No More Page 3’s Christmas single – even worse than it sounds

Sometimes, the world looks like a bleak place: the Middle East is still rocked by bloody violence, endangering thousands of innocent lives; millions around the world are still dying from poverty and preventable diseases. And yet, No More Page 3 (NMP3) campaigners are still convinced that the real crisis facing humanity today is the influence of boobs on working-class men.

The campaign, which is pushing for British tabloids the Sun and the Daily Star to remove their semi-nude Page 3 feature, is stepping up its efforts in the form of a soon-to-be-released charity single. ‘Now’s The Time’ is a melodramatic and deeply depressing listen. Singer Miss Baby Sol belts out lyrics so lamely faux-radical they make your toes curl: ‘Let us think about the future / Turn our back upon the Sun / The brightest stars within us / Let it shine and we have won.’

As much as an embarrassing misstep as this single is, it does bring the innate conservatism and pointlessness of NMP3 into clear view. It’s an outdated format being used to push an outdated view – that is, that men’s lustful appetites need to be tamed in order to protect vulnerable women. What’s more, the reality is that, in the age of the internet, every 13-year-old can easily access a cornucopia of filth on sites that have a much bigger audience than the Sun. If, as the campaigners claim, Page 3 causes the objectification of women, the amount of porn consumed online would imply men can’t tell women apart from furniture.

So why focus on Page 3? Because it’s an easy, and suitably proletarian-hued, target. Let’s hope this single, and this campaign, becomes a festive flop.

Yamir Ash is studying war studies and history and King’s College London and is co-editor of the Kings Tab.

Listen to ‘Now’s The Time’: