Actress Gemma Chan labels Page 3 ‘a disgrace’ and throws her weight behind the No More Page 3 campaign.
Gemma Chan is currently starring in the film Jack Reacher: Shadow Recruit, later this year she stars in London Fields with Johnny Depp and new BBC TV show, The Game, with Brian Cox. She is the partner of comedian Jack Whitehall and has appeared in TV shows including Fresh Meat, Dr Who, Sherlock and Secret Diary of a Call Girl.
In a front page interview with The London Magazine, March issue, out now. Gemma said
“A picture of a naked woman isn’t in itself a sexist thing, but it’s the context of having those pictures in the most ubiquitous newspaper and the culture that creates. This campaign is saying that it is sexist and it’s not harmless: it influences boys and girls growing up as to how they view a woman’s place in society. You have a newspaper where all the men are decision makers, the managers, the sports people etc, and as a woman there is page 3 telling you that the most important thing is that you’re viewed as sexually desirable, and in quite a limited way.” The campaigners also point out that page 3 is usually the largest image of a woman in any newspaper on any given day, “which is a disgrace,” says Chan.“Imagine if it was a picture of a teenage guy with his balls out every day; the arguments against it would seem completely self-evident.”
The No More Page 3 campaign was started by Lucy Holmes when she bought a copy of the Sun during the 2012 Olympics and found that she couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that the largest female image was the Page 3 image even though Jessica Ennis had just gold. Lucy said
‘We are thrilled to have Gemma on board. She’s a really energetic supporter who often tweets us and wears her No More Page 3 T-shirt! The pressure really is building now on David Dinsmore, editor of The Sun, he can’t choose to stay stuck in the sexist 1970s for much longer!’
No More Page 3 is supported by
- Girlguiding UK (over 500,000 young members)
- Mumsnet (Mumsnet is the UK’s largest website for parents, with 4.3 million monthly unique visitors)
- The British Youth Council (over 220 youth organisations)
- UK Youth (working with approx. 1 million young people, and 11,000 youth clubs)
- Members of the Girls’ Brigade England and Wales (just under 20,000 members)
- The NUT, ATL, NAHT and NASUWT (combining over 780,000 teachers, lecturers and Head Teachers)
- Unison (our largest union, 1.3 million members)
- The National Assembly of Wales
- The Scottish Parliament
- The Royal College of Midwives
- The Royal College of Nursing
- 28 universites and 6 Oxford University Colleges have voted to stop selling The Sun until it drops the page 3 topless images
- Rape Crisis
- Woman’s Aid
- End Violence Against Women’s Coalition