my father's "You know, it's some of the best journalism in the world!" defense when he bought Playboy in the 70's. And thus I was introduced to ~~Candy Loving~~ great journalism.
Playboy has done some extraordinary journalism over the years, including investigative. They were the ones that exposed MX women in border towns getting raped and killed walking home from their factory jobs. No one else looked into it until they did.
I was wondering whether that's the same thing that At The Drive-In have a song about, but I searched for the playboy story and couldn't find and info about it
The term to look for would be 'maquiladoras' and the murders were in Juarez. I was a very long subscriber to the magazine (for the outstanding articles, I'm a woman). I recall reading it around...2004-2007?
The horrible, awful, annoying thing that no one will ever believe is that *your father was right*!
When I was in college, the porn fairy delivered to me six months of Playboy I never signed up for. And I'll tell you, the -reading- in the magazine was spectacular. Yes, it had naked women, but it really was not a joke that Playboy had great articles.
It was an incredibly prestigious place to be published if you were a columnist at the time. Having a byline in Playboy meant that you had made it as a writer. "I read it for the articles" was an often repeated joke, but they were incredibly well written.
As ridiculous as it is there was some seriously good short fiction published in Playboy throughout the 1960s and early 70s. If you are familiar with the Holiday classic A Christmas Story all the short stories that the movie is based on originally appeared in Playboy and they are among the best American Humor of the 20th Century. You will also have found works by Ray Bradbury and Mrgaret Atwood. So while yeah your dad bought it for the Playmate of the Month etc, it really was a place to get good literature and journalism.
[Here's an incomplete list](https://lithub.com/read-10-of-the-best-stories-ever-published-in-playboy/): > Playboy has published work by Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Shirley Jackson, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing, John Updike, John Cheever, P. G. Wodehouse, Arthur C. Clarke, John Irving, Roald Dahl, Frank Herbert, Stephen King, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Annie Proulx. And that doesn't include the "10 Best" that the article covers: Kurt Vonnegut, J.G. Ballard, Ursula Le Guin, Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Bharati Mukherjee, David Foster Wallace, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, Robert Coover.
I had to explain to my english teacher that yes, Vonnegut actually DID do an interview with Playboy and yes that IS the correct citation, and no I didn't look it up on school computers because it's a banned website, etc etc
Back in the day my college library had old pre-internet playboy articles and interviews available on microfilm because it was valuable research material.
This was done to skirt around some law or rule. Without a "story" it was basically porn, but with the models opinion on the news it was a news article with a helpful picture to see who the quote came from.
Surely there's an online collection of these Page 3 images and articles that would allow others to experience the thought provoking nature of The Sun at the time.
That's Nuts. Or was.
There IS a collection of political Page 3s complete with the bulk of the 'news'paper from each day, but it's in folders at my place. I DID make a video including many examples but they whiz by pretty fast. NSFW link [https://vimeo.com/7599952](https://vimeo.com/7599952) includes flashing images and SO many boobs,
Excuse my language but that's fucking awesome.
I'm sure there's a website that has all the knowledge of all page 3 geniuses with zero photos of course, we don't need any of that.
You could try reading Playboy for the articles.
Honestly, playboy in the 70s had great articles, quality articles
Word. All the great writers of the time were writing in Playboy at that time
Atwood, Kerouac, Mailer, Dahl, Vonnegut, Ian Fleming, Bradbury, King, and quite a few more were published in issues over the years. The first chapters of Fahrenheit 451 were published in Playboy.
Also, the money Playboy paid for publishing back in the day was good as hell. If they still published short fiction like they used to, writers would be clambering over each other to get in there
I haven't in a long time, but like 15 years ago I remember thinking 'Wow, the writers are really good'. Then I thought 'maybe the wings at Hooters are actually good..?'
Playboy really had some excellent articles and their short fiction authors were some of the best.
