Charlotte Sometimes

Category: Rants

Smart Clothes for Women

I’ll never feel as smart as a man when I get ready to walk into an interview.

How can I? Society has always told me that a suit, shirt, and a tie is the ‘uniform’ for most interviews and work. That’s what I always saw around me when I worked in an office before. That’s what I see on the TV and in movies. That’s what I saw my Dad wear to work every day when I was growing up. That’s what I see the other people wearing who are being interviewed.

Since I’m about to soon finish nearly five years of education I’ve bought myself a suit to wear to interviews. But I don’t feel smart it in. I feel kind of… lumpy and a bit of a mess. It’s a beautiful suit from Hobbs. Hobbs really do make lovely ready to wear suits. Hobbs and Reiss are some of the best you can get for women’s workwear as far as I’m concerned (and of course the price reflects the good quality!).

But I had such a problem getting trousers to fit. You see, almost all women’s trousers are all cut to be quite slim to the leg, even when they proclaim to be a straight fitting trouser. So I bought a size 12 trouser in the end because I’m a person who likes doing spin classes, although this does make the waist have six inches of fabric spare.

The jacket is relatively nicely fitting, but weirdly broad shouldered as if it was made for an athlete (in contrast to the trousers which an athlete would never get into). Too broad for me and I grew up doing alot of swimming, I’m quite wide in the shoulder for my body size. So even though I bought a size 10 – as small as I could go – it kind of doesn’t quite fit me properly because it doesn’t sit right around the upper arms. Seems strange to make your trousers so skinny but your jacket so wide.

Then there were the shoes. Of course the shoes depended on the kind of trousers so they had to come afterwards. What I really wanted were a pair of leather Oxfords or similar – like the men who work in offices and go to job interviews. But I couldn’t find a nice suit that would sit neatly on the top of a pair of Oxfords, so instead I had to resort to a nice leather pair of ballet flats. There’s nothing wrong with ballet flats, I find them quite comfortable actually. But they’re totally not autumn/winter wear. My feet freeze in them. I perhaps could have got away with a pair of ankle boots, but they’d have had to be high heels, and I’m going for an interview with the armed forces (with aptitude testing that requires using a foot pedal) and hopefully an interview with a leading construction firm (with a 15 minute walk to the station and an hour on the train). Somehow, high heels don’t really feel appropriate. Nor do they feel smart to me.

Ok, well, I’ve made some compromises. But I have a suit that fits reasonably well and a pair of shoes that at least are leather so my feet won’t get totally wet if it’s raining. (Dry feet hardly seems like much to ask for when going to work or to a job interview, but apparently it is. Can’t wear bloody socks with them either.)

So then I order some shirts. I want double cuff shirts so that I can wear cufflinks. I like cufflinks, they make me feel smart. And as if I get to wear (almost) the same clothes as the men as part of my interview/work uniform. I look at the main shirt manufacturers and I discount anything in a stretch fabric, anything that isn’t 100% cotton, anything in a pattern other than stripes or checks, and anything that is cut tight to the body. I end up with two gorgeous shirts from Hawes & Curtis. Shirts are one of my favourite things. I love them. The fabric is so beautiful and the garments are so light and practical for workwear. Again though, I have to order in a size 12. But this time because a size 10 clings tight to my breasts and gapes slightly at the front. Now just for the record, I don’t have massive breasts. I’m a 32C/D (more or less) which isn’t actually particularly large. But despite my petite frame, I have to go up to a size 12. Unfortunately, everything else is too big. The neck gapes – I can’t wear it buttoned up because it’s a few inches too big. I certainly can’t wear a tie with it. The sleeves are far too long, and the shoulders a little too wide. I won’t lie, I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed that I can’t have nice things. Well I can have nice things, but the nice things don’t really fit me. I don’t understand why I can’t buy a women’s shirt by collar size. Which leads me on to the main thing that bothers me…

Why can’t I buy a women’s shirt by collar size? Because women’s shirts are ‘fitted’. I’m not entirely sure why, other than because the people that design them assume that women want to show off their bodies at work. If you’re wearing a shirt with double cuffs you’re going to tuck it into your trousers, so why does it need to have darts in the back and front in order to fit it close to your body? Why can’t it fit like a men’s range shirt where it’s loosely cut and just tucked into the trousers at the waist? I can only imagine that if it’s not to make women look more sexy at work, then it’s to make women spend more time ironing their clothes getting ready for work. I can iron a male cut shirt in no time at all. It’s so simple. But women’s shirts? Forget it. You can’t just press the front, back, front, yoke, collar, sleeve, sleeve flat on the ironing board.. no. You have to press each piece carefully because it is turned into a 3D garment with the darts designed to make it fit close to your body. It takes me three times as long to press my shirts as it does to press a man’s shirt. I suspect that it might be quicker if I invested in a decent large tailors ham, but why should I have to use specialist pressing equipment just because somebody has decided that women’s work shirts have to fit close to the body? Come on shirt manufacturers – sort it out. Just give me a shirt that fits close to my neck and has enough room in the body to go round my breasts without gaping. You don’t need to put darts in it. You don’t need to make it sexy. Just give me a practical garment that I can wear every day to work and doesn’t require me to give up half my Sunday evening to get five of them ironed.

On top of that – you can’t transport women’s shirts easily! Because they have so many shaping darts in them, they don’t lie flat in a suit carrier! The shirt will basically always need ironing again when you get to your destination (which is why I bought a striped shirt for the interview that requires an overnight stay the night before…). I don’t understand why everything is made so difficult for women compared to a man’s work wardrobe.

You know what? Should have bought the bloody shift dress that went with the suit jacket instead. It would have at least travelled better and taken less time to iron. I might have felt smarter in it too, because I’m not missing a tie from my outfit…

November 11, 2017
On 40k Sisters of Battle Sexism

I was inspired to write a post recently about the sexism in the look of the current range of Games Workshop figures. I wanted to analyse all the female sculpts in one post; but with just the Sisters of Battle I’ve already hit 2600 words, so I figured that I’d do the others in a second post.

This is an attempt to analyse the range of Games Workshop female figures, simple from images of the models and the small amount of text that accompanies them on the official website (UK version, correct as of December 2016). I’m going to use a fairly standard feminist history of art approach to the sculptures (with more swearing than is acceptable in academic papers), and I will treat them as if they are works of art like any other you might find in a gallery or museum.

Sisters of Battle Canoness

It’s the tit armour. I’m sorry, but it’s hideous. I mean, lets just think a little about reality; if Space Marines are hyper muscular under all that armour (a pretty standard thought about Space Marines) then they most likely wouldn’t have massive tits that needed to be accommodated on the front of their armour with weird globe-like structures. The fitter you get, the more fat you generally lose, and breasts are just made of fat and not really much else.

