How did Margaret Thatcher use the Media? By Georgina Ward

1980s regional coverage approached Thatcher through a deliberately comedic style. Aspects of gender and humour were central components to Thatcher-centric programmes, and Thatcher’s image can be seen not only as a construct intended for a mass cultural mainstream but was considerably driven by popular discontent. 1983’s Central Lobby opens with Tony Francis in the studio examining various Margaret Thatcher commemorative pieces.^[1]

https://vimeo.com/117167508

His mocking manner instantly suggests regional programmes operated on an alternative, more familiar level. Nothing is explicit even in later questioning of a clear anti-Thatcherite, so the programme maintains professionalism whilst still provoking a potentially ironic reading for a media literate audience. This is seen again when another programme ends with its reporter remembering his first interview with Thatcher and she is seen walking straight past, ignoring his question.^[2] This framing is introduced as shared humour, in turn suggesting confidence in Thatcher’s decrease in popularity (or at the very least viewer awareness of how controversial a figure she was) for the programme to endorse the subjective position. It also suggests that factual regional programmes were unafraid to place comedy over ideology in order to connect with and represent their audiences.

Gavin Schaffer has considered the significance of the comic form. He suggests that while the ‘culture dimension’ was considered an emerging space for the opposition to send a political message, the ‘mileage gained by Thatcher and her government from jokes that were designed to undermine them’ indicated the unreliability of comedy as a political weapon.[3] This is reflected in the way Thatcher’s gender was targeted by British comedy. Central pitting Thatcher against a female journalist suggests not only the traction and current-ness of women’s issues but that there was production interest in capturing a contrast between the interviewer – a seemingly ordinary, well-spoken woman – and the ‘Iron Lady.’^[4]  ATV Today 1980 shows consecutive clips of Thatcher refusing help from men on visits (either digging or getting into a cockpit), firmly shaking hands, standing within an all-male crowd, and speaking particularly severely with some amusingly disinterested children on a school visit.^[5]

https://vimeo.com/117173900

These selected clips put together within a montage format particularly accentuates her aggressiveness; done through visual style techniques rather than substance allows a perspective to be projected without any of distractions of context. This shows the intent to broadcast a harsher, ‘masculine’ image for Thatcher.

Historians have grappled with how to classify Thatcher’s gender identity. As Britain’s first woman Prime Minster, Thatcher ‘became a conspicuous figure in the world of sexual politics’^[6] and gender therefore became central to how she was seen and understood. ‘Thatcherism,’ Toye states, was ‘also taken to include her militant, aggressive and authoritarian bearing,’ but that debate has considered how far she exploited her status as a ‘political outsider’ as part of her media image.^[7] In John Campbell’s view, the ‘way that Thatcher used her lower-middle-class origins to underline her position as an outsider amid the Tory Party’s upper-class aristocratic majority was rather exaggerated,’ however Hugo Young regards Thatcher’s aggressive leadership style as a way of ‘disguising her insecurity due to her social background and sex.’^[8] Toye considers her to have been an ‘expert gender bender’; that despite not ‘openly cite[ing] her gender as a determining factor in the political game, [it] did not mean she did not exploit her status as a woman,’ confounding her colleagues through iron-ladylike behaviour which she could then switch to a more charming female role.^[9]

Of course, ATV was only utilizing footage of Thatcher, and it can equally be said that the former prime minister was deliberately demonstrating a ‘masculine’ command towards and of the camera by acting with independence and authority in given situations. Thatcher’s own awareness of the media can therefore be seen through her active projection an authoritative ‘masculine’ image in order to compensate for any perceived ‘weakness.’ Thatcher stated that she refused to be defined by gender, however her frequent use of gendered language during press conferences and televised speeches including use of the derogatory ‘wet’ indicate a desire (however manipulated) to set herself above from her male colleagues and, working within eighties sexist politics, maintain control through this unpredictability of gender and gender deviance. Consequently, the media, in attempting to dovetail Thatcher into an ‘understandable’ category, reinforced this stereotype of her masculinity. Political cartoons capture this anxiety; popular cartoonist Gerald Scarfe perpetuated an image of Thatcher as a cutting, scythe-like figure.[10] It can be seen that, even though Thatcher was trying to change her image to suit a male environment, she is still mocked for it by the same male industry; for example, caricatured as ‘top bitch’ at Crufts.[11] In constructing an unfeminine image for Thatcher, it can be argued that on some level the media was doing exactly what Thatcher wanted.

Cartoon depictions frequently called upon her gender to formulate humour.[12] Further assaults on her gender are most visible in Central Television’s puppet-based satirical sketch show Spitting Image, where she was often portrayed as dictatorial amongst other defeminising stereotypes. McSmith argued that the programme, especially with its focus on Thatcher and her cabinet, ‘attacked Britain’s political leaders “with a venom that had never been seen before on television,”[13] leading to the Independent Broadcasting Authority receiving numerous complaints, with ‘one viewer typically claiming that Spitting Image was “a determined socialist attempt to undermine normal standards of patriotism and decency.”[14] However, Schaffer states that, far from damaging Mrs Thatcher, the construction appeared to make her even more popular, again, ‘fuelling her reputation for toughness’ and, as Richard Vinen states, ‘helping to define Thatcherism in the public eye.’[15]

Encouraging gendered stereotypes, Thatcher managed to her benefit from a media-constructed image. Webster, however, counters that far from being in control of her own image, Thatcher’s presentation and performance was ultimately manipulated and re-invented by men and the male media industry.[16] Sexist material was understood as a ‘continuation of ‘mainstream success,’ popular with the ordinary Briton who saw it as a tradition, and therefore this environment created its own problems. For example, Thatcher’s popularity can be tracked across the archive, and 1979 vox pops show general optimism towards her owing to her limited time in power but mainly the repeated assumption that, being a woman, she would naturally understand and champion women’s issues.^[17]

https://vimeo.com/118017422

During her 1979 campaign, the Conservatives produced an election poster with a blatant appeal to women, associating the party with Mrs Pankhurst and giving women the vote, the first women to sit in Parliament being a Conservative and now the Conservatives having elected the first women party leader: ‘It only leaves one thing for a women to do. Vote Conservative.’^[18] This would not be a continued affair. As Thatcher said in a press conference she ‘like[d] people who have ability, who don’t run the feminist ticket too hard, after all I reckon if you get anywhere it’s because of your ability as a person. It’s not because of your sex.’^[19] However, the 1980s opinion polling on gender and party preference by MORI (Market & Opinion Research International) revealed that women were ‘more likely to vote Conservative because of personal support for Margaret Thatcher,’ more likely to share her economic worldview, her importance accorded to education and education policies.^[20] Jackson states that ‘while feminists viewed Thatcher as an enemy of women’s liberation, on average women voters were less likely to view Thatcher as anti-feminist.’^[21] Archival vox pops therefore support the data that a significant percentage of women in the 1980s both ‘admired and agreed with Margaret Thatcher,’^[22] and indicate how much gender was a motivational factor in voting. Thatcher’s image and attitude therefore needed to be appealing to the female electorate as much as the male side of the population.

This is reflected later in 1986 in an interview for Central Lobby, which happens to demonstrate Thatcher’s detachment towards feminist issues.^[23]

https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/117254249

Significantly, she makes no attempt to suggest, when questioned about dental capping or having changed the shrillness of her voice, that this was done specifically because of her gender, however, it is clear that she Thatcher did have something of a women’s agenda. In frequently using media traditionally seen as outside the purview of politics, such as Cosmopolitan or Women’s Own, or mid-morning radio programmes (consumed primarily by housewives)^[24], she can be seen not only to be targeting women but promoting domesticity and her own inclusion within that feminine role. Thatcher explicitly stated her ‘appreciation of the central role of women’s magazines in politics at a speech to a group of magazine editors,’ saying that ‘We always read, every week in my home Woman’s Weekly and I must tell you that it upheld excellent standards.’^[25] Jon Lawrence and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite argue that this rhetoric of the family and appeal to gender solidarity was emphasised by Thatcher in order to ‘counter Labour’s appeals to broader class or social solidarity,’^[26] and in crafting an ‘acceptable’ image as a female role model, these sentiments demonstrate an attempt to express rather than reject traditional femininity.

Thatcher can be considered alongside Princess Diana in this respect. Despite many differences between them, both eighties icons were in the unusual position of being very publically visible in a conventionally masculine environment. Media attention focused on their private lives as wives and mothers, as well as on their public roles, and by traversing both the public and private spheres they visibly transgressed gender norms and expectations on a day-to-day basis. Whilst Thatcher somewhat kept her family in the background of her career, Diana’s visibility as both a wife and mother were less escapable. As a response to this, the media, contrary to Thatcher’s defeminisation, created a ‘hyper-femininity’ around Diana in order to contain her within ‘appropriate’ societal gender roles. Central News demonstrates focus on Diana’s feminine image: immediate scrutiny over what she is wearing and her attitude – evaluating whether or not, as the journalist asks, she is indeed the ‘caring princess’ – takes precedent over specifying the actual details of her charity concern.[27]

https://vimeo.com/142492531

However, Diana can arguably be perceived as a manipulator of the media through her fashion choices and profile in order to command the camera’s attention to the event, even over the visits of her husband. This tactic can be applied to Thatcher in terms of how she took control of a media image, both with direct interaction with the media (impromptu statements, grabbing the microphone[28]) and through gendered remarks during televised broadcasts, defying her male counterparts. Thatcher’s awareness of the camera and the view of public perception can be recognised; both women demonstrate some level of command over the media’s lens and reveal a battle for control between the media and their subject – whether it was Thatcher or the journalists that controlled her ‘unfeminine’ image.

Gender portrayals and language can been seen as staple subject material for news segments and broadcasts. Mass Observation reveals public perceptions beyond vox pops – often quickly compiled and carelessly answered – or MORI figures which obscure the variation of individual responses towards Thatcher; additionally, many survey participants included information regarding their media consumption. One news-watching responder to the Spring Directive 1983 stated Thatcher to be ‘very masculine in thought and deed…no different to a male prime-minister,’^[29] conveying a similar attitude to the films. Mass Observation similarly states Diana repeatedly as being ‘feminine’[30] – an ‘all-rounder’ that could ‘swim, dance, cook and talk well with children’^[31] – reflecting how the focus and language of media-communicated images were adopted by its audience and how, to some extent, media representation could influence cultural organisation. Arguably, the limits to the ‘progressiveness’ of comedic portrayals led to struggles to galvanise any truly radical opposition.[32]

Arguably, focus on ‘working-class’ comedy only offered a ‘“culture of consolation” amid the onslaught of Thatcherism and in fact acted as a ‘force of conservatism’ – ‘allowing for the release of tension [but] ultimately…preserving the status quo.’[33] Bruce Carson describes how, despite contrasting televisual representations of Thatcher and Princess Diana, both accounts emphasised the ‘centrality of the subject, the narrativisation of the material towards resolution and the privileging of the personal over political issues.’^[34] Reports also tended to focus on the centrality of emotional response (such as vox pops, children and humour) in order to attract the majority, which, as John Wallace states, also covered the regional media’s commitment to ‘establish themselves by expressing a genuine interest in the people of the Midlands,’ and their various values and interests.[35] Thatcher’s efforts to embody tropes of Britishness, such as valorising housewives,[36] deploying moralistic arguments about the decline of British society, particularly within debates over education reform,^[37] and particularly her actions surrounding the Falklands crisis indicate not just bids for support, but specific tailoring of her image for mass public consumption. Emphasising British values can be linked to fears of internationalisation; the CND anti-bomb campaign gained large followings due to the perceived threat of America’s influence, along with fears that deregulation would lead to ‘wall-to-wall Dallas,’ seen by Worpole and Herdige as eroding and undermining British culture and identity.^[38] ATV equally responded to these ‘foreign cultural objects’ by reinforcing celebrations of our ‘national culture’; the Royals and Thatcher during the Falkland’s victory were presented, particularly towards and in association with the working-classes, as positive cultural icons. Local patriotism was also depicted in news segments, with light reporting and ‘British’ comedy a ‘rallying point for resisting globalisation’ and a way of ‘recognising and placing themselves.’[39] but media focus and attitude often changed with regional support. In this way, the media’s catering to mass audience appeal superseded any political position. It is also seen how local cultures and values can be produced or encouraged through articulation of, or by means of consumption of, global forms and media. Positive international perspectives further demonstrate this portrayal: ‘at last she seems to be showing the British like we like to see them.’[40]

David Morley has analysed the structure of factual television programmes through a ‘concern with the wider field of popular programing towards the multifaceted processes of consumption and decoding in which media audiences are involved.’[41] His work tracks a series of shifts in the historiographical focus of interest from interdiscursive connections of new technologies towards concerns regarding an emphasis on gendered viewing practises within the context of the family,[42] overall suggesting that engaging with the fundamental role of the media in articulating both public and private spheres can lead to a broader, more contextualised discussion around how various information and communication technologies can function in constructing and/or reinforcing cultural identities, gender stereotypes and the social organisation of the community.[43] It therefore becomes clear how media depictions of Thatcher were intimately interconnected with not just a political campaign image, but a dimension both inside and outside of media production, heavily dependent upon viewership and the cultural climate.