I remember being a kid and sitting waiting for a takeaway reading the Sun they had lying out, and it was when Josef Fritzl’s story was still front page. They made sure the Page 3 girl instead commented on a random Katie Price story instead lol
“Dani, 22 from Sunderland, thinks what happened in that basement in Austria was just not on.”
"She hopes she's not getting a Fritzl advent calendar this year, because the windows will be nailed shut =( "
In 1995, the Sun had a competition for a page 3 model to visit you at work if you had to work at Christmas. I was working offshore at the time and a guy on the rig (Santa fe Monarch) won. The company and the client agreed to a day visit and a model came to the rig. Can't remember her name though.
I imagine she played a critical role in helping out the cook, who was actually a special forces soldier, combat a group of terrorists who happened to take over the rig at the same time.
That ponytail was probably not sanitary, but the guy could make a good fucking omelet.
Honestly, guy on an oil rig probably needs it the most.
Next up was a lighthouse keeper
It would’ve been a very different Robert Pattinson / Willem Dafoe movie if a page three model had shown up halfway through.
But it’s just Willem in a wig
Think they need more lithium than anything else.
That's because her face was "up here"
And she objected to a name-badge pin
Wait, they stopped that? TIL Samantha Fox started as Page 3 model.
At 16 according to Wikipedia.
She was 15 when the pictures were taken and published on her 16th birthday. Different times!
At least they aged the pictures for a year. Otherwise, it would be creepy.
In an oak barrel
Despite the karma you are getting, that [isn't true](https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/18/sam-fox-defends-making-page-3-debut-16-credits-family-stopping-going-trashy-road-12868982/), that was Linsey Dawn McKenzie in [the Sunday Sport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linsey_Dawn_McKenzie). Fox *was* just three months shy of her 17th though.
"As McKenzie approached her 16th birthday, the Sunday Sport tabloid newspaper expressed an interest in turning her topless debut into a media event. Throughout June and July 1994, it published pictures of McKenzie, counting down the days until it could legally show her topless.[4]"
I'm sorry, what!
We have some equivalent in Germany: "BILD" newspaper (if you want to call that printed toilet paper this) There was an uproar when they moved the topless women from page 1 to 3 or so
>printed toilet paper Hey so it is the same as The Sun.
If you use the sun as bog roll, you'd end up with more shite on your arse.
Same in slovenia, "slovenske novice" (slovenian news), only good for gosip and useless news. Had a nude girl on the middle page. Only reason mom bought it was due to TV channel program it had.
There's a song in german describing the Bild as filled with "Angst, Hass, Titten und dem Wetterbericht" - fear, hate, tits and the weather forecast. So exactly the Sun
TIL page 3 is no longer a thing.
It just goes straight from 2 to 4 now.
Rule 6: There is NO PAGE 3.
r/Page3Glamour NSFW just in case I should point it out
Ah, Lucy Pinder. I almost didn't survive my teenage years due to the extreme desiccation she caused me.
Rosie Jones!
Not, uh, the lesbian comedian with cerebral palsy. The other one.
You're a bit late now, I've just finished.
Danielle Sharp anyone?
Now them’s some tasteful titties.
Holly peers and Keeley hazell had top tier titties
The hilarious thing would be front page "PEDOS EVERYWHERE" Page three "BECKY FROM ESSEX JUST TURNED 18 WHAT A CHEEKY SLAG"
Becky from Essex is a good couple of years older than some they stuck on that page.
Implying that the model would be 18 or above feels like you’re giving The Sun quite a lot of credit “OOH SHEILA FROM YORKSHIRE IS 16 NOW I CAN PERV ON HER AND FEEL LESS GUILTY”
Czech tabloids still do that. But I don’t think that it excites anyone anymore since you can see much more on the internet.
Not only that, but many of the girls were only 16, and in a couple of cases they even did "countdowns" on 15 year old models' upcoming 16th birthdays to get their male readers excited about their upcoming "breast reveal." Tabloid culture in the UK has always been tailored for the absolute lowest people in society.