I mean, I’ve got pretty large breasts (a DD cup last time I was measured) and I can fit just fine into nominally ‘standard’ plate breastplates made for men (it’s the waist and shoulders that’s actually difficult with the fitting). I know that some women are exceptions to the rule that the more athletic you are the less fatty tissue you have sat on your chest, but the reality is that this armour looks like she’s struggling to contain an extreme set of round breast implants. Why are some of the most elite soldiers in the universe so concerned about how they look that they have breast implants?

There’s an argument I’ve seen tossed around many times that space marines are actually totally androgynous because the gene seed fucks with their genitals, so like, we already have female space marines. But if that’s the case then why haven’t their secondary sex characteristics disappeared too? If male space marines have no testicles then female space marines would logically have no breasts. However that argument against Games Workshop making female space marines is a load of crap – because if all secondary sex characteristics had disappeared then they wouldn’t have beards either. Sorry Space Wolves. Your mighty Viking manes are just as bullshit as the breasts. Mind you, I almost always use the clean shaved heads on my Marines. Or the ones wearing helmets. Even for my Space Wolves.

Not to mention that the decoration on the boob armour looks far too much like those trashy fetish club outfits called ‘chastity bras’. You’ll have to Google that for yourself – I’m not posting it here. In fact, don’t bother Googleing it. It’s every bit the dull male power fantasy that you expect from a name like ‘chastity bra’.

Verdict: Sexist.

Battle Sister with Heavy Flamer

From this angle she looks pretty good. However, I’m pretty sure that her heavy flamer is hiding the same hideous tit-armour that the Canoness has. I like the cute gas mask she’s wearing though. I should put this model on my wishlist, then carve off her inevitable boob armour if you can see it.

Verdict: Inconclusive.

Exorcist Tank

I can’t seem to find a good picture of the sprue to see what armour she’s wearing. Can anyone help?

Verdict: Inconclusive.

Penitent Engine

Oh. Lets pause here.

This model, a bipedal walker, has an almost naked, extremely pert and busty woman on the front of it. I mean I say *almost* naked, she’s not naked in exactly the same way as Milla Jovovich is not naked in Resident Evil. ‘What do you mean she’s naked? She’s not naked! She’s wearing an A4 piece of paper that just about covers up her rude bits!’ Yeah. She’s naked. And so is the woman on the front of the Penitent Engine.

What does Games Workshop say about the Penitent Engine on their product page?

‘Driven by their pilot’s frantic need for forgiveness, they will charge towards the foe heedless of danger, knowing that only in death, theirs or the enemy’s, can forgiveness finally be earned.’

Delightful.

So basically what seem to be looking at here is an example of the ‘fallen woman’. The Victorians used the phrase ‘fallen woman’ to describe someone who has been a bit naughty with sex outside of the expected parameters of chaste life until marriage. So that would be hookers, mistresses, and any woman who enjoyed her sexuality more than was acceptable in Victorian times. The meaning has persisted and can still be found even now in some particularly insidious circles.

I’m kind of unsure where the women on the front of the Penitent Engines come from. Are they Sisters of Battle who have committed some kind of heinous crime? Or are they just women off the street, as it were, who have committed crimes and are expected to atone for their sins with implanted feelings of guilt and pain, and eventually death?

It doesn’t really matter that much – but ‘fallen women’ drawn from a group of battle nuns who have dedicated themselves to a life of religious vows is kind of unpleasant. The sexualised nudity of the figure in *that* context feeds straight into the Madonna/Whore complex which is pretty much The Worst.

I mean, I suppose at least she’s wearing a sheet that goes to her ankles.

I don’t really understand why women have to atone for their sins by being strapped naked to the front of a machine that walks into battle with no fucking clothes on when the men in the universe don’t have to. Is it because the only appropriate punishment for wicked women who have done wrong is sexual humiliation or something? I must have missed the memo. I’m pretty sure I remember from reading some of the books that blokes generally just go to prison.

Verdict: Sexist.

Seraphim Squad

Mm, there’s that tit armour again. This time, with added corset!

Battle corsets. I’m not sure who ever thought that was a good idea. I like the visible pipework on the male Space Marine’s power armour – it looks cool! Instead the Sisters of Battle get corsets that look completely inflexible and probably renders them unable to fight particularly well.

I don’t know if you’ve worn a corset, but I have. In fact I wore corsets quite a bit in my early twenties and still do ocacsionally now. Corsets are very stiff – that’s the point of them. They are designed to force your body to conform to certain shapes that are aesthetically pleasing to other people (mostly men) so that you can then put fashionable dresses over the top of them. They were largely worn historically by women in the upper echelons of society who didn’t really have to do do much for a living. They’re more suitable for standing around in Royal courts than fighting Xenos on the front line.

To many people corsets are symbolic of the fact that women have historically largely been considered decorative objects rather than people. Women were meant to stand around and look pretty rather than actually do anything useful. So why the fuck have these objects of bodily oppression turned up on an amazing fighting force of kickass women in the future? If I was designing the miniatures I certainly wouldn’t use this kind of symbolism.

Talking about symbolism – lets talk about the name for a moment. Seraphims. Do you know what a seraph is? It’s an angelic being associated with high levels of purity (Isaiah 6:2-6). Unless you use the other meaning of it which basically means serpents instead (Numbers 21:6–8,Deuteronomy 8:15, Isaiah14:29, Isaiah 30:6). Oh yes. Angelic, pure beings vs serpents. Madonna/Whore complex again anyone? Poor Eve, she’s always being blamed for man’s sins. It’s not a name I would have picked for my cool warrior jetpack women.

Verdict: Sexist.

Retributor Squad

Corsets and tit armour.

Verdict: Sexist.

Battle Sisters Squad

More corsets and tit armour.

*yawn*

Verdict: Sexist.

Repentia Squad

I can’t help noticing that these scantily clad women have what look like whip marks all over them. I thought I noticed it on the Penitance Engine woman, but I let it slide there because I thought maybe they’re battle scars. I wonder if there’s an explanation in the sales patter on the Games Workshop website…

‘they are led to war by a Mistress of Repentance – a harsh warrior who drives her charges onwards with a pair of neural whips.’

Right. Of course. So here we have scantily clad, gimp mask wearing, women who are forced into combat by a dominant woman with a whip. Basically, it’s a lesbian sex slave party. I mean, the tit armour and corsets on the other minis wasn’t great, but this model type basically just proves that in fact this is *not* an army designed to appease women, it’s absolutely nothing more than a wank fantasy for a submissive man.

Do you think these outfits are where they got inspiration for Milla Jovovich’s other outfit in Resident Evil? I suppose at least the red dress is A3 in size and she’s wearing pants under it.