Spitting Image again fed into public consciousness. Including a clip within a segment[44] not only serves to demonstrate Central’s relevance through an understanding of popular culture and perceptions surrounding Thatcher, but also highlights how important the satire was in feeding back into the creation or substantiation of such humorous perceptions through its inclusion, framed within a factual context and medium. Understanding Thatcher through more culturalist terms such as through political stereotypes can help to explain certain media choices and go some way to defining how particular presentations were defined or redefined. In addition, whilst consumption of political cartoons to some extent were limited by newspaper selection and party preference, the show Spitting Image was notoriously enjoyed by all ages and large, cross-class sections of society. In this way, Central not only taps into a nationalist as well as regional popularity but capitalises upon this mass appeal.

The ‘deregulation’ of broadcasting, with its increased reliance on advertising revenue, created arguments that it would force the medium ‘down market’ in terms of both reduced opportunities for ‘genuine viewer choice’ and the greater influence of advertisers in controlling programming for mass audiences.[45] However, Connell’s 1983 argument that ITV was ‘progressive’ in terms ‘of both its own programming and the extent to which the BBC was then forced to compete with it, ITV having a built-in drive to “connect with the structure of taste” which no public-service institution had’ contradicts this view of public-service broadcasting, in so far as the ‘“public sphere” created by such traditional broadcasting was heavily structured by class and region.’[46] In essence, ITV, in trying to fight competition and cater to the mass market, gave greater power to the ‘average viewer’ in pursuing individuals and their stories. Furthermore, the importance of the ‘authenticity’ of cultural products[47] and pressures for regional broadcasting to represent their regions, as opposed to national programmes, actually afforded ATV greater freedom, such as implicitly supporting particular political values or modelling their shows more like a popular newspaper. Therefore, a regional, British ‘hegemony’ of the popular and commercial rather than any dominant ideology arguably drove ATV towards making certain professional choices in terms of content and character.

Television news coverage and current affairs programming show an erosion of difference between ‘documentary objectivity and melodramatic sentiment’[48] due to production pressures to connect with whole regional communities and comedy being seen as rooted in class bonds and political values. Discourses of current affairs and popular comedic personality reportage therefore played into the extent to which the media facilitated a gender stereotype for Thatcher.

 

[1] Central Lobby [Programme 015] ‘Extract’, 10 February 1983, Media Archive for Central England, University of Lincoln (hereafter MACE) https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/117167508

[2] Central News East, ‘Thatcher Special,’ 11 October 1985, MACE https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/118018520

[3] Gavin Schaffer, ‘Fighting Thatcher with Comedy: What to Do When There Is No Alternative,’ Journal of British Studies, Vol. 55, Issue 2, 2016, 13

[4] Central Lobby [Programme 116], 26 June 1986, MACE https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/117254249

[4] Ben Jackson, Robert Saunders, Making Thatcher’s Britain, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 346

[5] ATV Today ‘Mrs Thatcher’, 27 June 1980, MACE https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/117173900

[6] Wendy Webster, Not a Man to Match Her: Feminist View of Britain’s First Woman Prime Minister, (UK: The Women’s Press Ltd, 1990), 1

[7] Richard Toye, Julie Gottlieb, Making Reputations: Power, Persuasion and the Individual in Modern British Politics, (London: I B Taurus, 2005), 176

[8] Toye, Gottlieb, Making Reputations

[9] Ibid, 177

[10] Kristie Kinghorn, ‘Gerald Scarfe’s controversial Margaret Thatcher cartoons on show,’ BBC News, 14 March 2015, accessed 20/04/16

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-31711778

[11] Kinghorn, ‘Gerald Scarfe’s…,’ BBC News

[12] ‘Margaret Thatcher Cartoons,’ PUNCH Magazine Cartoon Archive, 2016, accessed 21/04/16 http://punch.photoshelter.com/gallery/Margaret-Thatcher-Cartoons/G0000iZrJGN2t3dg/

[13] Schaffer, ‘Fighting Thatcher with Comedy,’ 13

[14] Ibid

[15] Ibid

[16] Webster, Not a Man to Match Her

[17] ATV Today, ‘Thatcher Vox Pop’, 27 July 1979, MACE https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/118017422

[18] Jackson, Saunders, Making Thatcher’s Britain, 343

[19] Margaret Thatcher, ‘General Election Press Conference (“Scottish Press Conference”)’, April 26, 1979, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, 2016, accessed 20/04/2016 http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104045

[20] Jackson, Saunders, Making Thatcher’s Britain, 333

[21] Jackson, Saunders, Making Thatcher’s Britain, 333

[22] Ibid

[23] Central Lobby [Programme 116], 26 June 1986, MACE https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/117254249

[24] Jackson, Saunders, Making Thatcher’s Britain, 346

[25] Ibid

[26] Ibid, 348

[27] Central News East, ‘Royal Visit,’ 30 May 1986, MACE https://vimeo.com/album/3610129/video/142492531

[28] Central News East, ‘Thatcher Special,’ 11 October 1985, MACE https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/118018520

[29] ‘Spring Directive General Election 1983 – G218,’ Mass Observation, Observing the 80s, accessed 21/04/16 https://docs.google.com/folderview?id=0Bz-9hs_TdzGPM056U0tVYUtPeHM&tid=0Bz-9hs_TdzGPeXpzcC1WczFjVFU

[30] ‘Responses to Special Royal Wedding 1981,’ Observing the 80s, accessed 21/04/16 https://docs.google.com/folderview?id=0Bz-9hs_TdzGPUkYzYlFMMG9Hak0

[31] ATV Today, ‘Royal Engagement,’ 24 February, 1981, MACE https://vimeo.com/album/3610129/video/144485085

[32] Schaffer, ‘Fighting Thatcher with Comedy,’ 11

[33] Ibid, 3

[34] Bruce Carson, Margaret Llewellyn-Jones, Frames and Fictions on Television: The Politics of Identity, (London: Intellect Books, 2000),

[35] John Wallace, ‘“A Sense of Region”? Independent Television in the Midlands, 1950-2000,’ Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester, Feb 2004, 303

[36] Jackson, Saunders, Making Thatcher’s Britain, 333, 341

[37] Jackson, Saunders, Making Thatcher’s Britain, 341

[38] David Morley, Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies, (London: Routledge, 1992), 219

[39] Schaffer, ‘Fighting Thatcher with Comedy,’ 23

[40] Central Lobby [Programme 015], ‘Extract,’ 10 February 1983, MACE https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/117167508

[41] Morley, Television, 1

[42] Ibid

[43] Ibid

[44] Central Lobby [Programme 116], 26 June 1986, MACE

[45] Morley, Television, 219

[46] Ibid

[47] James Curran, Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain, (London: Routledge, 1997), 165

[48] Carson, Llewellyn-Jones, Frames and Fictions, 25

 

 

Bibliography:

ATV Today. ‘Mrs Thatcher.’ Broadcast 27 June 1980. Media Archive for Central England. University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/117173900

ATV Today. ‘Thatcher Vox Pop.’ Broadcast 27 July 1979. Media Archive for Central England. University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/118017422

Carson, Bruce. Margaret Llewellyn-Jones. Frames and Fictions on Television: The Politics of Identity. London: Intellect Books. 2000.

Central Lobby [Programme 116]. Broadcast 26 June 1986. Media Archive for Central England. University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/117254249

Central Lobby [Programme 015]. ‘Extract.’ Broadcast 10 February 1983. Media Archive for Central England. University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/117167508

Central News East. ‘Royal Visit.’ Broadcast 30 May 1986. Media Archive for Central England. University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3610129/video/142492531

Central News East. ‘Thatcher Special.’ Broadcast 11 October 1985. Media Archive for Central England. University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218364/video/118018520

Curran, James. Jean Seaton. Power Without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain. London: Routledge. 1997.

Jackson, Ben. Robert Saunders. Making Thatcher’s Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2012.

Kent, Susan Kingsley. Gender and Power in Britain 1640-1990. London: Routledge. 1999.

Kinghorn, Kristie. ‘Gerald Scarfe’s controversial Margaret Thatcher cartoons on show.’ BBC News. 14 March 2015. Accessed 20/04/16. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-31711778

‘Margaret Thatcher Cartoons.’ PUNCH Magazine Cartoon Archive. 2016. Accessed 21/04/16. http://punch.photoshelter.com/gallery/Margaret-Thatcher-Cartoons/G0000iZrJGN2t3dg/

Moore, Suzanne. Head Over Heels. New York: Viking. 1996.

Morley, David. Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge. 1992.

Nunn, Heather. Thatcher, Politics and Fantasy: The Political Culture of Gender and Nation. London: Lawrence & Wishart. 2002.

Ribberink, Anneke. ‘Gender Politics with Margaret Thatcher: Vulnerability and Toughness.’ Gender Forum. Issue 30. 2010.

Robinson, Lucy. ‘“Sometimes I like to stay in and watch TV …” Kinnock’s Labour Party and Media Culture.’ Twentieth Century British History. Vol. 22. No. 3. Jan 2011.

Schaffer, Gavin. ‘Fighting Thatcher with Comedy: What to Do When There Is No Alternative.’ Journal of British Studies. Vol. 55. Issue 2. April 2016.

‘Spring Directive General Election 1983 – G218.’ Mass Observation. Observing the 80s. Accessed 21/04/16. https://docs.google.com/folderview?id=0Bz-9hs_TdzGPM056U0tVYUtPeHM&tid=0Bz-9hs_TdzGPeXpzcC1WczFjVFU

Thatcher, Margaret. ‘General Election Press Conference (“Scottish Press Conference”)’, April 26, 1979, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, 2016, Accessed 20/04/2016 http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104045

Thompson, Juliet S. Margaret Thatcher: Prime Minister Indomitable. US: Westview Press. 1994.

Toye, Richard. Julie Gottlieb. Making Reputations: Power, Persuasion and the Individual in Modern British Politics. London: I B Taurus. 2005. 177

Wallace, John. ‘“A Sense of Region”? Independent Television in the Midlands, 1950-2000.’ Centre for Mass Communication Research. University of Leicester. Feb 2004.

Webster, Wendy. Not a Man to Match Her: Feminist View of Britain’s First Woman Prime Minister. UK: The Women’s Press Ltd. 1990.

