After this week’s heated debate concerning the fate of The Sun at our University, this piece of ‘new journalism’ written by former President of Exeter Gender Equality Society Rachel Brown gives a narrative which explores what stereotypes exist concerning The Sun’s male readership due to the presence of Page 3.
The little door opens, delinquent winds seize chance, throwing upon the innocent café entrance handfuls of rain and dust made fugitive from the cobbled square outside. As the remaining gusts quarrel with the tinny jingle of the doorbell, the discordant orchestration compels my gaze above the top of my book and toward the source where I observe your final wrestles against the wind.
As you triumphantly close the door, raindrops cling stubbornly to your coat and pull neglectfully at your hair. Sweeping the weather-beaten strands from your cheeks, your face is revealed like clouds parting for the sun.
Photo Credit: An Untrained Eye via Flickr cc
I barter with luck while you survey the low-ceilinged café. Composed of typical West Country furniture, their blockish framework is so enduring that your grandchildren, buttery-faced, will probably swing their chubby legs from the same chairs as they gleefully tuck into their scones.
Fortune is mine, you sit at the neighbouring table and ask the waiter for a pot of Darjeeling tea. I inhale, and, trying not to disclose smiling joy at your choice, I briefly close my eyes to recall the virtues of your chosen tea: “Its leaves decorate only rare heights and just one clime. Its texture rich, notes delicate and swansong sweet…”
I open my eyes. You have settled into your seat and assumed sovereign poise. Turned so slightly facing towards me, I bask in nature’s sweet coincidence — our equal purview of one another. Your posture is elegant, your plaid scarf wrapped as though arranged by birds in flight, your woollen coat sharp as a cliff’s edge and brogues that cannot silence unfailing taste. The waiter returns and you meet his face to thank him with kind eyes and a smile.
Any attempt of return to my book, without mere affectation, would be unthinkable! All I can do is give definition to the flowering picture of you. You exhale, perhaps signalling relief at your escape from the torments of the raging weather now behind us.
You draw down into your bag to produce some reading material. “What tales of you might this speak?” I ask myself hopefully. Its scarlet topped paper remains obscure to my vision. The article rises in your hand toward the table you rest upon. You open to its pages, now unveiling to me its cover from which I read: “The Sun”
Images of male “Sun readers” paraded in my mind — Misogynist. Chauvinist. Sexist. These words hurled themselves at me with a greater violence than the marauding winds outside. Arrows began to cast themselves into the picture of you. Your defence attorney pointed and quibbled: “But he will, of course, take no interest in passé page three. He is interested, I am sure, in only the sport and actual news.” But you did not hasten past page three to the later sports pages.
And it would always be: You had purchased The Sun, a newspaper that still makes boobs news. My vision of you punctured, I picked up my book, my bag and my disappointment, and there I hoped: May you and your newspaper one day possess a more visionary male stereotype than just a certain kind of man.
Rachel Brown
Is somebody’s choice of newspaper an accurate way to judge their personality? Is it fair to label readers of The Sun as misogynistic and sexist? Leave a comment below or write to the Comment team at the Exeposé Comment Facebook Group or on Twitter @CommentExepose.
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