Oh and the armour! Why the fuck are their feet and nipples more armoured than anywhere containing vital organs? I suppose I should be grateful for the fact that two of them appear to be wearing armoured thigh high boots which will at least offer some protection against leg wounds when fighting Xenos. Even Space Marine Scouts have more armour than these poor chicks (who will fucking freeze their tits off as soon as they go anywhere below twenty degrees Celsius). Why don’t they even get shoulder pads? Is it because their delicate lady-shoulders can’t take the weight of them?

Fucks sake.

I also can’t help noticing that the women that make up this squad are really quite young and beautiful compared to the gnarled, ugly faces of the rest of the Sisters of Battle. I always thought that it was just the house style of Games Workshop to make basically everyone in the entire universe really fucking ugly. Turns out that’s not actually the case – Games Workshop will make an exception if you’re a lesbian sex slave who likes a bit of whipping. Apparently their sculptors are capable of sculpting beautiful women – but only if they’re to be used for some sad blokes to bash one out to. I’m also making the assumption here that the designers just thought the idea of an old, ugly woman in these sexy outfits would be just too horrendous to think about. Women who grow old or who are scarred should not get their tits out it seems…

Verdict: Sexist.

Dominion Squad

More tit armour and corsets. It doesn’t get any better if I say it the opposite way round.

Verdict: Sexist.

Sororitas Command Squad

Tit armour, corsets, and a blow job face.

No, I don’t fucking know either. At least the woman with the blow job face is wearing robes without tit armour.

Verdict: Sexist.

Immolator

Again, hard to find pictures of the figure.

Verdict: Inconclusive.

Battle Sister Squad Upgrade

I love the way that their breasts seem to sit on the top of the gun as if it’s a shelf.

No wait, I really don’t. Guns should never be used to hold tits up, a bra is a far more appropriate garment. Probably a sports bra if you’re a kickass soldier of the Imperium.

Verdict: Sexist.

Canoness Veridyan

I understand that this is a figure based on artwork by John Blanche that was on the cover of the original Sisters of Battle codex. No, it doesn’t really make it any better. Games Workshop themselves mentioned it in a post recently on their blog.

Lets make it clear that this is an new model that has been released in December 2016. Quite frankly I’m surprised that Games Workshop would bring out such an appallingly sexist model with such celebration.

I mean, she’s wearing high heels. HIGH HEELS. I know that fantasy wargaming isn’t based on the real world, but I’d really like the design team, the marketing team, and the top tier of management at Games Workshop to wear thigh high boots for a day with at least a six inch stiletto heel and see just how goddamn impractical these things really are.

Ridiculous, long, black, stiletto boots really are the preserve of fantasy dominatrixes (with few exceptions). The whole point of them in that particular fantasy setting is that they are difficult to walk around and do things in, meaning that the man (who worships the woman, of course) has to do things for her while she is pretty much helpless. She is reduced to mere object. Decoration. Diminished to living a languorous lifestyle. SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING ON A MILITARY HERO? If high heeled thigh boots are so effective for combat why aren’t the Ultramarines wearing them? Actually, I’d quite like to see an Ultramarine soldier wearing a high heeled thigh boot – but lets not examine that thought too closely.

Other than that – lets see. Skulls for breasts? That’s a bit… peculiar. I’m sure that can be traced back to Freud again. In fact I don’t even know what to make of it really, I feel like it deserves a whole post just to itself.

And that corset. We’ve already established that corsets are just wank on fighters. But this one appears to have a metal ring sitting just above her pubic area. What’s the significance there? My mind goes straight to some kind of chastity signifier. A woman who can be controlled. That’s why you put rings into bulls noses, isn’t it? Either that or it’s reminiscent of a door knocker… something something knock for entry? Not sure which one is worse really.

At least she has shoulder armour. And a cool sword.

And I really like her little surcote with the fleur de lis on it and the nice design around the split sleeve. I think I need that surcote for my LARP character.

Verdict: Extremely Fucking Sexist.

Battle Sister with Multi-Melta

I thought this model was awesome, then I noticed the tit armour poking out behind her gun.

Verdict: Sexist.

Battle Sister with Heavy Bolter

Shelf-tits.

Verdict: Sexist.

Battle Sister with Simulacrum Imperialis

Alright, I’ll level with you. I think this one is kind of cool. Her hands and robes are in the way (mostly) of her tit armour so you can’t really see it. And it doesn’t seem to have weird chastity or skull decoration. I’d buy this model. She also has a really cool surcote. I mean it’s still sexist really, but it’s literally the least sexist mini so far.

Verdict: Inconclusive.

Sisters of Battle Superior with Bolter

Cute surcote, but tit armour and corsets. Again.

Verdict: Sexist.

Battle Sister with Meltagun 2

This one is getting an ‘inconclusive’ rating just because I think if the gun wasn’t so big then they would have made the tit armour mode visible.

Verdict: Inconclusive.

Battle Sister with Flamer 2

Tit armour.

Verdict: Sexist.

Battle Sister with Storm Bolter 2

For some reason Games Workshop have photographed this one at a different angle to just about every other model. But this allows us to see exactly how much of a tit shelf they are using their weapons as. URGH.

Verdict: Sexist.

SPECIAL MENTION

Uriah Jacobus, Protector of the Faith

What a surprise that the only male figure in the Sisters of Battle collection (with the exception of the alternative withered figure for the front of the Penitence Engine) is a leader who the Sisters of Battle follow faithfully into war. Fuck off.

Fuck. Off.

Verdict: Sexist.

December 29, 2016
Proving Credentials

There’s a couple of things that really wind me up when it comes to model photography and modeling (and by extension, this is one of the reasons I jacked both in).

1. The requirement to ‘prove’ your credentials as a model. When I was shooting models commercially, there was no requirement for any model to ‘prove’ their credentials. If they were with an agency, and the agency thought they could do the job, then we were happy with them. And we paid them nearly a thousand pounds a day. We shot models who had five years of commercial experience, and we shot models who were on their first job. No experience was not a problem. It was our job as a photographer to coach them through it. And if we couldn’t get usable images out of them it was our problem as photographers. We were failing the models – not the other way around.

In the amateur scene this is all turned on it’s head. Models with more experience get more money and more bookings. The photographers just don’t have the same ethic. If they don’t get the results it’s always the models fault. The pressure is on the model to work for months, years even, for no money in order to then scrape measly amounts of cash from tightfisted shit photographers who don’t even really give a fuck about how the model looks – just about their experience.