 

 

The housewife and advertising in the 1950s and 1960s. By Eleanor Melbourne.

When analysing the role of women throughout advertising in the 1950’s and 1960’s, it is undeniable that the housewife contributed to a great extent. Throughout the post war period, the notion of work was largely intertwined with gender. To escape the trauma of the War, gender roles encompassed a nostalgic view of pre-war Britain and thus relied on the notion of the strong male breadwinner and as a counterpart, the housewife.[1] This essay will explore the ways in which the image of the housewife was utilised throughout the advertising industry in the 1950’s and 1960’s. With particular reference to two videos from The Media Archive for Central England (MACE) and the BOB National archive, this essay will engage with clips from the period in order to understand how women were portrayed. The first is a promotional video for the Esiclene kitchen range.[2] The date of the video is not recorded on the archive, however on further investigation it is thought that the video is from the 1950’s.[3] The second is a promotional video for the Mercury oven released in 1958. The third is a clip taken from the Chanel 4 television show ‘It was Alright in the 60’s’ that discusses Terry Scott’s television show, ‘Scott on Birds’ from BBC2 in 1964.[4] By analysing each video this essay will aim to uncover the housewife in both advertising and entertainment. With the help of historians such as Gillain Murray, Stephen Brooke and Sean Nixon, and primary sources from the Daily Mail from the period, this essay will contextualise each video and argue that the role of the housewife was used heavily throughout advertising to appeal to an audience striving to realise the nostalgia of pre-war Britain.

Throughout the period of war in the early twentieth century, a confusion of gender roles has been identified by ample historians such as Helen Smith[5] and Stephen Brooke[6] and Joanna Bourke.[7] This was largely owed to a change in the industrial structure of Britain noted in Sally Alexanders article ‘Becoming a Woman in London in the 1920s and 1930s’ and argues that opportunities for women’s economic freedom were apparent throughout the war period.[8] An industrial transformation had been witnessed from the dependency on traditionally masculine industries such as ship building, coal mining and steel works that flourished during industrialisation, to a new reliance on plastic, glass and motor manufacturing, all of which offered women employment opportunities since they were a source of cheap labour.[9] The effects of this confusion of gender roles are undeniable throughout the 1950s and 1960s. After the trauma of the war and the unemployment experienced throughout the interwar period, nostalgia for Victorian Britain was integral in the reconstruction of family and gender roles. [10] The videos taken from both MACE and the BOB National archive demonstrate the male ‘Breadwinner’ and female ‘Housewife’ used throughout the advertising industry that tapped into a more general consensus. The Esiclene promotional video counters the image of the housewife using the domestic range with the male manufacturer reinforcing the nostalgia of Victorian gender identity.[11] Similarly, Terry Scott’s television show mocks women showing the housewife to be the perfect women that every man should end up with.[12] Thus, it is obvious from this that both regional and national television clung to this idea of ‘Housewife’ and ‘Breadwinner’.

One common aspect of each video is the appearance of the housewife. A consistency in the way the housewife is represented can be seen throughout each clip. The Esiclene promotional video opens with a cartoon image of multiple women holding hands wearing dresses and aprons.[13]

https://vimeo.com/137369102

Thus this instantly establishes the tone of the video, suggesting that the image of the housewife will take precedent throughout the promotional video. The video then uses a traditional housewife well dressed, with neat hair, wearing an apron using the Esiclene kitchen range.[14] Thus, the introduction to the promotional video works to establish the Esiclene domestic range as a product that will be used by women. Similarly, the Mercury Oven promotional advert also introduces the video with images of housewives, again neatly presented and wearing an apron.[15]

https://vimeo.com/137372575

Each of these representations of women work to support Sean Nixon’s argument of the consistency of housewife image:

‘Typically they were associated with the emblem of the housewifery role: an apron. The apron was always pristine and the presentation of the housewife usually saw her looking neat and well groomed, often wearing court shoes, occasionally heels, and sometimes a sting of pearls.’[16]

Thus, this seems to be true for each of the video’s analysed in this essay. The final video that represents Terry Scott’s television programme ‘Scott on Birds’, was not an advert for a particular product, however was a satirical sketch on women in general. Scott works his way through three types of women, the first a glamorous woman who he compares to a ‘Lamborghini’.[17] The second is a women wearing just a bikini, and the third woman that ‘most men end up with’ is a traditional housewife, again clad in an apron and neat dress.[18] Again, this is consistent with the appearance of each housewife in the regional promotional videos and also support Sean Nixon’s notions.

The consistency of appearance of the housewife in each video shows the aspirations of housewifery established by the media. From these three video’s, we can gage an understanding of what constitutes the perfect housewife in the eyes of both regional advertising and national television. One important aspect to the representation of the perfect housewife was class. When analysing the representation of the housewife in each video, it is clear that the aspirational housewife has been represented by middle class women from their dress and the household facilities they are able to afford. The Esiclene clip illustrates a number of women, all of which make use of the image of middle –class, well dressed and economically affluent female unbound by need to work in industry.[19] The Mercury oven promotional video also utilises this image throughout. This chimes with Gillian Murray’s contention that the ideal housewife throughout advertising was represented by middle class women.[20] Thus, the expectations imposed upon on working-class women who could not necessarily afford these commodities had an undeniable effect. Working-class women filled their houses with ‘televisions, washing machines and fridges’ and sacrificed provisions such as ‘hot running water and an indoor toilet.’[21] Thus, there is a clear gap between the representation of housewives in advertising and the lived experience of women during the 1950s and 1960s.

A gap in the expectation of women and the lived experience of women can also be noted when turning to newspaper advertising. The Daily Mail for example makes use throughout its advertising in the 1950s and 1960s of the housewife image discussed previously. For example, an advert for ‘Quaker’ macaroni was published in the Daily Mail addressing housewives in 1950.[22] Again, the image of a housewife donning an apron, a dress and neatly presented is situated next to the advertising text showing a consistency with the videos analysed hitherto. When looking through the Daily Mail archives there is ample evidence of these types of advertising, reaching out to the housewife and utilising the stereotypes that have been discussed. However, this did not necessarily match up with the content of the paper and a gap can be seen regarding the experience of women in the fictional stories, and the expectations of women in the advertising section. One article entitles ‘Surely they’re the husband and wife of the year’ depicts the story of a husband and wife.[23] The story is of a mother whose husband supported and took on the domestic duties whilst she studied for her degree, and were thus being praised for the both the education of the wife and the domesticity of the husband it is clear from this article that the gender roles of the domestic mother and breadwinning father was not necessarily a reality.

Furthermore, Gillian Murray argues that the image of ‘Mrs Consumer’ was used throughout advertising and television to represent the peak of housewifery.[24] The economic independence of women was affected by the affluence in the post war boom as British exports rose by 77 per cent between the years 1946 and 1950.[25] Affluence in the post war period stretched over a period of 20 years, from 1950s to the 1970s and living standards dramatically increased during this period.[26] Due to the economic stability, the unemployment rate stayed at 2 percent throughout the period, allowing wages to rise and a mass improvement in the living standards of both the working and middle classes.[27] This resulted in a long boom in consumerism and ‘people were weary of hardship and deprivation, which for many families had lasted since 1919, and they were eager to take advantage of consumer pleasure’.[28] The desire to own consumer products, from domestic products such as washing machines, ovens, refrigerators and hoovers, to both male and female clothing.[29] New industries such as motor, class and plastic, all of which employed women, replaced old industries such as ship building, coal mining and steelworks.[30] Thus, as women now had the opportunity to engage in employment, this resulted in a new female economic independence. Shopping and consumerism was largely associated with women, and therefore the advertising industry relied on the image of ‘Mrs. Consumer’ to appeal to this stereotype.

Throughout advertising, an emphasis was put on the freedom that these consumer products would grant women. Adverts represented domestic products as a as tool of female emancipation, a break from the ties of domestic duties and the provider of an easier lifestyle. `In 1950 the Daily Mail published an article titled ‘Electricity makes life Easier.’[31] The advert uses an image of a woman’s leg next to an oven clad in heals, a dress and an apron.[32] The advert states:

‘Lashings of really hot water always available whenever you want it- what more could a housewife ask? Lots of things: a spotless electric cooker or any of the other labour saving appliances which make life worth living.’[33]

This advert demonstrates the pressure put on women to purchase these new consumer items and shows the expectation that women will perform domestic duties. Furthermore, this shows the appeal of female emancipation used by advertisers during this time period.
Similarly, both promotional videos for the Esiclene Domestic Range and the Mercury oven both use this idea of domestic freedom to sell their products. The Easiclene promotional video pitches their new domestic range as a conversion from ‘dingy Edwardian kitchens into Jewels of brightness and labour conservation.’[34] In addition, simply the name of the company, Easiclene, denotes the importance put on the ease and emancipation of domestic labour. Similarly, the Mercury oven promotional video also stresses the importance of ease of use their new product provides. A demonstration is shown to depict the ease of cleaning the hob. The male presenter spills sauce on the hob, and hands the woman a cloth who cleans the sauce with ease and says ‘just like a man’. [35] Thus, not only does this advert show the ease and convenience of the oven, it also displays traditional gender roles and places the woman in the kitchen cleaning the male presenters mess. Therefore, it is clear that both videos tap into the idea of labour saving devices to entice the female consumer, while preserving the essential elements of female subservience and their domestic role. However, Claire Langhamer offers a contrary views and argues that the labour saving domestic consumer products advertised, instead worked to achieve the opposite and raised the standards of household aesthetics.[36] Each domestic product became so desirable and had the effect of community competition for the best looking and cleanest house. Consequently, the advertising industry, instead of meeting the expectations they enforced, had the reverse effect to female emancipation.

From the sources analysed throughout this essay, it is clear that both regional advertising, and the national media relied on the image of the housewife during the 1950s and 1960s. By conforming to the perception of women’s work and creating a specific aesthetic appearance of the housewife, the advertising industry reinforced the nostalgia of Victorian gender roles. Three important themes have been picked out and were all consistent elements throughout regional advertising and were also recognised on a more national level: 1) the middle class representation of the housewife, 2) the association of women and domesticity, 3) the gap between public and media expectations and the lived experience of women in the 1950s and 1960s. The consumer culture that has been noted throughout this essay played a large role in the perception of women throughout advertising and this was facilitated by the economic structure of post war Britain. As women were engaged in work, they became economically independent and spending power allowed them to consume luxury items. However, the advertising industry did work to polarise those who could not afford these commodities. As shown in this study, the power of television and advertising in this period must not be underestimated as working class women often sacrificed necessities for what would be considered luxuries, showing the strength that the housewife image held. Therefore, overall, the image of the housewife contributed to advertising vastly throughout the 1950s and 1960s and was consistent from regional promotional advertising, to national satirical entertainment and finally, national newspaper advertising.

 

[1]Stephen Brooke, ‘Gender and working class identity in Britain during the 1950s.’ Journal of Social History 34, no. 4 (2001), 776.

[2] Easiclene of Wolverhampton, ‘Something to Sing about’, unknown date, Media Archrive for Central England, University of Lincoln, https://vimeo.com/album/3537349/video/137369102

[3] Creda Promotional Video, ‘Mercury’, first broadcast 1958, Media Archive for Central England, University of Lincoln, https://vimeo.com/album/3537349/video/137372575

[4] Channel 4, ‘Alright in the 1960’s’, first broadcast 21 September 2015, BOB National Archive, http://bobnational.net/record/314280

[5] Helen Smith, ‘Love, Sex, Work and Friendship: Northern, Working-Class Men and Sexuality in the First Half of the Twentieth Century.’ In Love and Romance in Britain, 1918–1970, pp. 61-80. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015.

