Media content needs a sex change

MEDIA & MARKETING:EVERYONE IS sick of hearing about Kate "fair game" Middleton's breasts by now, but this column isn't about Kate "fair game" Middleton's breasts, nor is it even about Kate "fair game" Middleton's fried eggs, which is apparently what she has, or so I read on what's fondly known in media circles as "the bottom half of the internet".

In this news cycle, we see that the reaction of some readers to the creative output of peeping Toms is to adjudicate on their targets’ bodies. What a shame that after all the trouble that hard-working paparazzo went to setting up his shot from 700 metres away, it turns out that Kate Middleton has the Wrong Kind of Breasts.

The next stage is for broadsheet-minded journalists to judge the readers for doing the judging, like I just did in the first two paragraphs. The journalists judging the readers are in turn judged by other readers and other journalists for snobbishly failing to accept the simple commercial law of supply and demand – or tits for cash.

It’s wearying, and yet still important to track. For these pictures are the manifestation of two separate but linked facets of the media – its no-holds barred “but the internet is doing it” opposition to the basic right to privacy, and its obsession with the sexualised female breast.

This has nothing to do with men, we hear. Some 45 per cent of the Sun’s readers are female, and the French edition of Closer is, after all, a women’s magazine. Well I can’t speak for the tastes of the French, but it does strike me as very wrong to attribute red-tops’ incorporation of the Kate “story” into their daily diet of nipples and “side-boobs” to demand from women. Much as it pains me to come over all Queen Victoria, I don’t know a single woman who enjoys looking at paparazzi snaps of other women’s breasts. Fashion, yes – including, sometimes, the aesthetics of swimwear and lingerie – but naked bodies, photographed either with or without consent?

The thing is, we have our own breasts.

For those who don’t, in Tuesday’s Irish edition of the Sun, there were 39 breasts on display, 18 of which were resting within the confines of a bikini and 11 of which were giving full or partial nipple. Why the uneven number, I hear you ask? Well, that would be the result of a two-page special on “pop-out princesses”. You might, if you were tuned into the subconscious of the minds responsible, call the feature “When Breasts Attack”.

In any case, 39 is 50 per cent more than 26, which was the number of breasts that could be found in this week’s MediaGuardian 100 – unsurprisingly, just 13 women made this annual jury-selected rundown of who has the most power and influence in the British media. It’s hard to argue that the number isn’t an accurate reflection of the state of play. It is, and that’s what is so dispiriting.

Campaigns such as Women on Air have done great work in highlighting the gender imbalances on television and radio, while the Guardian journalist Kira Cochrane has painstakingly counted print bylines in UK national titles to find that on average there are four male ones for every one female. But there is also the male dominance that you can’t hear on air or see in cold type – the one that runs through the boardrooms and executive office suites of media companies, and colours their editorial meetings.

Of course, The Irish Times would never knowingly objectify women just for larks. That doesn’t make it any less unnerving to me that at evening news conferences, a typical ratio of men to women is 15 to one. When there are two women present, I count it as a good day for the sisters.

It is, in fact, extremely difficult to find media content that is not, at some point along the chain, either run, controlled or owned by men. I’m not claiming that the Mirror is a less leery red-top by virtue of the fact that until recently it had Sly Bailey as chief executive of its parent plc. Rebekah Brooks’s editorial reign at the Sun did not result in the abolition of page three. The top-placed woman in the Mediaguardian 100 was Joanna Shields, a vice-president at Facebook, which has a notoriously complex gender policy, in so much as it censors breastfeeding images while allowing pro-rape pages to amass “likes”.

Yet, I resent the implication that gender at senior level is meaningless. Australian media mogul Gina Rinehart is an unpalatably right-wing, extremely unsympathetic power-grabber, but, hey, she’s our unpalatably right-wing, extremely unsympathetic power-grabber.

I have no idea how to fix a situation that has its origins in the fact that global wealth is the domain of white men. All I can do is consume the few examples of women-controlled media that do exist – strictly non-commercial projects, such as the Women’s Views on News site or the Antiroom podcasts.

The sheer relief that comes with listening to the latter and knowing that its panel discussions were at no time mediated by a man is quite unique. But it’s bittersweet too. Women are not a special interest group. We are not a minority. And yet in terms of media power, we are such small fry, buried beneath a cascade of fried eggs.

As for the blossoming No More Page 3 campaign, I wish them luck in trying to change attitudes to nudity in the news, though doubtlessly “the market” will continue to dictate that breast is best. Nipple counts, like hypocrisy levels, will remain perkily high. It’s not fair, but it is a game.