2. Models without the experience, who say that they are pro, are derided by amateur photographers. They are mocked mercilessly online by people who, quite frankly, don’t appear to have much of a clue. People forget that all you need to be ‘pro’ is enough income coming in to satisfy you. I’m a professional writer and photographer. Am I earning as much as other professional writers and photographers? Nope. Doesn’t matter. I’m still a professional. I have a professional attitude and an income from my work. It’s the same with models. A model can be professional on two shoots a month, or they can be professional on four shoots a week. If they have the right look, the business acumen, and the attitude, then they’re a professional model.

3. The same shit photographers who rely on models cycling through a programme of set poses are the same shit photographers who also require photographers to ‘prove’ your credentials. If you’re not doing what they consider ‘cutting edge’ work (which is generally a bit safe and seems to involve coloured gels on your lights) then you’re doing it wrong and you’re lying if you say you’re a professional. You’re required to prove everything. I get so much shit in my line of work as a photography journalist because people think I don’t have the qualifications to back up what I say… but the fact is that I was shooting between 50-250 images *a day* for publication in catalogues before I went into journalism. I bet most photographers couldn’t do that. Sure, I’m not the most creative person on the planet – but I have never, ever claimed to be. I do catalogue photography really fucking well though. And I can pose a model for those shots – I don’t need to rely on the model posing for me.

(Crossposted from Facebook. I actually meant to conclude with a thing about the patriarchy and the power balance between male photographers and female models.)

September 7, 2016
#GamerGate – Quoted for Record

I made a post on Facebook earlier in response to somebody arguing that yes, GamerGate was in fact about ethics in gaming journalism. So I have quoted it here in order that I can find it again.

You know though, you’re very luck to be able to say ‘I’m out’ over a topic like this. You see, I was diagnosed female at birth. I have what society considers a woman’s body. That means I am routinely oppressed in our world. And yes, that really does include videogames. You see, if I want to play the kind of games that I enjoy (AAA fighting and exploration games) then I have to endure repeated negative depictions of my assigned gender which I’m taught that men always get to save the day, be baddass, and be sexual conquerers.

I was taught that message since I was a child, through videogames. Because I’ve been a gamer since I was thee years old and I insisted that we keep my Dad’s old Grandstand box next to the telly all the damn time. Ms. Pacman taught me that all women wore bows, high heels and too much makeup. Tomb Raider taught me that heroines always wear short shorts. Red Dead Redemption taught me that women’s sexual torture is entertainment. And Metal Gear Solid taught me that women should *always* jiggle their tits for the player – even if the player is a straight woman. Because games aren’t made for women, they’re made for men. That’s why Quiet jiggles her tits at the camera and why her action figure had squeezable breasts that were made from a softer plastic compound than the rest of her body.

I don’t get to say ‘I’m out’ on this one. This is my life we’re talking about. My hobby and profession where I’m constantly reminded that I’m simply not welcome. The very fact you can say ‘I’m out’ and return back to your daily life without a thought or a care is simply demonstrating the sheer amount of privilege that you, as a man, have in the whole gamergate discussion and the wider videogaming industry.

None of this matters to you. You didn’t have to change your name so that you would be listened to and treated equally in the industry that you love (I did). You don’t have to avoid voice chat when you’re playing so that you don’t get guys asking you for blowjobs – and calling you a whore when you refuse. You don’t have to carefully read reviews of games carefully to decide if the sexism in the games is going to make the game an unenjoyable experience for you. Gamergate is just an argument you can have on your friends wall every now and again, convinced you’re in the right, before putting it down and going back to your microwave meal and shit telly in the evening.

It was never about ethics in gaming journalism. Your friends – who you claim were heavily involved in the movement – are either lying to you or they’re thick. You take your pick. It was all about reinforcing women as outsiders in the videogames industry, an excuse to hound women from their jobs and homes, and a way for the core club of ‘gamers’ to flex their muscles about how they don’t want women in their basements.

August 17, 2016
There’s nothing good about today.

0130hrs I got up this morning. I couldn’t sleep. Too much was weighing on my mind. The results of the EU Referendum will impact my life, perhaps more than most. I slipped downstairs and put on the BBC news that is running all night.

In the early hours the Remain vote started to pull ahead. For a while there those presenting the show seemed upbeat and positive, but then it started to go downhill. Leave began to take key areas. The map turned blue.

I’ve just graduated with almost fifty thousand pounds worth of debt from university. This doesn’t scare me – not at all. The last three years of my life has been more than worth than that – I’d have paid double.

The EU has been one of the things that has helped make the institution that I studied at so good. Only recently they celebrated being placed 20th in the rankings for History of Art. Not bad for an old polytechnic. It’s EU investment that got us here. It’s EU students that have diversified the student body, and bought multiculturalism to what we do.

If we leave the EU many institutions have stated that our education system will suffer. Less money, less foreign students, less talent. Many will downsize their operations. Many will just simply get worse.

My degree teeters on the edge. I took a gamble and went to an up and coming university. My universities reputation is likely to go down in the global rankings now. My degree is not worth as much in the global market now as it was two hours ago.

My career was based on the idea that I wanted to be a lecturer. But there will be less money in the future. More staff fighting over fewer jobs. Less money for research. Less research. A downward spiral.

Our currency has this morning hit levels that have not been since since before I was born. I am 31 years old.

We are fucked. My career is fucked.

What could I have done better? What could I have said to convince people to vote Remain? How could I have used my writing more effectively? I don’t know.

June 24, 2016
Male photographers and girl models
“I am arranging a series of editorial/lifestyle shoots rather like a day in the life of a model. Wanting to shoot some boudoir lifestyle images and I want to know where you can buy storage boxes etc for keeping all your jewellery, necklaces, earings etc. Every female has them on their make up table or beside table. I am wanting to recreate the real effect of a girl’s boudoir as studios don’t have these on their sets. Just trying to make it as realistic as possible.”

“I find it worrying that some people seem more interested in the girls, the gear and the settings and seem less interested in looking at a great picture and admiring it for what it is and trying to develop the skill to learn how to create that yourself.”

“I never ever ask a girl to go past the agreed levels.”

I find it worrying that lots and lots of male photographers refer to female models as girls.

I’m a stickler for using the correct words for things. Why use twenty words when you can use one? And yes, sometimes I make mistakes and get things wrong, but I do try to get it right.

So in the spirit of discovery and exploration, lets determine what the word girl actually means.

When you define:girl in Google, you get this:
noun: girl; plural noun: girls

1.

a female child.

“girls go through puberty earlier than boys”

a person’s daughter.

“he was devoted to his little girl”

2.

a young or relatively young woman.

“I haven’t got the time to meet girls”

a young woman of a specified kind or having a specified job.

“a career girl”

informal

women who mix socially.

“I look forward to having a night with the girls”

a person’s girlfriend.