[6]Joanna Bourke, Working class cultures in Britain, 1890-1960: gender, class, and ethnicity. (Psychology Press, 1994) 776.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Sally Alexander, ‘Becoming a Woman in London in the 1920s and 1930s.’ Metropolis—London. Histories and Representations since (1800), 203.

[9] Ina Zweigiger-Bargielowska, Women in Twentieth-Century Britain: Social, Cultural and Political Change (Routledge, 2014) 168.

[10] Stephen Brooke, ‘Gender and t Working Class Identity in Britian’ , 775

[11] Easiclene of Wolverhampton, ‘Something to Sing about’, unknown date, Media Archrive for Central England, University of Lincoln, https://vimeo.com/album/3537349/video/137369102

[12] Channel 4, ‘Alright in the 1960’s’, first broadcast 21 September 2015, BOB National Archive, http://bobnational.net/record/314280

[13] Esicle Easiclene of Wolverhampton, ‘Something to Sing about’, unknown date, Media Archrive for Central England, University of Lincoln, https://vimeo.com/album/3537349/video/137369102 ne video, 00.1 – 00.25.

[14]Easiclene of Wolverhampton, ‘Something to Sing about’, unknown date, Media Archrive for Central England, University of Lincoln, https://vimeo.com/album/3537349/video/137369102.

[15] Creda Promotional Video, ‘Mercury’, first broadcast 1958, Media Archive for Central England, University of Lincoln, https://vimeo.com/album/3537349/video/137372575

[16] Sean Nixon, Hard sell : advertising, affluence and transatlantic relations, find page number, 130.

[17] Channel 4, ‘Alright in the 1960’s’, first broadcast 21 September 2015, BOB National Archive, http://bobnational.net/record/314280

[18] Channel 4, ‘Alright in the 1960’s’, first broadcast 21 September 2015, BOB National Archive, http://bobnational.net/record/314280

[19] Easiclene of Wolverhampton, ‘Something to Sing about’, unknown date, Media Archrive for Central England, University of Lincoln, https://vimeo.com/album/3537349/video/137369102

[20] Gillian Murray, ‘Regional News and the Mid-Twentieth-Century ‘Housewife’: Exploring the Legacy of Afternoon Television in Midlands News Programmes in the 1950s and 1960s.’ Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 9, no. 2 (2014)

[21] Murray, ‘Regional News’, 60.

[22] “Multiple Display Advertising Items.” Daily Mail [London, England] 15 Feb. 1950: 2. Daily Mail Historical Archive. Web. 6 May 2016. http://find.galegroup.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/dmha/newspaperRetrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DateAscend&tabID=T003&prodId=DMHA&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R2&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=5&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28tx%2CNone%2C10%29Housewife+%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28gs%2CNone%2C13%29%22Advertising%22%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C23%2901%2F01%2F1950+-+12%2F21%2F1970%24&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&userGroupName=ulh&inPS=true&contentSet=LTO&&docId=&docLevel=FASCIMILE&workId=&relevancePageBatch=EE1864620553&contentSet=DMHA&callistoContentSet=DMHA&docPage=article&hilite=y

[23] Rhona Churchill, ‘Surely they’re the husband and wife of the year?’ Daily Mail (London, England), Saturday, June 26, 1965

[24] Murray, ‘Regional News’.

[25]Stanford E Lehmberg, Thomas William Heyck. The Peoples of the British Isles: A New History. (Wadsworth Pub. Co, 1992) 224.

[26] Ibid, 225.

[27] Ibid, 225.

[28] Ibid, 225.

[29] Ibid, 225.

[30] Ina Zweigiger-Bargielowska, Women in Twentieth-Century Britain: Social, Cultural and Political Change (Routledge, 2014) 168.

[31] Unknown Author, ‘Electricity makes life Easier’, Daily Mail (London, England), Saturday, August 12, 1950; pg. 2; Issue 16921.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Easiclene of Wolverhampton, ‘Something to Sing about’, unknown date, Media Archrive for Central England, University of Lincoln, https://vimeo.com/album/3537349/video/137369102

[35] Creda Promotional Video, ‘Mercury’, first broadcast 1958, Media Archive for Central England, University of Lincoln, https://vimeo.com/album/3537349/video/137372575

[36] Claire Langhamer, ‘The meanings of home in postwar Britain.’ Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 2 (2005), 358.

 

 

Bibliography

Brooke, Stephen. ‘Gender and working class identity in Britain during the 1950s.’ Journal of Social History 34, no. 4 (2001): 773-795.

Bourke, Joanna. Working class cultures in Britain, 1890-1960: gender, class, and ethnicity. Psychology Press, 1994

Smith, Helen. ‘Love, Sex, Work and Friendship: Northern, Working-Class Men and Sexuality in the First Half of the Twentieth Century.’ In Love and Romance in Britain, 1918–1970, pp. 61-80. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015.

Ina Zweigiger-Bargielowska, Women in Twentieth-Century Britain: Social, Cultural and Political Change (Routledge, 2014) 168.

Sean Nixon, Hard sell : advertising, affluence and transatlantic relations, find page number, 130.

Murray, Gillian. ‘Regional News and the Mid-Twentieth-Century ‘Housewife’: Exploring the Legacy of Afternoon Television in Midlands News Programmes in the 1950s and 1960s.’ Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 9, no. 2 (2014): 54-73.

Lehmberg, Stanford E, and Thomas William Heyck. The Peoples of the British Isles: A New History. Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1992.

Langhamer, Claire. ‘The meanings of home in postwar Britain.’ Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 2 (2005): 341-362.

Primary Sources

Unknown Author, ‘Electricity makes life Easier’, Daily Mail (London, England), Saturday, August 12, 1950; pg. 2; Issue 16921.

Rhona Churchill, ‘Surely they’re the husband and wife of the year?’ Daily Mail (London, England), Saturday, June 26, 1965

“Multiple Display Advertising Items.” Daily Mail [London, England] 15 Feb. 1950: 2. Daily Mail Historical Archive. Web. 6 May 2016. http://find.galegroup.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/dmha/newspaperRetrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DateAscend&tabID=T003&prodId=DMHA&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R2&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=5&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28tx%2CNone%2C10%29Housewife+%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28gs%2CNone%2C13%29%22Advertising%22%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C23%2901%2F01%2F1950+-+12%2F21%2F1970%24&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&userGroupName=ulh&inPS=true&contentSet=LTO&&docId=&docLevel=FASCIMILE&workId=&relevancePageBatch=EE1864620553&contentSet=DMHA&callistoContentSet=DMHA&docPage=article&hilite=y

Easiclene of Wolverhampton, ‘Something to Sing about’, unknown date, Media Archrive for Central England, University of Lincoln, https://vimeo.com/album/3537349/video/137369102

Creda Promotional Video, ‘Mercury’, first broadcast 1958, Media Archive for Central England, University of Lincoln, https://vimeo.com/album/3537349/video/137372575

Channel 4, ‘Alright in the 1960’s’, first broadcast 21 September 2015, BOB National Archive, http://bobnational.net/record/314280

 

Page Three and 1980s ATV programming. By Lauren Wells

The 1960s saw an abundance of permissive legislation, however many Britons did not truly experience the effects of ‘permissive Britain.’ The lived experience of the so called ‘permissive society’ was limited and attitudes towards sex remained fairly conservative, particularly in areas outside of London. [1] So when did Britain become ‘permissive’? Popular culture has become increasingly sexualised since the 1970s and it seems likely that it was the growing presence of sex and sexually explicit content in all aspects of the media which truly created a ‘permissive Britain’[2]. In an analysis of ATV footage from the Media Archive for Central England (hereafter MACE), this essay will argue that the general attitude of acceptance towards Page Three, promoted by ATV in the 1980s, is indicative of a growth in permissiveness amongst some members of the British public in this period, or at the very least amongst those in the Midlands.

The breadth of material on topless modelling available in MACE demonstrates that such stories must have been popular with ATV producers as well as with audiences. The introduction of Page Three had already significantly increased the circulation of The Sun in the 1970s,[3] and it could be argued that ATV was attempting to capitalise on the popularity of the feature. In his discussion of the British popular press, Adrian Bingham argues that British journalism was intensely preoccupied with sex throughout the twentieth century, and sex had long been a key selling point for newspapers.[4] The wide coverage of Page Three in ATV programming could thus be seen as a continuation of this preoccupation with sex in the media as a whole, suggesting that sex was not only a popular topic in newspapers but also on television. Although risqué stories had been permeating newspapers since the interwar period, television news reporting tended to steer clear of ‘sexually explicit’ content until the 1980s. Jonathan Bignell’s work suggests that the increasing number of programmes relating to sex and sexuality on television in the 1980s and 1990s was a result of the 1980 Broadcasting Act, and the subsequent introduction of Channel 4.[5] The Broadcasting Act required Channel 4 to ‘encourage innovation and experiment in the form and content of programmes’, and they did this through broadcasting increasingly sexual programmes. The producers promoted these programmes as cultural, meaning that Channel 4 was able to remain within the realms of acceptability.[6] Thus ATV’s preoccupation with topless modelling seems likely to have been a result of competition with Channel 4. Although ATV did not present their pieces on topless modelling as cultural, they did present them as acceptable, and it is this supposed acceptance of topless modelling, influenced by the increasingly sexualised media, which I believe presents the 1980s as a period of increasing permissiveness.

The prevalence of topless modelling features and other sexual content on television cannot suggest a new era for permissiveness by itself, yet the MACE footage provides us with insight into reactions of the general public to such material. A considerable number of the features make a point of ‘taking to the streets’ to carry out vox-pops with the general public. In all of the public interviews in the MACE material the positive reactions to Page Three outweigh the negative reactions. For example in a report aired on Central News East in 1986; of the five men and five women interviewed, only one woman disapproved of the feature, not because of its overt sexuality but because of the media in which it was presented.[7]

https://vimeo.com/album/3760338/video/152985840

Another report, aired on ATV Today in 1980 interviews a smaller pool; an older gentleman who claims he never looks at Page Three and a builder and his colleagues who shout down to the reporter “They’re beautiful! Absolutely beautiful!”[8]

https://vimeo.com/155951046

Thus in these interviews the dissenting voice is either absent or simply brushed aside. However, it must be considered that these replies are likely to have been carefully selected in order to construct the view of Page Three that the producers of ATV chose to represent, and are therefore not entirely representative of attitudes towards Page Three in the Midlands overall. Nonetheless ATV seem desperate to suggest that these pieces were reflecting public attitudes. In a similar vein, vox-pops were carried out with nine men and eight women of varying ages in programme eleven of Central Weekend, a late night discussion programme, which was aired shortly after labour MP for Birmingham Ladywood, Clare Short, took a bill to parliament attempting to ban Page Three girls from newspapers in 1986.[9]

https://vimeo.com/153766640

The majority of those interviewed had nothing to say against the feature yet the dissenting voice was more apparent in this programme than in others. Still only four of the seventeen members of the public interviewed, were against the feature; one man felt it trivialised news and two elderly women found it distasteful.[10] In the same programme the results of a poll carried out by the programme makers again revealed a positive reaction to Page Three, as 67% of people polled were against “any move to cover up the page three girls” with people responding that “the topless girls were either just good fun or sometimes even brightened up the newspapers”. Thus the material in these broadcasts does suggest that there was a general attitude of acceptance towards Page Three from the public and, to an extent, growing permissive attitudes. However it is also clear that ATV appears to have been working hard to dismiss the disapproving voices in order to promote the feature, and thus these examples must be read with caution.

