Daily Star signals end of a tabloid era with new Page 3 policy

The era of topless Page 3 models in UK newspapers is ending after the Daily Star announced that it will no longer feature pictures of naked breasts.

The Star was the last daily paper “maintaining the British tabloid tradition, after The Sun stopped doing so following political pressure in 2015”, reports The Guardian.

However, “the new policy will not see scantily clad women removed entirely from the paper, but will see them merely covered up”, adds the Daily Mail.

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Announcing the decision, Star editor Jon Clark said that his publication was “always looking to try new things and improve”.

“In that spirit, we’ve listened to reader feedback and are currently trialling a covered-up version of Page 3,” he continued.

The last image of a topless model was published in the paper on 1 April, “ending the 50-year tradition in Fleet Street of publishing naked breasts”, the Mail reports.

The decision was welcomed by former Labour minister Clare Short, who was “pilloried by the tabloids in the 2000s when she repeatedly proposed banning the feature”, says The Guardian. Short told the paper that her campaign had been vindicated, adding: “Good news. It only took 30 years.”

The Star’s U-turn has surprised many commentators. The Guardian says that the tabloid has “always taken an idiosyncratic approach to the newspaper business”, noting that “when The Sun cancelled its Page 3 girls, the Daily Star responded by increasing on its own commitment to the feature”.

The new policy has also been applauded by Girlguiding UK’s Advocates panel, which said the organisation was “thrilled” that the “disrespectful and embarrassing” tabloid tradition was coming to an end.

But according to the Mail, the decision has “also sparked an angry backlash from glamour models, who branded anti-Page 3 campaigners ‘no bra-wearing, man-haters’ and said the move would put women out of work”.

Glamour model and bodybuilder Jodie Marsh defended the Star, claiming she had “never felt exploited - in fact, the opposite”.