“his girl eloped with an accountant”

dated

a female servant.
So the first definition that Google offers us is that of ‘a female child’. Well, I can understand that some photographers do photograph female children, I have done so myself in the past. The law defines a child as being under the age of 18 in the UK, just so that we’re clear on what we’re talking about. The law also forbids making indecent images of children, and the quotes above generally come from people who are more interested in the ‘indecent’ side of photography than the pure and decent alternative. (NB – I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with indecent images. Only yesterday was I shooting dirty sex pictures of a hot guy.) In short, there’s everything wrong with most amateur photographers talking about photographing ‘girls’ in a sexually appealing way.

The second definition gets a little bit more tricky. It defines ‘girl’ in the more colloquial sense of being a young woman. This is where it gets more tricky. I still object to older male photographers referring to the models that they photograph as ‘girls’. Here is why.

Neatly and succinctly Google has laid out the reasons why this is problematic to me.
- informal
  
  women who mix socially.
  
  “I look forward to having a night with the girls”
- a person’s girlfriend.
  
  “his girl eloped with an accountant”
- dated
  
  a female servant.
First up we have the informal usage of ‘women who mix socially’.We’ve all heard women say ‘I’m going out with the girls’. Well, some women. Not all of us will say that to be honest but that’s a minor point.

When a woman calls her friends ‘her girls’, it’s a bit when people from a certain subculture use the N word. Or when my gay friends call each others fags. It’s a word that – even without many people realising – has been reclaimed for this kind of use. If you’re a member of another demographic, I’m not quite sure that you have the authority to use those words in those contexts. It’s a bit like women who have recently reclaimed the words slut and cunt – except ‘girl’ was reclaimed in a much more organic process that wasn’t overtly associated with feminist ideologies.

The two bullet points that follow are examples of how ‘girl’ is generally used (and intended) when it falls out of the mouth of almost everyone else. ‘His girl’ – quite a dated phrase nowadays, I think we tend to think of 1950s Americans when we think of this way of speaking. However it’s a pervasive attitude within society, that a girl belongs to a man. Without doing large amounts of research I’d speculate that it comes out of a time when underage girls were married to older men and treated like property – so the phrase ‘his girl’ would have been accurate at a certain time and place. That usage has followed through and in the photographic community we have photographers extending that subconscious meaning and referring to models as ‘their models’.

The second bullet point makes the point that female servants have always historically been referred to as ‘girls’. Male photographers hiring female models? Servants? All a bit too close to the bone if you ask me. There’s no denying the fact that lots of amateur male photographers do hire young, female models as a kind of weird sexual fantasy thing which makes the context of the word ‘girl’ when you know it’s historical precedence of a name for a servant rather creepy.

You see the problem is that language has baggage. Sometimes it’s good baggage – associating gay guys with a happy and carefree lifestyle isn’t necessarily a negative thing. But using the term ‘girl’ for a grown woman (even if she is ‘young’) comes with it’s fair share of negative baggage that perhaps we need to be a bit more careful about using.

I have no doubt that most male photographers don’t have this kind of intention at the forefront of their mind when they’re referring to young female models as girls. Lots of guys would be utterly horrified to think that they were involved in a turn of language that has it’s roots in the systematic oppression of women. However lets look at the culture surrounding the people that make these statements.

I’m talking about quite a specific community of photographers here. In a tongue in cheek way I’m going to write the hashtag #NotAllPhotographers, but I’ve written about this particular community before, when I discussed on this blog how not all naked chicks are art.

They’re a self-referential group of photographers. They look insularly to their own kind of inspiration and seem to be immune to inspiration from the world outside. With that attitude comes the fact that they also seem to be immune to getting with the times and understanding the implications of their actions.

The work that they create is unanimously said (by the members of this community) to glorify women. To celebrate women. To show the beauty of women (NB – interestingly you do actually get some gay photographers who photograph men in this objectifying way). It’s all supposedly about elevating women onto this pedestal and showing them as a beautiful object.

Oh fuck, there’s that word – object.

Objectifying people is problematic.
May 12, 2016
Green Party Copyright

I want to take the opportunity to highlight a problem that I have with a Green Party policy. I didn’t feel robust enough to discuss this on my feed before the election because I wasn’t in the mood to get shouted down, but I’d like to make people aware of it nonetheless. I am, theoretically a Green voter – but with such major flaws that would affect my life in their policy, I simply cannot be.

The Green’s proposed reducing the copyright terms to 14 years “after publication“. It’s here: http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ec.html#EC1011

Introduce generally shorter copyright terms, with a usual maximum of 14 years;

Liberalise ‘fair use’ policies to operate outside the academic environment, and allow greater development from existing copyright material

Now, there appears to be some confusion as to what the Green’s actually mean by this. The policy is ambiguous. Currently English & Welsh Law is that copyright is protected for 70 years after the creators death. Reading this policy as a cynic, it seems to imply that 14 years after creation or publication would be the norm.

The Green’s have defended these policies, saying that the citizens income would make up for the loss of earnings for writers and artists. Well, to be honest, I don’t want to have to rely on the state for my income because one of their policies has made it impossible for me to earn from previous work.

You might be thinking ‘but I don’t work in a job where I can earn from something I did 15 years before, that doesn’t seem like a big deal anyway’. But please, hear me out. Let me explain. When you have a career the general expected path is that as you aquire skills, you move jobs and you get paid more money. So that project that you managed when you were 25 potentially adds to the experience that you get when you move jobs and get paid more at 35. The qualification you took when you were 30 could well be what help’s you get a job at 50. It’s called experience and it matters in many, many careers.

Photography and writing does work that way too, but not to the same degree. If I’m earning 20k at 25 years old as a photographer it’s actually quite hard for me to be earning 50k as a 50 year old, for example. Because you can’t just keep putting the fee up in many sectors of photography and writing.

For instance I sell stock images as part of my income (stock images are picture that you have taken, lodged with an agency, and then people like book publishers search through the archive and purchase them as illustrations). A picture of a tomato, for example, is a picture of a tomato. If someone wants a picture of a tomato on a white background they will not pay £400 if they could pay £200 for an almost identical picture of a tomato. Experience doesn’t matter, they’re buying a picture of a tomato that they like. It’s very democratic actually. You could be an amateur with a single photo of a tomato that was the first picture you ever took, and sell it for the same amount of money as a professional with 50 years of experience and 50,000 photos.

And that’s the key.

The key to my stock photography income is repeat sales of images I have taken in the past. I’m about 8 years into my stock photography ‘career’ and have been building my library since I picked up a camera. Take this picture, for example. I shot it in 2007 and sold it yesterday.

Yeah I know, it’s really boring. But sales like this are the bread and butter of my library. One of my best selling images is a pile of mushrooms.

Anyway, I shot it in 2007. That’s eight years ago. This picture is still relevant. Needlenose pliers don’t look any different. The magazine art director doesn’t care when it was shot, only that it was a picture of something that they need. This image still has value in my collection, despite it being eight years old.

