Campaigners question use of ‘sexualised imagery’ in The Sun’s breast cancer drive
The campaign group lobbying The Sun to dump its Page 3 feature has criticised the paper’s decision to use “sexualised images of young women” to promote an initiative encouraging women to check their breasts for signs of cancer.
The Sun has today (4 March) launched “Check em’ Tuesday” a partnership with breast cancer awareness charity CoppaFeel! The paper says it will use Page 3 every Tuesday to remind readers to check their breasts for signs of the disease.
Page 3 regular Rosie appears topless on the front page of today’s paper next to the text: “Page 3 v Breast Cancer”.
The founder of the No More Page 3 campaign Lucy Anne Holmes backed the objective of the campaign and congratulated CoppaFeel! for “securing this partnership with a powerful platform like the Sun” but questioned the use of Page 3 models.
She adds: “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 churlish to wish the campaign anything other than success.”
The No More Page 3 campaign was founded in 2012 to persuade the then editor Dominic Mohan to remove topless photographs of women from the paper.
It has lobbied some of the paper’s biggest advertisers including Tesco and Morrisons to try and pressure the paper to change its use of Page 3.
