The Blowfish Blog

Undressed Kingdom

Since I’m getting a byline starting with this column, I suppose I’ll drop the charming conceit that Caught in the Net is the product of a secret cabal of dedicated web-surfers, and acknowledge that, in fact, it’s only me. (Though I’m aided by the suggestions of friends and readers and friendly readers, so keep the interesting links coming!)

As an American boy, I was woefully unfamiliar with the concept of Page Three girls — the topless beauties who appear on page three of Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid The Sun. (There’s a sad dearth of topless women in supermarket checkout rack tabloids in the USA — even in papers run by the conservative world-dominating media moguls! Which means we get stuck with Rupert Murdoch publications without even the scant consolation of scantily clad babes.) As usual, you can count on Wikipedia for a factual rundown of the subject, along with a photo from the very first topless shoot way back in 1970. Apparently the inclusion of bare breasts increased circulation by 40%. I can’t say I’m surprised. But now, in the digital age, I don’t have to book a transatlantic flight and browse British newsstands to find page three girls.

Though she’s not well-known in America, the lovely Keeley Hazell has been the reigning queen of topless British models since she won the Page Three Idol Contest back in 2004, or so the internet tells me. In addition to her regular appearances in The Sun, Keeley appears often in that noble lad rag Zoo. I especially direct your attention to her “World Cup Strip” spread in honor of the 2006 World Cup, in which a clever editor had the idea of populating an entire soccer team with, well, even more Keeleys: check out the photos here. It’s basically the platonic ideal of sporty cheesecake. You can see lots more Page Three stuff (and by “stuff” I mean “half-naked ladies”) at Page3.com.

The Sun recently revealed their rather complex formula for what makes a perfect Page Three girl. The formula accounts for things like breast shape, waist measurement, nipple size, and other quantifiable attributes. Keeley is the perfect sum of that formula, it seems. Shockingly, the formula includes nothing about intelligence, humor, talent, or ambition. What kind of newspaper are they running over there? Well, here’s an article from way back in 2004 that asks that very question: Page 3 - Model Propaganda: The Sun, The Girls, The Truth. It seems these models often espouse — or are depicted espousing — some very conservative political opinions, which line up peculiarly well with the politics of the paper’s owner. If there is overt propagandizing going on, it’s a clever approach — I’m always inclined to listen to what mostly naked women tell me (though it doesn’t convince me as effectively when I imagine Murdoch’s voice coming out of the model’s mouths. Try it yourself).

And, because this has been a highly breast-centric installment, and I’d hate for my essential heterosexuality to limit the scope of Caught in the Net’s coverage, here’s a website devoted to naked uncircumcised British guys: UK Naked Men. Let’s see Rupert Murdoch try to push a conservative political agenda with images of big uncut British cock! Then I would bow before his media-fu.

Tim Pratt

Share This

This entry was posted on Wednesday, 30 May 2007 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Ask Blowfish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.