Page Three

Many tabloid newspapers use a photo of a topless or a naked girl to improve their sales. Very often, this photo is placed on page three of the newspaper; that is where the name of this feature is from. For this reason, the feature is referred to as Page Three or Page 3. The newspaper The Sun, who introduced this in 1970, holds a copyright on the name. The Sun showed a picture of a topless girl on page three. Other newspapers, such as the Daily Star and Daily Mirror had pictures of naked women; The Mirror changed for models in swimsuits after a few years.Andrew Belsey, Ruth F. Chadwick: Ethical issues in journalism and the media Routledge, 1992, , S. 92–93

Claire Short tried to stop this.She did not want to penalize the depiction of nude women, but she wanted to define a newspaper as a publication that did not show naked or topless men or women. This would have meant that British rainbow press would no longer have been newspapers. She received 3,000 letters supporting the idea. The Sun, and other papers fought against the bill, which was known as Page Three Bill. Eventually, the Bill failed, because it did not get enough support.

There are many women who want to appear as a page three girl. Most of them are unemployed, or come from the working class. Buying make-up and clothes to be able to run as a contestant is very expensive; most of the women can barely afford this alone. Very often, the whole family will help. The best motivation for these women is to be able to start a career as a starlet.

Many girls who started as a page three model later became well-known. Examples are Samantha Fox, Michelle Marsh, andr Lucy Pinder. 

Other websites
Page Three girls – the naked truth from the BBC website

References

Category:Newspaper publishing
Category:Sociological terminology