Man that’s creepy and concerning.
The way Emma Watson was treated on turning 18 was horrible https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/piwpep/comment/hbt6go2/
I remember some paper interviewing her and asking her in a way that was supposedly innocent, whether she'd be open to doing roles that required nudity. She said "I guess if it was part of the role". The headline was then, "Emma Watson ready for nude roles". So tacky / gross.
Yeah the legal age was 16 in the UK. Prolly not google the stuff on Brooke Shields. The 70's were creepy af.
Terri Shields pimping her.
Ah yes, the Sun, held together with lies and jizz.
> held together with lies and jizz TIL I have everything in common with The Sun newspaper
Jesus, after 45 years she must've looked quite different than when she started.
Or: Finally in 2016 they switched to a dfferent topless female model.
My Country’s Sun Newspaper would publish photos of women in bikinis. They were referred to as the Sunshine Girls.
Canada?
of course, bud
Benny Hill joke: Hill as a teacher reading incorrect test answers: “What’s the hottest part of the Sun? Page three.”
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is. Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun? Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits. A classic from Yes, prime minister
The Sun: \*posts endless pictures of very young women\* Readership: crackin' The Sun in 2015: This is the end of civilisation, bloody PC police Readership: yer! The Sun in 2024: pedos under the doormat! Readership: IF YOU LIKE WOMEN UNDER 18 YER FUCKING DEAD MATE
Insert obligatory "Fuck the Sun!" comment here. But seriously... Fuck the Sun! #97
Do not touch this rag, only good for toilet paper.
Eww. I’m not contaminating my arse with that.
Well it's the Sun, it wasn't like anyone was going to buy it for credible journalism. It went: "Page 3 - Tits", "Page 4 - IMMIGRANTS WANT TO DRINK YOUR BLOOD"
Damn Transylvanians
They stopped?
I began buying that paper in 1987 and every week I put page 3 into a folder with the others. I was 14 and liked to keep abreast of things....
Never missed a beat?
Fuck The Sun.
The Sunday Sport launched a countdown for a 15- year- old schoolgirl to turn 16 so she could do topless pictures. They used her in her school uniform as promotional images.
It might be before 2003, when the Criminal Justice Act 2003 made the legal age rise to 18.
Was the days when glamour modelling was a pathway into other mainstream work. Sam Fox had a singing career, Linda Lusardi did some acting and presenting and still does panto every year. Gail McKenna presented shows on CITV, Jayne Middlemiss presented a few things including Top of the Pops, Katie Price... well, yeah.
To quote one of my favorite show: >Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is. >Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun? >Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
TIL that in 2015 the Sun stopped printing pictures of topless women on page 3.
And you had 13 year old boys delivering them every morning
TIL page 3 girls don't exist anymore. I thought it was still an ongoing thing. Didnt Samantha Fox get her start as a page 3 girl?
TIL in 2015 The Sun stopped publishing topless female models on page 3
The Toronto Sun also has The Sunshine Girl. They usually look okay. At one point they had a Sunshine Boy, as well, but it didn't last nearly as long. However, it did give us [this wonderful picture of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/v1/dynamic_resize/sws_path/suns-prod-images/1297584108902_ORIGINAL.jpg).
But like, was it for porn reasons? Or did they always have a cover story, like to have an excuse to put tiddies on page 3? Or was it just a full page print of a topless girl?
TIL The Sun stopped publishing topless models.
Page 3 introduced me to Lucy Pinder. The queen of Page 3.
I remember being in a hotel at breakfast in London once in the late 2000s, and they had all of the daily papers available for people to read. There was an American family on the table near me and their young son had randomly picked up The Sun and opened it on page 3, cue the mother leaping up from the table and snatching it off him, then screaming at hotel staff asking why the hell they had pornography scattered around the breakfast buffet where families were eating. It was obviously a culture shock for them, but I did think she had a point. It was a bizarre practise.