The acceptance of Page Three is also emphasised through interviews with the parents of the Page Three girls or by asking the models how their families reacted. For example, Topless Model Gerri Perry was asked how her parents reacted to her job, and she replied; “No they weren’t shocked at all, they were quite pleased for me. Topless is accepted nowadays, so if it had of upset them I wouldn’t have gone ahead with it. I think they were quite pleased really.”[11]

https://vimeo.com/153766635

Not only is the acceptance of her parents (the generation prior to the advent of Page Three Girls) important in registering the notion of increased permissiveness in the period, but also the statement that the feature is accepted, suggests she witnessed very little criticism of topless modelling. Again, this reinforces the idea that Britain was becoming more accepting of topless modelling, and perhaps the promotion of female sexuality on television and in newspapers. It is important to note that this piece was filmed two years before Clare Short’s parliamentary bill, when the coverage of the topic in both the national press and on ATV increased substantially, and as a result, Geri would have been more likely to have heard the voices of dissent after the Bill was introduced. Another model, Jill Nevile, interviewed in 1980 said that her mother was not particularly impressed with her career choice but goes on to say;

I think the rest of my family backed me up quite a lot so she [her mother] succumbed to it in the end, and I think she’s not proud exactly but I don’t think she was quite as disgusted with me as I thought she might be.[12]

Again these interviews suggest a general attitude of acceptance, and none of the interviews with parents reveal a strong disagreement with topless modelling, or Page Three. Although this is indicative of permissiveness in the Midlands, although carefully chosen by producers, the people interviewed are in fact real people discussing what appears to be their true views. However, that Jill’s mother needed convincing that her daughter’s job was acceptable, highlights the fact that not everyone was as open and accepting of page three as ATV sometimes suggested. This reinforces the point that there will always be members of the population who will not adapt to or accept modernised values, thus terms such as ‘permissiveness’ cannot be applied to the entire population.[13]

The acceptance or rejection of Page Three, whether from the parents of Page Three Girls or from the general public, seems to correlate with class. Teresa Stratford has argued that;

Class is central to the Page 3 issue. Middle-class people tend not to read the Sun or the Star. Middle-class girls tend not to dream about appearing on Page 3. They have no need; most of them have job prospects which promise more interest, more respect and a longer career elsewhere. It is no accident that most Page 3 Girls come from working-class homes.[14]

Notions of class are not, at first, overt in this footage, however a close analysis reveals that Stratford’s argument can also be applied to the evidence in the ATV footage. Of the two women mentioned above Jill Nevile appears to be the more middle-class of the two and it seems that she had the most difficulty in convincing her parents that her job was ‘acceptable’. In both The Sun and ATV footage, the majority of topless models are presented as the working-class girl-next-door.[15] This is emphasised by a constant reminder to the viewers that these girls are ‘ordinary’ and live just a few miles away. For example: “the down to earth girl from Belpher in Derbyshire, who’s too shy to even take off her bikini top on holiday wants to become a topless model”,[16]

https://vimeo.com/152979170

“Jaunty Julie Bootes, seventeen, hales from Halesowen, just a step from Brum”.[17] Locality seems to have been a key feature in forming the identity of the Page Three Girl, perhaps because it made them recognisable to the viewers, or because it linked them to the readers via class. The vox-pops also reveal that the dissenting voice tended to come from the more middle-class members of society, though some distinctly working-class interviewees were also against the feature, the voice of apprehension was formed largely by middle-class men and young women. Perhaps unsurprisingly, working-class men seemed to be the most avid supporters of the feature, after all the highest proportion of The Sun readers also fit into this profile.[18] This could suggest that Page Three only demonstrates notions of permissiveness amongst the working-classes, as the ATV footage does present Page Three as a working-class issue. However this area requires further analysis as it is difficult to decipher a person’s class simply from a brief television interview. Generation also seems to play an important role in acceptance of Page Three, the parents of most of the topless models appear to be of a similar age to the majority of those who supported Page Three in the vox-pops, perhaps hinting that permissiveness had taken effect a generation before, as Central Weekend’s poll revealed “One in Three women under 40… said that Page Three pictures were degrading to women.”[19] This suggests that the ‘permissive society’ had begun to affect lived experience earlier, likely in the 1970s, as a result of second wave feminism and the gay liberation movement in the 1970s which not only promoted ‘sexual pleasure for its own sake,’[20] but also forced matters of sexuality into the public eye. Adding to this idea there is also the matter that the dissenting voice become more prominent in footage after Clare Short’s bill, which could suggest that post 1986 Page Three was becoming less of a signifier of Permissiveness, or possibly even that permissiveness itself was changing.

The way in which the topic of topless modelling was broadcast by ATV suggests an openness in terms of the sexualisation of the female body. Most of the pieces in MACE include samples of Page Three images or interviews with models, some of whom are topless during their interviews, and the bare breasts of these women quickly become the focus of the reports. It is particularly notable that the majority of the footage concerning Page Three comes from Central News East, usually broadcast as early as 6.00pm, and ATV Today broadcast just an hour later.[21] This early broadcast time meant that these images were not reserved for adult viewing but would have been viewed by people of all ages. This could be read as demonstrative of an acceptance of the proliferation of sexualised images of women on television, thus hinting at a growth in permissiveness. However, this is more representative of the attitudes held by ATV producers rather than those of the audience. By broadcasting images of bare breasted women to such a wide audience, the producers were demonstrating their attitude towards the feature. Clearly they felt that Page Three was not sexually explicit enough to be reserved until after the watershed, to their eyes perhaps it was ‘harmless’ and ‘just good fun’. However, it has been argued that ‘the media create as much as reflect reality, and their process of “selection and interpretation” is historically significant,’[22] thus there must have been at least some level of permissiveness in society for the producers to deem the topic ‘acceptable’ to broadcast, and by broadcasting the feature and promoting it as acceptable, ATV may even have been increasing notions of permissiveness amongst its viewers. Alongside this, Carolyn Kitch has demonstrated that until the 1960s, society was being conditioned to view female sexuality as monstrous,[23] yet in the 1980s it is possible to read Page Three as a promotion of female sexuality, though still in terms of male dominated heterosexuality. In these broadcasts, female sexuality is no longer monstrous but ‘a bit of fun’ and something to enjoy in your morning paper. The promotion of female sexuality to such a wide audience demonstrates that, although not in a particularly liberated form, there was an increase in freedom of expression in terms of female sexuality. Thus permissiveness in this particular form, was in fact becoming lived experience, at least for the women who appeared in Page Three, or found the images liberating as opposed to offensive.

Despite this supposed sexual liberation of Page Three, many of the models interviewed deny that their job is particularly ‘sexy’,[24] though the sexuality of the resulting images is hard to dispute. But it appears that the way in which the features were presented may have made them seem more ‘acceptable’. The producers at ATV worked hard to promote the idea that the feature was in fact ‘harmless’, the pieces were often presented in a playful tone, and with the exception of the Central Weekend programme mentioned above, none of the pieces appear to take the issue seriously. By presenting the issue as something to joke about rather than something to be offended by, which Patricia Holland argues is the way in which The Sun presented the feature, ATV could be understood to be promoting Page Three and encouraging support for it.[25] ATV could also be perceived as responsible for the supposed acceptance of Page Three amongst its viewers. That a news channel was broadcasting images of topless models, is likely to have made the issue seem less threatening, indeed the media creates reality as much as reflects it, and ATV’s instance that Page Three was harmless may have convinced the viewers that Page Three was acceptable . So perhaps it was the supposed lack of ‘sexiness’, emphasised by both the models, and it some ways by ATV, which made Page Three seem acceptable. Yet despite ATV’s insistence that most people were perfectly happy with the feature, five thousand letters were sent to Clare Short after the introduction of her Bill in 1986, and the ‘overwhelming message of the letters was one of support for what Clare Short was trying to do.’[26] With the knowledge that there were still a number of people who disagreed with the feature, reactions to Page Three cannot reflect an entirely permissive society, but they do demonstrate that to some extent, Britain, or at least the Midlands, was more permissive in the 1980s than it was in the 1960s. However Page Three is a clear indicator of the complexity of sexuality in the media as well as the complexity of notions of permissiveness.

The public majority who accepted Page Three suggests that society had become ‘permissive’ in some ways by the 1980s. The ATV footage makes it evident that there was some level of freedom to express female sexuality on television and in newspapers, which suggests a move away from the Conservative values of the 1950s and 1960s. I believe that this is due to the increased sexualisation of the media, and that as a result, Britons were becoming increasingly exposed to matters of sex and sexuality in their everyday lives. Yet permissiveness did not and could not reach everyone and thus perhaps it is the term ‘permissive society’ itself is what makes this issue so complex. By itself the coverage of Page Three in ATV programming cannot suggest a completely new timeline for notions of permissiveness. However it does demonstrate that some people, particularly the working-classes, had become more permissive by the 1980s. Siân Nichols has recommended that historians move away from single media histories and instead focus on the wider media landscape,[27] and if further research would allow, this topic would benefit from an analysis of the sexualisation of the media as whole, perhaps from the late 1960s until the early 1990s in order to discern when or how the sexualisation of the media affected notions of permissiveness.

 

[1] Jonathan Green, ‘The Permissive society: Do your own thing’, in All Dressed Up; The sixties and the counter-culture (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998).

[2] Feona Attwood, ‘Introduction’ to Mainstreaming Sex (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), xix.

[3] Vic Giles, ‘The bare facts about the origins of Page 3’, The Guardian, 21^st January 2015, 3.

[4] Adrian Bingham, Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life & The British Popular Press 1918-1878, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 1 & 263.

[5] Jonathan Bignell, An Introduction to Television Studies (London: Routledge, 2004), 239.

[6] Bignell, An Introduction, 45.

[7] Central News East, ‘Topless Models’, first broadcast 14 March 1986, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3760338/video/152985840.

[8] ATV Today, ‘Page 3 Girl,’ first broadcast 8 February 1980, Media Archive for Central England (hereafter MACE), University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3760338/video/155951046.

[9] Teresa Stratford, ‘Women and the Press’, in Ethical Issues in Journalism and the Media, eds Andrew Belsey, Ruth F. Chadwick (London: Routledge, 1992), 132.

[10] Central Weekend [Programme 011], ‘Page Three,’ first broadcast 18 April 1986, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3760338/video/153766640.

[11] Citizen 84 [Programme 01], ‘Page Three,’ first broadcast 16 January 1984, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3760338/video/153766635

[12] ATV Today, ‘Page 3 Girls’.

[13] Christian Adam, Christoph Knill and Steffen Hurka, On The Road To Permissiveness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 51.

[14] Stratford, ‘Women and the Press’, 133.

[15] Patricia Holland, ‘The Page Three Girl Speaks to Women, Too’, Screen 24 (1983), 97.

[16] Central News East, ‘Young Model’, first broadcast 17 November 1986, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3760338/video/152979170

[17] ATV Today, ‘Page 3 Girls’.

[18] Bobby Duffy and Laura Rowden, ‘You are what you read?’, MORI Social Research Institute (2005), 21.

[19] Central Weekend, ‘Page Three’.

[20] Nickie Charles, Gender in Modern Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 113.

[21] Peter Dear and Peter Davalle, ‘Today’s television and radio programmes’, The Times , March 14, 1986, 31, Peter Lee and Peter Dear, ‘Television and radio’ The Times, September 21, 1982, 23 and Peter Dear, ‘Today’s television and radio programmes’, The Times, December 30, 1981, 17.

[22] Carolyn Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine Cover (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 3.

[23] Kitch, The Girl, 187.

[24] Citizen 84 [Programme 01], ‘Page Three’, Central Weekend, ‘Page Three,’ and Central News East, ‘Topless Models’.

[25] Holland, ‘The Page Three Girl’, 94.

[26] Kiri Tunks and Diane Hutchinson, comp., Dear Clare…this is what women feel about Page 3 (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1991), x.

[27] Siân Nicholas, ‘Media History or Media Histories?: Readdressing the history of the mass media in inter-war Britain’, Media History 18 (2012): 379-394.