I expect this image to have value in another six years time as well. I know that cameras are getting better with higher quality and more megapixels (this one was shot on an Canon EOS 350D for those interested, with just 6MP IIRC) but at the end of the day you don’t need huge megapixels for printing magazines.

What the Green’s are potentially proposing is that in six years time, this image becomes valueless. I will be unable to make an income from it any longer because anyone would be able to just take the image and use it without having to pay me any money for a license.

What I believe would happen is that people would no longer put images online without a huge watermark through the middle, and the prices of images would rise to take into account that you only have 14 years of earning from an income instead of… well… 50 years plus 70 after creators death… basically they could rise by up to eight times as much theoretically. That’s unlikely, but I’d expect to see photographers looking to double or triple their prices (and having to work far harder to shoot more images and attempt to market them better than the next guy).

But that doesn’t work, of course. It would for the first 14 years while we wait for the timebomb to tick (unless they make the rules apply to everything created in the past… hopefully not…) but at 14 years suddenly there is a free market for images. Anyone can use them wherever they wanted, for whatever purpose they wanted.

That might sound great to you. Perhaps you’re a blog owner and you’ll suddenly be able to get hold of images like my one above without paying any money for it. Perhaps you’re looking forwards to your magazines being more lavishly illustrated. And those things would be nice, of course. But soon after we’d see a death of images available. Photographers would shortly leave the career and go elsewhere. Those people who generate the images that you want to use for free would be forced to go get other jobs instead of being photographers. Skills would be lost. Less photographers would be available to shoot everything else – because many photographers fill in their free time by shooting stock. Some photographers would of course survive, but choice becomes narrowed down and the industry may well get stale.

That doesn’t sound like such a happy world to be. Yes, I’d still have my citizens income, but I don’t think I’d be as happy.

And although I’ve focussed on stock photography here, this applies to lots of other areas too. Writers who resell articles, writers who have written books (it might seem great that your favourite book comes out into the public domain after just 14 years – but your favourite writer will be considering a different career), academics who rely on royalties from republishing their work, artists, illustrators, designers, and the list goes on.

Royalties from pictures and words are many peoples retirement plan. Many creatives don’t take pension plans out because our work *is* our pension security. In many cases it’s our children’s income too – leaving your legacy to a child is one of the reasons that some people work on residual earning projects like stock photography. That will no longer be possible. Children will no longer be able to benefit from their parents creative work.

As a photographer and writer this has the opportunity to hit me hard and force me into another career. One that I love less. One where I’ll have to start from the bottom and work my way up the ladder. Again. One that wastes all the skills I’ve learned and my talents. But I guess that’s ok, as long as we’re doing it all for the greater good, so that people can have a few free pictures.

I’d like to perhaps believe that this is about equality – making us all have the same chance in life and stopping the residual passing down of earnings and so forth. But writers and photographers generally aren’t exactly loaded down by the weight of all their gold pieces. This is the wrong group to target for this purpose. It’s short sighted and it will kill our creative industries. Because I’ll tell you what, emigration looks pretty fucking awesome if this goes through – I’ll take my taxes to a country that respects and encourages creativity instead.

May 13, 2015
Photographing is believing – Part 1
There’s two famous ladies in these photos. I’ll give you a hint – they ain’t alive anymore. The eagle-eyed will spot that both the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo are in the backgrounds of these photos – that is if you can see them through the cameras, phones and selfie sticks held aloft.

This is what the Mona Lisa room looked like from where she surveys the crowd:

I see just two people in that photograph actually looking at the painting in front of them. About US$780,000,000 worth of painting. By one of the greatest artists that has ever lived.

There’s a joke I’ve heard told a fair few times amongst art historians that you don’t visit the Mona Lisa to see the painting in person, you go to experience the crowds. And now you go to experience the phenomenon that is the selfie.

I mean I guess it’s not that odd, after all so many people will just be repeating the Beyonce/Kanye selfie that appeared last year some time.

And P. Diddy.

Nothing prepared me for the huge amounts of people in the crowds in front of the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo that had their backs to the work of art. And not just because they were turning round to let someone else have a look, but because they were trying to take a fucking selfie.

I think it was Roland Barthes who wrote an essay when he was alive (1915-1980) that discussed how photography had become like big game hunting. Amateur photographers developed this drive to photograph everything that they saw in order to take it home and show people. This was evident in the Tate’s Salt and Silver exhibition which in some places read like an album of ‘interesting shit I’ve seen’. If you’ve ever sat though ‘Jim and Bob’s trip to Cambodia’ at your local camera club, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

The idea of the photograph as trophy seems to have got stronger rather than died out as a concept. Barthes would be turning in his grave. The idea that it’s the cultural norm to photograph a famous artwork and then Facebook it to prove you are there rather than actually look at the damn thing is verging on… well… I don’t have a word for it. I want to say disturbing – that’s the closest I can get.

It’s the fact that people have to prove they are there with a photograph that is the problem for me. I carry a camera around galleries and I photograph artworks. I do this for a few reasons.
- Reference shots. I often take a snap of the art work and another of it’s label (just in case I take the wrong label, or something, so that I have both for the future). Being an art history student means that I’m always working on my huge inner database of artworks and this helps me look things up later and read about them.
- Interesting observations. Sometimes there’s something interesting about a sculpture or painting that I don’t want to forget. A small detail in the corner of the painting, a dress, or often something on the side or back of a sculpture that isn’t usually photographed and easily available on the internet or from the galleries website.
- Material for essays. If I’m working on something specific, then gallery website pictures don’t always work out for me. Sometimes there’s an experience you want to get from seeing it in person and you need to try and convey in a photograph. Sometimes you want to photograph something other than the artwork itself – like when I wandered round MoMA in New York taking pictures of the installations and galleries themselves because I’m writing a project on how you would install a video game exhibition.
- The Louvre – View from inside.
  
  Nice compositions. Fundamentally I’m still a photographer. Sometimes an artwork just makes a nice composition, and riffing off of another artist’s work can be enjoyable. Like this shot of The Louve taken through one of it’s own windows. Sometimes artworks can be seen or experienced in new ways because of the location that they are now in or the light on that particular day or the other works that they have been paired with.
You know why I don’t take photographs? To prove I was there. Or for detailed looking at later. If you want to look at something closer later most galleries provide really good digital copies of their works. Sometimes you download them from the site itself, sometimes you have to register and they send them to you (like the British Museum). This is one area where the galleries and museums have generally embraced digital technology very well and do provide great resources for people who need to look at something a bit closer and in more detail. Google are also really championing this cause with the Google Art Project. And Wikipedia can often be a good source of imagery too, because works get pulled from their gallery pages and into a central repository. Like this digital copy of the Mona Lisa for example. If you click on it you’ll get a glorious 2834 x 4289 version to look at in depth. You can’t photograph this work as well as this from the crowds surrounding the painting while the gallery is open. You can’t. They won’t let you because you’d need a tripod etc and that’s now allowed in the gallery. There’s no point.

