History
When he relaunched the flagging Sun newspaper in tabloid format on 17 November 1969, Rupert Murdoch began publishing photographs of clothed glamour models on its third page. The first edition featured that month's Penthouse Pet, Ulla Lindstrom, wearing a suggestively unbuttoned shirt. Page Three photographs over the following year were often provocative, but did not feature nudity.
On 17 November 1970, editor Larry Lamb celebrated the tabloid's first anniversary by publishing a photograph of 20-year-old German model Stephanie Rahn in her "birthday suit" (i.e., in the nude). Sitting in a field with one of her breasts visible from the side, Rahn was photographed by Beverley Goodway, who went on to work as The Sun's main Page Three photographer until he retired in 2003.
The Sun gradually began to feature Page Three girls in more overtly topless poses, with their nipples clearly visible. Although these photographs caused controversy at the time, and led to the Sun being banned from some public libraries, they are partly credited with the increased circulation that established the Sun as one of the most popular newspapers in the United Kingdom by the mid-1970s. In an effort to compete with the Sun, the Daily Mirror and Daily Star tabloids also began publishing images of topless women, although the Daily Mirror stopped featuring topless models in the 1980s, deeming the photographs demeaning to women.
The Sun made some stylistic changes to Page Three in the mid-1990s. It became standard to print Page Three photographs in colour rather than in black and white. Captions to Page Three photographs, which previously contained sexually suggestive double entendre, were replaced by a simple listing of models' first names, ages, and hometowns. After polling its readers, the Sun also instituted a policy of only featuring models with natural breasts.
Before 2003, British tabloids could legally feature 16- and 17-year-old girls as topless models. Samantha Fox, Maria Whittaker, Debee Ashby, and others began their topless modelling careers in the Sun when they were 16, while the Daily Sport was even known to count down the days until it could feature a girl topless on her 16th birthday, as it did with Linsey Dawn McKenzie in 1994. In 2003, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 raised the minimum legal age for topless modelling to 18.
In June 1999, the Sun launched its official Page Three website. The site features the tabloid's daily Page Three girl in three different poses, including the photograph published in the printed edition. It also hosts an online archive of previous Page Three photographs, multimedia, and various other features.
Although the Sun ordinarily features only one Page Three girl in each edition, a pictorial sometimes features two or more women posed together. A special pictorial to celebrate 40 years of Page Three featured 15 Page Three girls posed together.
In 2003, Julian Jones made a documentary about Page Three girls, The Curse of Page 3, which examined the negative aspects of some Page Three models' lives, including drug addiction and involvement in abusive relationships.
Read more about this topic: Page Three Girls
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