Today, The Sun published the ‘shaming’ story, ‘New sex game shame for topless Brit birthday girl in Magaluf’.
Putting aside whether or not it is in any of anyone’s business what a girl does on her 18th birthday it is worth just taking a moment to highlight the paper’s barefaced moral hypocrisy when it comes to baring breasts.
The Sun goes to great length ‘to celebrate’ the ‘bare-breasted beauties’ (see this 40th anniversary ‘celebration’) that they have daily on their page 3, but don’t seem to hesitate to talk of the shame that this girl is supposed to have felt for choosing to get her boobs out for a drinking game.
So which one is it – is The Sun celebrating natural beauty, in which case I personally look forward to the page 2 cock close-up juxtaposed next to the boobs, or, are we shaming people for getting their naughty bits out?
Of course The Sun is not the only paper to sink into a moral hypocrisy as they try to appeal to both middle-England’s sense of perpetual outrage and to the dispiriting fact that half naked pictures sell papers.
The other example that springs to mind is The Daily Mail’s obsession with fighting the ‘sexualisation of childhood’ whilst at the same time running pictures of 14-year-old Kylie Jenner in a “tiny wetsuit” and “skimpy bikinis”.
For what it is worth I personally feel a lot of sympathy with the ‘celebrating natural beauty’ argument but just feel that is not, and indeed, cannot, be properly ‘celebrated’ in a society and newspaper industry that is so depressingly dripping in overt sexism.
Perhaps even more importantly though, I just feel that this sort of barefaced hypocrisy deserves to be highlighted.
Hynd's Blog 
I wonder if your position is a bit inconsistent in that you suggest people can do whatever they want on their 18th birthday but it is shameful that a newspaper pays consenting adults for topless shoots. You say it is inconsistent for The Sun to condemn only one of these, but perhaps it’s a problem for you too. Perhaps you don’t want to look like a prude, but don’t want to look like a misogynist either.
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The key to my position here is about equality – I don’t mind girls getting their boobs out, or even being paid to do so, I do mind it in the deeply sexist context of page 3. Hope that clarifies.
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