So what is the point? Literally the only reason to photograph such a famous painting as the Mona Lisa is to say ‘I was there’. But I think that says a fair bit about your friends, if they don’t believe you were there without seeing a photograph of you with the painting.

I’m assured that the Mona Lisa has always been busy since it’s display in The Louvre, that it’s always had similar volumes of crowds. But ten or twenty years ago they were looking at the work, not trophy hunting to prove that they were there.
April 14, 2015
We need to talk about sharing images.

I know, I know. I have this reputation for being a bit uptight. And to be honest, sometimes it’s true. Especially when it comes to my photography.

Lots of photographers have a difficult relationship with Tumblr. The problem is, it’s a platform that encourages you to be pretty unethical. You see, if you want to add content to your Tumblr blog all you have to do is click the ‘reblog’ button (or whatever it’s called) and it just regurgitates it wholesale onto your own page. You don’t have to think about who created the original piece or if they had permission to upload those images and the content, you just click reblog, and it magically populates your own stream with interesting things.

I try to get around this to an extent by automatically reposting my blog posts both here and on LARP.GUIDE to their own Tumblr feeds, hoping that people will reblog content from those feeds rather than pinching the images from somewhere else and then letting them out into the world without any effort at credits.

I repost content myself on my blog all the time, but I make the effort to make it relevant to what I’m writing. For instance I wouldn’t just pinch someone else’s picture and post it with no explanation on my blog just because I liked it. I also wouldn’t just pinch someone else’s picture to use as illustration without asking them first. Especially if it had nothing really to do with the content of that blog itself. So, for example, if you’re writing a post on something random about LARP and you want to put a picture in – find one that is somehow relevant to your content and then ask the photographer if that’s ok. Don’t just think ‘I’m writing a post about making foam weapons, so any picture featuring a foam weapon is fair game’ because that’s not cool.

If you want to use a picture by someone else to illustrate an article (or a YouTube video, a quote from someone, anything really) then try to add something to the thing you are using for illustration. Discuss the point made in a video. Talk about how the photograph represents what you’re writing about. Comment on the quote you use or contrast it with a quote that someone else made. We learn to do these things while we’re learning to write essays at school – don’t abandon those lessons!

I photograph LARP because I love photographing LARP. I photograph it because I like the friends I have made and I have aspirations about shooting for film and TV one day. But I also photograph LARP because I feel that there’s a really strong community underlying the hobby and I like to help build up the community.

So you might be wondering why I have a problem with people sharing my images of LARP if I like the idea of fostering a community. The honest answer is, that pinching and using an image on your own blog without taking the time to chat to me first isn’t building a community. It’s just taking something that I made and using it without asking. Part of building a community is talking and having conversations – so have a conversation with me and tell me what you’re up to. Involve me to make the community ties stronger. If you don’t want to have a conversation with me then don’t bother using my images – it’s not a compliment if you don’t like me enough to engage with me on any level, especially when you’ve not even bothered to tell me where I can find my images online. I might just want to take a screenshot of your use of my images for my own records, so that I can look back and smile when I see that people have loved my images enough to use them. (As you can see from my writing portfolio, I love keeping track of where my work has ended up!)

A few people have suggested in the past that it doesn’t matter if someone takes my images down and puts them somewhere else, because I put my watermark on them anyway. Well, as I said above, firstly I like to see where they have ended up. That means something to me. But secondly, if people didn’t just pinch them and put them on their own Facebooks, their own Tumblrs, their own blogs, etc, without permission, then I wouldn’t have to watermark them in the first place. I watermark work primarily because I cannot trust the general public to not use my images without crediting them. I don’t ask for money for my pictures, I just ask for people to let me know that they love my work. And I don’t know what you love my work if you don’t tell me!

So please guys, if you want to use my work on your blog, don’t just assume I’m ok with that. Just reach out, send me a message and start a conversation. And lets see how we can help each other out. (And as it says on the side of this blog above the Patreon logo – if you like my work and you feel you got something out of it, please consider buying me a coffee. It takes alot of time, effort, love and money to make great photos of LARP. Don’t be afraid to say thanks.)

March 3, 2015
Why critising Page 3 is not just about stopping men looking at tits

TW: Rape

In the wake of the news(!) that Page 3 will now show women in bras instead of half naked, I’d like to address some concerns that I have seen posted on my social media feed, amongst other places.

Here we go…

Last week you were all “Je suis Charlié” in defence of freedom of speech/expression. Now you’re advocating censorship coz boobs?

It might seem like semantics, but nobody is calling for the censorship of boobs. Or not that I’ve seen anyway. What the people who are criticising Page 3 are largely saying is ‘Hey, we don’t think that some mass media outlets treat women with the same respect as men. We’d really like it if you did. Could you think about doing that please?’

It’s not just women objectified by the sun. How come every guy athlete is photographed in shorts and stripped to the waist?

I’d like to say that this is a fair point, but it’s not. When guy athletes strip to the waist they do it because they’re hot and they want to take their shirt off to cool down. The editors of the paper don’t put these images in because their readership find them sexy and arousing, they put them in because that is considered the normal behaviour of a sportsman. Well, a footballer. You don’t see many skiers stripping to the waist after having a good run. Not to mention that shorts are the standard uniform of most land sports. You think the photographers are going to run onto the pitch as a striker kicks the ball at a goal and asking him to put some joggers on? Didn’t think so.

Instead of asking why guy athletes are photographed in shorts and no shirts, perhaps we could instead why women never make it into the sports pages of Red Top newspapers? Or newspapers in general really, unless there’s an Olympic Games on. The fact that women’s sports are not considered good enough to report on in the newspapers (i.e. women’s sports are not news) is a symptom of the problem that goes hand in hand with the glamour models on Page 3 and the paparazzi reporting. All reinforce the idea that if a woman wants to get into the newspaper she needs to look great and show some skin. There’s no point in her being brilliant and successful in any other way.

Don’t like it, don’t buy it.

You know what? I totally agree with you. But I’d also like to make you aware that you can be exposed to the sexist attitudes that it helps to reinforce even if you don’t buy it. Lucy-Anny Holmes covered this much better than I could in her piece for the Huffington Post. I’d like to highlight a few points though:

The school girl, who wrote to the Everyday Sexism project saying that the boys in her school hold up Page Three in the corridor and mark the girls out of 10 as they walk past, doesn’t buy it.

