Organisation says paper should 'promote positive role models to inspire girls' and stop treating women as objects

This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

The Girl Guides have become the latest organisation to urge the Sun to end its practice of printing photographs of topless women on Page 3.

Just weeks after proprietor Rupert Murdoch hinted he might scrap Page 3, Girlguiding UK has written an open letter to the Sun urging the tabloid to "promote positive role models to inspire girls" and stop treating women as objects.

The letter to Sun editor Dominic Mohan says: "We know that The Sun is a family newspaper. Anyone can pick it up, turn to page 3, and think that it is normal for young women to be treated as objects. We feel this is just wrong and has to stop."

The organisation says objectifying women on the pages of the tabloid, a practice which has gone on for more than 40 years, is "disrespectful" and sexist.

"As a young woman in UK society, it is impossible to nurture your ambitions if you are constantly told that you are not the same as your male equivalent," the letter adds. "This is what Page 3 does. It is disrespectful and embarrassing."

"We would like the Sun, as a leading UK newspaper, to promote positive role models to inspire girls and young women and help everyone to understand that women are never for sale.

"We hope that the voice of Girlguiding members, combined with the rest of the signatories on the No More Page 3 petition, will convince you to finally take bare boobs out of the Sun."

Girlguiding UK wrote to Mohan after its members, who are aged between five and 25, voted overwhelmingly to support the No More Page 3 campaign which was set up last year and has gathered almost 90,000 signatures on a petition.

Bare-breasted women have featured in the Sun for decades and the paper has resisted all attempts to get it to abandon the practice.

It went to war with MP Clare Short in 1986 when she put forward the idea of legislation to axe Page 3, branding her "fat, jealous Clare".

She said the bullying by the paper was renewed with vigour when 20 years later she said she still objected to Page 3 with half-naked women calling at her home and making snide comments about her body.

In February this year Murdoch hinted for the first time that he might agree that topless women had no place in a newspaper.

Twitter user @Kazipooh tweeted to him: "#nomorepage3 Seriously, we are all so over page 3 – it is so last century!". Murdoch replied: "page three so last century! You maybe right, don't know but considering. Perhaps halfway house with glamorous fashionistas."

However apart from a handful of days when the paper has showed a bikini-wearing model, there is no sign that topless models will disappear from the paper.

The No More Page 3 campaign was set up during the London 2012 Olympics when writer Lucy-Anne Holmes objected to the fact that the largest image of a woman in the paper was a Page 3 topless model even though Jessica Ennis had just won her medal.

• This article was amended on 10 April 2013 to correct the age range for Girl Guiding, which includes girls from five to 25

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