 

 

Bibliography.

Adam, Christian, Christoph Knill and Steffen Hurka. On The Road To Permissiveness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Attwood, Feona. ‘Introduction’ to Mainstreaming Sex, xiii-xxiv. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009.

Bignell, Jonathan. An Introduction to Television Studies. London: Routledge, 2004.

Bingham, Adrian. Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life & The British Popular Press 1918-1978. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Charles, Nickie. Gender in Modern Britain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Duffy, Bobby and Laura Rowden. ‘You are what you read?’. MORI Social Research Institute (2005): 1-30.

Giles, Vic. ‘The bare facts about the origins of Page 3’. The Guardian. 21^st January 2015: 3.

Green, Jonathan. ‘The Permissive society: Do your own thing’. In All Dressed Up; The sixties and the counter-culture. London: Jonathan Cape, 1998.

Holland, Patricia. ‘The Page Three Girl Speaks to Women, Too’. Screen 24 (1983): 84-102.

Kitch, Carolyn. The Girl on the Magazine Cover. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Nicholas, Siân. ‘Media History or Media Histories?: Readdressing the history of the mass media in inter-war Britain’. Media History 18 (2012): 379-394.

Stratford, Teresa. ‘Women and the Press’. In Ethical Issues in Journalism and the Media, eds Andrew Belsey, Ruth F. Chadwick, 130-136. London: Routledge, 1992.

Tunks, Kiri and Diane Hutchinson, comp. Dear Clare… this is what women feel about Page 3. London: Hutchinson Radius, 1991.

Primary Sources

ATV Today. ‘Page 3 Girls.’ First broadcast 8 February 1980. MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3760338/video/155951046.

Central News East. ‘Topless Models’. First broadcast 14 March 1986. MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3760338/video/152985840.

Central News East. ‘Young Model’. First broadcast 17 November 1986. MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3760338/video/152979170

Central Weekend [Programme 011]. ‘Page Three’. First broadcast 18 April 1986. MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3760338/video/153766640.

Citizen 84 [Programme 01]. ‘Page Three’. First broadcast 16 January 1984. Media Archive for Central England (hereafter MACE), University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3760338/video/153766635.

Dear, Peter. ‘Today’s television and radio programmes’. The Times. December 30, 1981, 17.

Dear, Peter and Peter Davalle. ‘Today’s television and radio programmes’. The Times. March 14, 1986: 31.

Lee, Peter and Peter Dear. ‘Television and radio’. The Times. September 21, 1982: 23.

 

 

Permissiveness on television in 1960s Britain. By Elizabeth Moran

In the post-war period, Britain experienced an age of affluence; full employment, an economic boom and the welfare state, all contributed to a rise in overall living standards.[1] The 1960s witnessed significant changes in society such as housing re-development, shopping centres, the arrival of television and the change in attitudes and behaviour.[2] The permissive society in the 1960s became shorthand for the change in attitudes towards taking recreational drugs, pre-marital sex, venereal disease and illegitimate pregnancies. However, the concept of a permissive society has been disputed by prominent historians such as Dominic Sandbrook and Arthur Marwick.[3] In this essay I will argue that attitudes and behaviours towards sexuality began to change slowly by the end of the 1950s. However, the concern in the 1960s for the permissive society came as a result of the change in television. I will highlight how ATV and BBC became more open and frank about discussing sexuality which intensified the debate surrounding permissiveness. I will also demonstrate how youth culture was portrayed on television, which appeared to threaten the moral codes in society, whereas in reality attitudes remained conservative. Finally, I will examine how television engaged with the controversial debate surrounding the Labour reforms. I will examine archive footage from ATV news reel (1962-1969) and the BBC’s Up the Junction (1965) to highlight how television engaged with the wider debate on sexual behaviour.

During the 1960s, television became more open when discussing sexuality due to a relaxation of moral censorship by producers.[4] This caused concern over the influence that television could have on society by critics such as Mary Whitehouse. Furthermore, television ownership increased after post-war austerity had created ‘a hunger for all things new’.[5] Therefore, television was consumed on a massive scale. The new cultural medium helped project the idea that permissive behaviour was widespread, although the experience was limited outside London.[6] In this section I will highlight examples from Up the Junction and ATV news to argue that discussions on sexuality became less restricted on television.

Callum Brown described that television was ‘ambiguous’ for it straddled the ‘traditional discursive world of the establishment’ whilst trying to convey the new, modern world.[7] The BBC’s The Wednesday Play, first aired in 1964, was a documentary-drama programme that presented the challenges of Modern Britain.[8] Nell Dunn’s Up the Junction, a novella of the same name, was directed by Ken Loach and first aired on the BBC in 1965. Up the Junction followed three young women Rube, Sylvie and Eileen living and working in Battersea, London. It was watched by an audience of nearly 10 million people but received 464 complaints for bad language and promiscuity.[9] The programme also hosted discussion of sexual relationships outside of marriage which was shared by the older female characters. It was also well remembered for Rube’s back-street abortion scene, as well as covering pre-marital sex and broken marriages.

The change in television caused controversy amongst critics. Mary Whitehouse was critical of Up the Junction as she believed that it portrayed promiscuity as normal.[10] She formed the ‘Clean-Up TV’ campaign in 1963, later known as the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association (NVALA). The organisation argued that television was responsible for promoting and spreading permissive values.[11] In a telegram to Harold Wilson, Whitehouse declared that ‘someone somewhere has to take responsibility for standards of BBC programmes’.[12] Whitehouse argued that standards at the BBC had lowered, raising concerns for the impact that this would have on society. Similarly, The Daily Telegraph argued that the BBC were ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ with Up the Junction and called for tougher censorship.[13] Furthermore, the BBC’s audience research found that some viewers found it ‘disgusting, degrading and unnecessarily sordid’,[14] demonstrating that permissive behaviour was not widespread in society.

Stephen Brooke argues that Up the Junction was ‘taken as a marker of social and sexual change’.[15] The documentary elements of the programme added to its authenticity and caused alarm amongst critics. Loach was conscious that the plays should be not be ‘considered dramas but as continuations of the news’.[16] Therefore, Up the Junction was filmed on location over four days rather than being captured in an electronic studio, [17] which improved its credibility by using real venues across London. The unpolished style of filming adds to the impression that the events might be taking place.[18] These techniques allow the audience to engage with the story as they gain a sense of listening in on people’s stories. Therefore, it was considered to reflect the challenges of modern Britain through its real depiction of promiscuity and abortion.

ATV news reel footage taken between 1962 and 1969 was also responsible for covering a range of issues that were deemed as permissive for the time. The footage provides a middle-class perspective on pre-marital sex, illegitimate births, venereal disease, family planning clinics, contraception, sex education and divorce. In 1962 Look Around, a monthly current affairs programme covered the issue of sex education. The programme featured a Moral Welfare Officer who highlighted the rise in venereal disease, pre-marital sex and illegitimate births.[19] It also featured an interview with Mary, who became pregnant aged 15, who is an example of the consequences of permissive behaviour. Similarly, The Midlands News in 1963 interviewed sixth-form girls after seeing the sex education film, The Yellow Teddy Bears, to highlight young people’s attitudes towards sex.[20] In 1965, Midlands News interviewed Mavis Walker regarding the growth of family planning clinics and she subtly suggested that unmarried women were utilising the service.[21] A Vox Pop from ATV Today in 1967 highlighted the mixed public opinion on the new divorce proposals that made the process easier.[22] The ATV news reel footage highlights how the relaxation on censorship, along with the rise in television ownership, allowed certain topics to be aired publicly and therefore influence opinion that society was becoming more permissive. The ATV news will be discussed in more detail in Sections 2 and 3 in relation to youth culture and the Labour reforms.

The emergence of youth culture in the 1960s had a dramatic impact on society. For the first time young people emerged as a separate group from adults; rebelling against traditional music, fashion and leisure pursuits. Jeffrey Weeks has argued that the anxiety towards the emergence of youth culture was ‘displaced onto the concern of sexuality’.[23] In effect, the physical changes in young people became associated with a lowering in moral standards which was seized upon by media forms such as television. In this section I will highlight how youth culture was portrayed in Up the Junction and ATV news coverage on sex education.

The young female characters in Up the Junction represent a new, modern form of female sexuality that challenges the traditional male authority.[24] Callum Brown argues that in the 1960s the female identity was re-constructed around work, sexual relations and recreational opportunities.[25] This is evident in the film as the women are independent to an extent as they work and seek out men for pleasure. They are perceived as promiscuous as in the opening scene they meet three ‘cheeky’ men in the pub.[26] They enjoy drinking and dancing to the latest music, which features throughout. The film is fun and lively as the approach of editing to music is utilised, employing lyrics to depict the mood at different points. Songs from ‘The Kinks’ and ‘The Searchers’ featuring lyrics such as ‘I’m so hungry for someone to love’ and ‘she said yes’, demonstrate the sexual appetite of the characters.[27] After leaving the pub, the group break in to a swimming pool late at night. The swimming scenes are intimate, as the three couples wrestle in the water in their underwear and passionately kiss one another.[28] The criminal aspect of the scene and the promiscuity of the teenagers, supports the concern over the lowering of young people’s standards.

The concern over young people’s attitudes towards sexuality was incorporated into the debate surrounding appropriate sex education. Government reports reaffirmed the need for suitable instruction in schools.[29] However, these recommendations were ignored, due to the influence of moral conservatives who sought to reaffirm the values of a traditional family life.[30] The debate reached a significant height by the 1960s as contemporaries feared that sex education would exacerbate permissive behaviour in young people.

In November 1963, Reg Harcourt interviewed several sixth-form girls, as part of the Midlands News, after they had seen the sex education film, ‘The Yellow Teddy Bears’, at the Cinephone in Birmingham.

https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117165892

The film focuses on a group of girls at an English school who place a yellow teddy bear on their uniform to symbolise that they have had pre-marital sex.[31] The camera is positioned behind the girls, to protect their identities whilst they discuss the film. This suggests that the nature of the conversation was deemed unsuitable for respectable girls to discuss on camera. All of the girls agreed that the film portrayed sexual issues accurately, but insisted that the film should be shown to younger girls, aged 14-15.[32] This suggests that the sixth-form aged girls had some knowledge regarding sexual intercourse. One girl in particular undermines the stereotype of permissive young people as Harcourt questions, ‘Do you know girls like this at your school?’[33] She replied that, ‘no, I myself do not know…but I think it does go on in some schools’.[34]

Look Around, the monthly current affairs programme, broadcast on ATV in 1962 a segment to highlight the inadequacies of sex education.

https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117165893

The last section of the programme features Stella Hunt, a Moral Welfare Officer, and Mary who conceived aged 15. Stella cites statistics that demonstrate the lowering of young people’s standards. She explains that a report in 1959 found that 31% more girls conceived than the year before.[35] Similarly, there were 65% more cases in girls and 67.3% more cases in boys of venereal disease.[36] However Stella points out that ‘even that does not give a true picture of the promiscuous intercourse which is carried on by our young people’.[37] Such alarmist language promoted pre-marital sex as widespread amongst young people.