The woman who sits in a staff room everyday while a male colleague shows Page Three to all the men with the words ‘would you do that?’ doesn’t buy it.

The father who felt outraged that a man was looking at Page Three while his three-and-a-half year-old daughter was having a hair cut, didn’t buy it.

When Clare Short stood up in the 80s and spoke out about these pictures being in the paper, she received 1000s of letters of support. Twelve were from women who had Page Three mentioned to them while they were being raped. These women didn’t buy it.

The boobs in page 3 are there soley for viewing pleasure and no model who poses for page 3 is under any other illusions.

No, you’re quite right. But if we’re going to play the ‘these women are up for it’ card, then perhaps at least we could briefly pause to consider how now all glamour models actually want to work as glamour models. Some are forced into it because it can be hard for young women to find work in our society (caused by sexist notions that are reinforced by this kind of imbalanced journalism). Some are forced into it as part of being in the sex trade. Some are forced into it as being part of a trafficked sex slave. Some are forced into it because education has failed them.

It’s true that many glamour models are brilliant, bright, intelligent women who are aware of the cultural arguments surrounding their choice to be a model – I was not one of those women. I worked as a glamour model to try and somehow get approval for my body. I felt I was liberated, but I actually really wasn’t. And that’s why lots of former Page 3 models speak out about Page 3. Because at 18 (or younger) how can we expect a young woman to make such huge decisions concerning her future? I’m not saying that 18 year old women aren’t capable of making good decisions, but certainly I think it’s very young to have enough relevant life experience in our sexist society to understand the full implication of their choices. The industry systematically takes advantage of the naivety of many of these women, and that’s not very pleasant at all.

To suggest page 3 breeds acceptance of objectification is the same as suggesting video games normalises gratuitous violence in teenagers & kids.

Except video games are fiction. The systematic sexist treatment of women in some mass media is real. You can’t compare real life with fiction.

I appreciate that video games also have a high degree of misogyny in many titles, but this is something that many of us are also working towards. If you disagree that this kind of behaviour should be normalised I’d love to have you on board with our work.

Your right to be offended should never trump my right to be offensive.

No, but perhaps the right of 51% of the population to not be treated disrespectfully trumps the ‘right’ of a few guys to look at porn with their cornflakes? Or on the bus? Or in the staff room? Or at the hairdressers?

I don’t buy this “I’m offended because women are objectified” argument. If people truly feel that way, campaign against makeup, fashion designers who make tight fitting clothing, shoe companies who make high heels.

I feel like this is somewhat of a spurious argument, but I’m going to do my best. I’m not against men or women wearing makeup or tight fitting clothing. What I’m against is the fact that some mass media outlets perpetuate and promote the idea that women are only worth anything if they conform to a particular stereotype and take their clothes off. If people want to wear things that make them feel great, then I’m all for that. But that’s not the same as presenting a half-naked, primped women as ‘news’.

The human race objectifies people hundreds of times an hour as we walk down the street, whether it’s turning your head for a second look or crossing the road to avoid.

Objectification: treating a person as a thing.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t treat people as things if I can help it at all. Crossing the road to avoid someone because you perceive a negative stereotype isn’t objectification. Having a second look at someone because they’re hot might be objectification due to cultural context.

But the important thing is how you act on that. If you objectify people inside your own brain and you don’t make any external actions, then I guess that’s ok. It’s your call how you work your grey matter. However systematic objectification of women throughout a newspaper in a way that affects many, many people is not ok. I think there is a pretty big difference between those things.

For if you censor then where does it stop? Transgendered people using a bathroom they were not born to? Muslims being offended at the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed? Women sunbathing topless on family beaches?

1. Once again, there’s no call for censorship. There is a call for mass media outlets to treat women with the same respect as men.

2. Transgender people use whichever bathroom is relevant to their status. I’m trying to think of a polite way to put this, but their ‘birth sex’ is none of your fucking business.

3. Everyone has a right to be offended. That’s ok. To be offended means resentful or annoyed due to a perceived insult. It’s natural human reaction to being insulted. I think the Pope made a fair point on this the other day – if you talk trash about my mother, that’s going to make me pissed. It’s how you act on those impulses that sets you apart as a person.

4. Where did women sunbathing on a beach come into it? Oh, I see. You think that those of us who think that women should be treated respectfully in the newspapers believe that tits are bad? I’ll tell my girlfriend. I’m sure she’ll find it hilarious.

The women in the pictures are very well paid models who know what they are doing, I’d have thought a feminist or a male apologist would be campaigning for the right for them to show naked breasts, not cover them up.

Just to set the record straight, posing for Page 3 isn’t generally that well paid. Not considering the amount of work that goes into it and the fact it basically devastates your ability to do many careers in the future. Your average (non famous) glamour model is probably doing well if they’re making £15k a year. I mean, they’re probably doing really well. Not so great really, is it? You could get paid more stacking shelves in supermarkets.

You say male apologist like it’s a bad thing for men to support equality for women.

However I absolutely campaign for the right for women to show naked breasts. I mean, I was there a few years ago handing out leaflets on a demonstration that said women should have equal rights of men to take their shirts off in the street. And I think that absolutely we should be able to model nude if we choose to. I think that the nude body is a wonderful thing and it’s great to use it to make art (or porn, I like porn too). What I don’t like is the fact that some media outlets choose to treat women with less respect than men. (I feel like a broken record now.)

And lastly when you say it’s about access, show me someone under the age of 18 who actually buys a newspaper.

Actually I’d like to suggest that lots of young people – mostly young teenage boys – probably buy newspapers like this to see the soft porn. Certainly they did when I was at school, and that wasn’t actually that long ago. Because if you’re underage you might not be able to get round the porn filters on your smartphone, without an adult putting their credit card details over the phone, or without you going into a phone shop and convincing them that you’re an adult.

But you know, Tesco didn’t just put some tabloid papers behind screens for no reason. They felt it was right right thing to do. To stop young people seeing overtly sexualised pictures of models (and celebrities) at eye level. I can’t see why anyone would think it is a good idea to instil in young peoples minds that overt sexualisation of women is natural, normal or a good thing. Perhaps we can encourage this generation to grow up with a far more egalitarian outlook if we stop ramming the message that women should be sexualised down their throats.

This “I don’t want boobs in my news” is ridiculous because I’m betting that no-one who is for the removal of page 3 actually buys and reads The Sun.

I don’t see how this is a relevant argument. I don’t buy battery farmed eggs and yet I still campaign for the removal of battery hen farms.

So it’s about censorship and removing some else’s access to something.

As was previously pointed out, it’s not about censorship it’s about calling for respect. And any adult who wants to look at soft porn can do so any time they wish on their mobile phone. There is no reason for it to be in a newspaper.

I think this is also a great place to leave this video. Again.

January 21, 2015