Mary is used as an example of the consequences of receiving inadequate sex education. During her interview her identity is obscured by filming from behind using the same technique as the Midlands News in 1963. Stella questions whether ‘other girls…have intercourse with boys and behave in the same way’, which Mary replies ‘I know they do’.[38] This admission challenges the traditional perspective that placed marriage and the family at the heart of society.[39] Stella concludes by stating that ‘it is often said that the standards in young people today are much lower…than when I was young’.[40]

Newspaper headlines also added to people’s concerns such as ‘teenage morals and the corruption of the times’ from the Evening Standard in October 1961.[41] Similarly, The Sunday Times published an enquiry entitled ‘Your Teenage Daughter’ aimed at the parents of Middle Class sixth-form parents.[42] They expressed a concern for the working class teenage culture corrupting the respectable sixth-form girls. This can be seen when comparing Up the Junction’s depiction of youth culture with the ATV interviews of young people. The newspaper declared permissiveness as widespread and stated that ‘none can afford to ignore it’.[43]

In reality, the concern over the lowering of young people’s standards was exaggerated. Michael Schofield’s 1965 study, The Sexual Behaviour of Young People, disputed the idea that the permissive society had arrived and argued that promiscuity and pre-marital sex were still considered to be exceptional.[44] The majority wanted to marry and expected faithfulness, whilst over 2/3 of boys and ¾ of girls in the study had not experienced sexual intercourse.[45] Furthermore, Eustace Chesser’s 1956 study uncovered that 43% of married women and 30% of unmarried women had experienced sex before marriage in the 1940s and 1950s.[46] This suggests that pre-marital sex existed before the so called ‘sexual revolution’ in the 1960s, and supports Hera Cook’s theory of a long sexual revolution between 1800 and 1975.[47] However, James Hampshire and Jane Lewis have argued that Schofield was in the minority, and that ‘the belief that British society…was undergoing radical change in its sexual attitudes and behaviour was widespread’.[48] As my research has demonstrated, this belief was heightened by the portrayal of permissive behaviour amongst young people on television.

The 1960s witnessed the most ‘significant package of legislative changes on morality for over half a century’.[49] The debate surrounding the Labour reforms focuses on whether the legislation cemented the progressive society or whether it allowed permissive behaviour to develop. In Up the Junction, the backstreet abortion and Sylvie’s separation from her husband demonstrate that attitudes had already changed in Working Class London before the legislation took place. Whereas ATV news reel challenges this assessment but draws on a Middle Class perspective. The Midlands News in 1965 argues that change occurred after the pill was introduced in 1961 which is similar to ATV Today in 1967 that argues that the plans for a Divorce Reform act were contradictory to its respondents’ views.

The Labour reforms can be traced back to the preceding decade, suggesting that attitudes were already changing before the 1960s. The Labour Party Leader, Hugh Gaitskell, argued that everyone should have an ‘equal opportunity for the pursuit of happiness however people decide they can best achieve this’.[50] Similarly, Roy Jenkins (who would become Home Secretary 1965-1967) called for extensions in personal freedoms to overhaul laws on homosexuality, abortion, divorce and censorship.[51]

Lesley Hall argues that the legislation ‘reflected change which has already taken place in social mores and attitudes’.[52] Similarly, Jeffrey Weeks argues that the reforms were an ‘attempt to come to grips with the problems posed by a legal framework that was no longer fit for purpose in the light of changing social realities’.[53] However, Stephen Brooke argues that the legislation served as ‘both symbols and causes of the permissive society’ by transforming Britain from ‘a drab and repressed society’ into ‘swinging London’.[54]

The growth of family planning clinics in the 1960s came partly as a result of the availability of the pill to married women in 1961 and to single women in 1967. The number of family planning clinics in 1938 was only 61, but by 1963 this had risen to 400.[55] On the Midlands News in 1965, Tim Downes interviewed Mavis Walker of the Family Planning Clinic in Birmingham.

https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117263581

She encourages all kinds of people to use the service without providing a judgement on contraception. Therefore, Walker challenges the claim that there was a generational divide regarding attitudes on family planning. However, Downes’ negative perspective is evident through his language. He states that ‘these clinics are increasing at a pretty terrific rate’ and questions ‘what…problems does it bring with expansion’.[56] He suggests that the growth in family planning clinics is linked to the changing sexual attitudes. Downes also questions ‘what kind of people come along?’ suggesting that only a certain type of individual uses the service.[57] Walker responds, ‘almost everybody’ and subtly hints that unmarried women were using family planning clinics as she claims that they also see ‘girls who are getting married’.[58]

The Abortion Reform act 1967 embodies the social changes of the 1960s. Up the Junction was timed to coincide with the Parliamentary debate on the reform in 1965. The BBC was criticised for going against its pledge of impartiality by trying to influence public opinion. The topic of abortion was not new to television but it was portrayed in a frightening manner. Close up footage is taken of Rube’s sweat-drenched face to highlight her pain and distress.[59] She screams and struggles on the bed as several shots have been edited to create maximum impact.[60] The scene lasts for approximately 1 minute and 40 seconds and was designed to draw attention to the pain and suffering of back street abortions. Furthermore, an interview with a doctor is conducted in which he argues that the abortion law should be reformed. He states that there are ’35 deaths per year’ due to the backstreet abortions, whereas an abortion is safer in hospital than removing the tonsils.[61] The scene serves to highlight to the audience that backstreet abortions were taking place in Britain regardless of the law, although to what extent is unclear.

Whilst the number of legal abortions almost quadrupled between 1968 and 1970,[62] there can be no comparison of statistics prior to the reform in legislation. However, the number of recorded abortions in 1968 was 35,000 which can be taken as indicative of women’s willingness to terminate their pregnancies.[63] It is also evident that illegitimate births were increasing among young people; between 1961 and 1971 extra-marital births increased from 5.8% to 8.4% of all births,[64] but these statistics do not take into account the increase in the teenagers who were part of the baby boom generation.

The Divorce Reform act 1969 ensured couples could separate by mutual agreement without proving fault. In 1965 Up the Junction depicted the marriage of Sylvie and her husband who had separated. Two-thirds of the way through the programme they insult each other and physically fight in the street outside the pub.[65] He accuses Sylvie of being promiscuous and she accuses him of abandoning their son.[66] The scene highlights the reality for Working Class families when marriages breakdown without the ability to get a divorce.

The topic of divorce was also covered by ATV Today in 1967. The Reporter, Rosemary Dunnage interviews 8 Middle Class respondents in the high street, 5 males and 3 females.

https://vimeo.com/118014157

There was mixed responses by all genders and ages to the question, ‘do you favour divorce by mutual agreement?’.[67] More people were in favour of divorce but stated that it should only be allowed ‘under certain circumstances’.[68] The Vox Pop opposes the Working Class view put forward by the BBC’s Up the Junction of people’s willingness to be divorced. The Middle Class views in the Vox Pop contradict the belief that permissive behaviour was widespread and impacting on marriages, when many people’s views remained fairly conservative. However, what is evident is that after 1969, the divorce rate trebled from 2.1 to 6 per 1,000,[69] which suggests that many unhappy couples had been waiting for the new legislation.

This research piece has contended that the portrayal of permissive behaviour on television influenced the debate surrounding the permissive society in 1960s Britain. I have utilised material from the BBC’s Up the Junction and ATV news reel to highlight how the topics covered by television, such as pre-marital sex, abortion, illegitimate births and sex education, changed in the 1960s. I have also demonstrated how anxieties surrounding youth culture were displaced onto concerns over young people’s changing attitudes towards sexuality. Facilitating these changes were the Labour reforms at the end of the decade, which were seen on television to be as a result of the change in attitudes. I have tried to present the reality of the situation in the 1960s which has challenged the misconception that Britain was permissive. Although, it is evident that attitudes had begun to change slowly, and certainly before the 1960s, but not at the rapid rate that has been argued. However, in order to fully assess how television engaged with the concept of a permissive society, further research is needed on other television programmes aired by the BBC and ATV.

 

 

[1] Iain Chambers, Popular Culture: The Metropolitan Experience 4^th edn, (London: Routledge, 1993), 41.

[2] Ibid, 42.

[3] See: Dominic Sandbrook, White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties, (London: Abacus, 2006) and Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c. 1959-1974 2^nd edn, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

[4] Callum G. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, (London: Routledge, 2001), 175.

[5] See page 161 for television viewing figures and television ownership in the 1960s. Tim O’Sullivan, ‘Television Memories and Cultures of Viewing, 1859-1965’, In Popular Television in Britain: Studies in Cultural History, ed John Corner, (London: British Film Institute, 1991).

[6] Stephen Brooke, Sexual Politics: Sexuality, Family Planning, and the British Left from the 1880s to the Present Day, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 146.

[7] Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, 178.

[8] Oliver Wake, ‘The Wednesday Play (1964-1970)’, BFI: Screenonline. Accessed 16 March 2016 [http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/454700/, accessed 16 March 2016].

[9] John Hill, Ken Loach: The Politics of Film and Television, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 47.

[10] Ibid, 45.

[11] Ibid, 26.

[12] Unknown, ‘Letters from Mary Whitehouse’, The National Archives [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/sixties-britain/letters-mary-whitehouse accessed 8 April 2016].

[13] Hill, Ken Loach, 47.

[14] Ibid, 47.

[15] Stephen Brooke, ‘Slumming in Swinging London? Class, Gender and the Post-War City in Nell Dunn’s Up The Junction (1963)’, Cultural and Social History 9 (2012), 432.

[16] Ros Cranston, ‘Up the Junction (1965)’, BFI: Screenonline [http://www.screenonline.org.uk.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/tv/id/440997/index.html, accessed 16 March 2016].

[17] Richard I. Kelly, ‘Ken Loach Interview’, Sight & Sound 17 (2007), 31.

[18] Hill, Ken Loach, 39.

[19] Look Around, ‘Sex Education’, first Broadcast 13 July 1962, Media Archive for Central England, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117165893

[20] Midlands News, ‘Sex Film at the Cinephone’, first Broadcast 15 November 1963, MACE University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117165892

[21] Midlands News, ‘Family Planning Clinic’, first Broadcast 21 October 1965, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117263581

[22] ATV Today, ‘Divorce’, first Broadcast 13 November 1967, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218371/video/118014157

[23] Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800 3^rd edn, (Harlow: Pearson, 2012), 329.

[24] Brooke, ‘Slumming in Swinging London?’ 433.

[25] Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, 179.

[26] The Wednesday Plays: Up the Junction, DVD, dir Ken Loach (UK, 1965).

[27] Ibid.

[28] Up the Junction.

[29] See: Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: 329.

[30] Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: 329.

[31] Unknown, ‘The Yellow Teddy Bears (1963)’, IMDb [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058169/, accessed 16 March 2016].

[32] Midlands News, ‘Sex Film at the Cinephone’.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Look Around, ‘Sex Education’.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid.

[39] James Hampshire and Jane Lewis, ‘The Ravages of Permissiveness’: Sex Education and the Permissive Society’, Twentieth Century British History 15 (2004), 297.

[40] Look Around, ‘Sex Education’.

[41] Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c. 1959-1974 2^nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 76.

[42] Unknown, ‘Your Teenage Daughter’, Sunday Times, 9 December 1961, accessed 8 April 2016, http://find.galegroup.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/dmha/newspaperRetrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DateAscend&tabID=T003&prodId=DMHA&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R1&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=1&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28tx%2CNone%2C8%29teenager%3AAnd%3AFQE%3D%28tx%2CNone%2C5%29moral%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C23%2901%2F01%2F1960+-+12%2F31%2F1969%24&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&userGroupName=ulh&inPS=true&contentSet=LTO&&docId=&docLevel=FASCIMILE&workId=&relevancePageBatch=EE1865927160&contentSet=DMHA&callistoContentSet=DMHA&docPage=article&hilite=y

[43] Ibid.

[44] Hampshire and Lewis, ‘The Ravages of Permissiveness’, 296.

[45] Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: 326.

[46] Stephen Brooke, ‘Gender and Working Class Identity in Britain During the 1950s’, Journal of Social History (2001), 783.

[47] Callum Brown, ‘Sex, Religion, and the Single Woman c1950-1975: The Importance of a ‘Short’ Sexual Revolution to the English Religious Crisis of the Sixties’, Twentieth Century British History 22 (2011), 191.

[48] Hampshire and Lewis, ‘The Ravages of Permissiveness’, 297.

[49] Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: 325.

[50] Brooke, Sexual Politics, 149.

[51] Hill, Ken Loach, 25.

[52] Lesley A. Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1800, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 176.

[53] Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: 324-5.

[54] Brooke, Sexual Politics, 146.

[55] Brooke, ‘Gender and Working Class Identity in Britain During the 1950s’, 782.

[56] Midlands News, ‘Family Planning Clinic’.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Up the Junction.

[60] Ibid.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Lesley A. Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1800, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 178.

[63] Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: 346.

[64] Hampshire and Lewis, ‘The Ravages of Permissiveness’, 297.

[65] Up the Junction.

[66] Ibid.

[67] ATV Today, ‘Divorce’.

[68] Ibid.

[69] Hampshire and Lewis, ‘The Ravages of Permissiveness’, 297.

 

 

Bibliography

Primary Sources –

ATV Videos

Around, Look. ‘Sex Education’. First Broadcast 13 July 1962. Media Archive for Central England, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117165893

News, Midlands. ‘Family Planning Clinic’. First Broadcast 21 October 1965. Media Archive for Central England, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117263581

News, Midlands. ‘Sex Film at the Cinephone’. First Broadcast 15 November 1963. Media Archive for Central England, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117165892

Today, ATV. ‘Divorce’. First Broadcast 13 November 1967. Media Archive for Central England, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218371/video/118014157

Other sources

4, Channel. ‘It was Alright in the 1960s: Episode 3’. First Broadcast 21 September 2015. Bob National: Box of Broadcasts. Accessed 20 April 2016; http://bobnational.net/record/314280

Loach, Ken. The Wednesday Plays: Up the Junction. UK, 1965. DVD.

Unknown. ‘Letters from Mary Whitehouse’. The National Archives. Accessed 8 April 2016; http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/sixties-britain/letters-mary-whitehouse/

Unknown. ‘Your Teenage Daughter’. Sunday Times. 9 December 1961. Accessed 8 April 2016. http://find.galegroup.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/dmha/newspaperRetrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DateAscend&tabID=T003&prodId=DMHA&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R1&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=1&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28tx%2CNone%2C8%29teenager%3AAnd%3AFQE%3D%28tx%2CNone%2C5%29moral%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C23%2901%2F01%2F1960+-+12%2F31%2F1969%24&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&userGroupName=ulh&inPS=true&contentSet=LTO&&docId=&docLevel=FASCIMILE&workId=&relevancePageBatch=EE1865927160&contentSet=DMHA&callistoContentSet=DMHA&docPage=article&hilite=y

Secondary Sources –

Aitken, Ian. The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. Oxford: Routledge, 2012.

Barker, Dennis. ‘Mary Whitehouse’. The Guardian. 24 November 2001. Accessed 1 April 2016; http://www.theguardian.com/media/2001/nov/24/guardianobituaries.obituaries

Black, Lawrence. ‘Whose finger on the button? British Television and the Politics of Cultural Control’. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 25 (2005): 547-575.

Briggs, Asa. The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: Volume V Competition 2^nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Brooke, Stephen. ‘Gender and Working Class Identity in Britain During the 1950s’. Journal of Social History (2001): 773-795.

Brooke, Stephen. Sexual Politics: Sexuality, Family Planning, and the British Left from the 1880s to the Present Day. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Brooke, Stephen. ‘Slumming in Swinging London? Class, Gender and the Post-War City in Nell Dunn’s Up The Junction (1963)’. Cultural and Social History 9 (2012): 429-449.

Brown, Callum. ‘Sex, Religion, and the Single Woman c1950-1975: The Importance of a ‘Short’ Sexual Revolution to the English Religious Crisis of the Sixties’. Twentieth Century British History 22 (2011): 189-215.

Brown, Callum G. The Death of Christian Britain. London: Routledge, 2001.

Chambers. Iain. Popular Culture: The Metropolitan Experience 4^th edn. London: Routledge, 1993.

Collins, Marcus. The Permissive Society and Its Enemies: Sixties British Culture. London: Rivers Oram Press, 2007.

Cranston, Ros. ‘Up the Junction (1965)’. BFI: Screenonline. Accessed 16 March 2016; http://www.screenonline.org.uk.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/tv/id/440997/index.html

Davis, Christie. Permissive Britain: Social Change in the Sixties and Seventies. London: Pitman Publishing, 1975.

Hall, Lesley A. Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1800. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000.

Hampshire, James and Jane Lewis. ‘The Ravages of Permissiveness’: Sex Education and the Permissive Society’. Twentieth Century British History 15 (2004): 290-312.

Hill, John. ‘Blurring the Lines Between Fact and Fiction: Ken Russel, the BBC and Television Biography’. Journal of British Cinema and Television 12 (2015): 452-478.

Hill, John. Ken Loach: The Politics of Film and Television. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Kelly, Richard I. ‘Ken Loach Interview’. Sight & Sound 17 (2007): 30-33.

Marwick, Arthur. British Society since 1945 4^th edn. London: Penguin Books, 2003.

Marwick, Arthur. The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c. 1959-1974 2^nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

O’Sullivan, Tim. ‘Television Memories and Cultures of Viewing, 1859-1965’. In Popular Television in Britain: Studies in Cultural History, ed John Corner, 159-181. London: British Film Institute, 1991.

Sandbrook, Dominic. White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties. London: Abacus, 2006.

Vahimagi, Tise. ‘TV in the 1960s’. BFI: Screenonline. Accessed 16 March 2016; http://www.screenonline.org.uk.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/tv/id/1209631/index.html

Wake, Oliver. ‘The Wednesday Play (1964-1970)’. BFI: Screenonline. Accessed 16 March 2016; http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/454700/

Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800 3^rd edn. Harlow: Pearson, 2012.

Unknown. ‘The Yellow Teddy Bears (1963)’. IMDb. Accessed 16 March 2016; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058169/

 

Sex education in 1970s Britain. By Paige Chapman

In 1971, Dr Martin Cole released the sex education film Growing Up, which was the first non-pornographic film to be released in Britain that featured actual sexual intercourse and scenes of men and women masturbating. The explicitness of this film sent shockwaves across Britain and divided public opinion on the whether the themes explored in this film should be shown to school children. During these debates, the woman who took part in the masturbation sequence, Jennifer Muscutt, was dismissed from her position as a teacher by the Birmingham Education Authority. She was later reinstated due to the fact that when the film was made in 1969, Mrs Muscutt had recently left a career in public relations and was not a teacher.[1] This essay will focus on the debates surrounding Growing Up and more specifically, it shall look at how the media portrayed Jennifer Muscutt. By using Siân Nicholas’ method of examining how mass media’s connected and interacted, this essay will explore a number of different mediums such as film, documentaries and news broadcasts, in order to deduce what debates surrounding sex education in 1970s Britain were.[2]

This paper begins by comparing how sex education changed between the 1960s and 1970s, and it does this by focusing on 1960s sex education films and coverage, and the film Growing Up. Within this section, the essay will discuss how people reacted to these changes. Then the argument will go onto exploring ATV’s coverage of the Jennifer Muscutt controversy and whether this reflected people’s reactions to the changes in sex education. Ultimately, this piece supports James Hampshire’s argument that sex education changed dramatically during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and Martin Cole’s film was an exaggerated example of the new direction which sex education gradually moved towards. In turn, this sparked conflicting debates throughout Britain, as some moralist groups interpreted the film as pornographic, whereas others saw the film as enlightening and a necessity.[3] It can be seen that these debates surrounding sex education then translated into the coverage of the Jennifer Muscutt case, as ATV had conflicting and confusing portrayals of Mrs Muscutt and it can be seen that they were reluctant to portray her as entirely guilty or innocent.

Sex Education from the 1960s to the 1970s

During the 1960s, as Jeffrey Weeks has established, society appeared to be becoming more erotic due to a greater social acceptance of sexual expression and an increase in the explicitness of advertisement.[4] In turn, this led to an increasing anxiety surrounding youth’s sexual practises, and there was a fear that young women in particular were defying social respectability by being promiscuous and no longer waiting until marriage to have sex. Sex education in the early 1960s was relatively accepted across Britain, as many advocates for this teaching believed that it would be a solution to the ‘permissiveness’ of young people’s sexual practises, which they believed were immoral and damaging. Furthermore, in order to combat this, the sex education curriculum would shame young women who were curious about sex, or who fell pregnant before marriage. This is demonstrated in the 1963 Midlands News programme where Reg Harcourt asked a group of sixth form girls about their view of a sex film called The Yellow Teddybears.[5]

https://vimeo.com/117165892

All of the girls are positioned with their faces away from the camera, thus showing how shameful it for young women to be even discussing sex and pregnancy at this time. Harcourt asks questions such as ‘Do you think the problem [of teenage pregnancy] was put fairly?’, thus showing that teenage pregnancy was seen as an issue in the early 1960s, and the response of the young girls was that they believed that sex education films – like the one they saw – would fix this problem of teenage pregnancy. Therefore, sex education films during this period were used as a way to shame young people’s sexual practises and establish traditional gender roles.

Additionally, sex education was very clinical and scientific during the 1960s, with the focus on only informing young people about the biological facts of life. This is clearly visible in the sex education film Learning to Live (1964), as the voiceover discusses the bodily differences between males and females and reinforces the gender roles by saying all women will look forward to one day having babies.[6] Therefore, there was very little discussion about pleasure and emotions surrounding sexual activity. There was also an emphasis in sex education films and broadcasts that it is down to the parents to tell students ‘the full details’[7] of what sex is like, and sex education in schools should only supplement parents teaching of sex, as it is their role to teach the ‘right attitudes and right behaviour’.[8] This explains why sex education in the 1960s was very scientific and focused on how puberty changes the body, as it was the role of the parents to inform young people on the non-biological details of sex.

However, during the late 1960s and early 1970s sex education began to adopt a completely different direction than that outlined above. Due to the influence of the Women’s Liberation Movement and the emergence of the ideology that the private is political, sex education advocates were inspired to begin to discuss sex education more liberally, with a new focus on emotions and issues surrounding relationships.[9] Roger Davidson has argued that sex education was not completely different than that in the 1960s, as the general discourse surrounding sex education was still promoting the sexual purity of women, and sexual urges were still depicted negatively.[10] However, one film that completely undermines Davidson’s argument was Cole’s 1971 film, Growing Up. As mentioned before, the film was very explicit, with scenes of male and female masturbation, naked bodies showing how the genitals transform with age, and a couple having intercourse. Rather than trying to deter teenagers from having sex until they are married, in the voiceover Cole says that ‘by knowing more about yourselves, it is hoped you can enjoy making love when you are ready’.[11] Therefore, the film was seen to be promoting sex between young people, which was a radical concept in comparison to the earlier sex education films. Additionally, in an interview for Muther Grumble, Cole stated that the reason for such an explicit approach was ‘important, [it] was this function of trying to normalise all forms of sexual activity’.[12] Consequently, the film portrays young people’s sexual practices as normal and that sex can even be pleasurable, which is an idea unheard of in sex education previously and was a very radical concept for this period.

It can be argued therefore, that Cole’s film should be seen as acceptable due to the progressive attitudes towards sex that emerged during the late 1960s by the different liberation groups. However, as Weeks has explained, that there was a revival of evangelicalism moralism in the 1970s, and these moralist groups began to condemn sex education as causing the ‘permissive’ society. [13] Many moral traditionalist groups feared the new developments in sex education, and were worried about the content of sex education programmes such as those created by the BBC and ITV, which were released throughout the 1970s.[14] These groups especially targeted the content of Cole’s film. The most prolific group who condemned the film was Mary Whitehouse’s National Viewers and Listeners Association (NVLA), as they believed that this new type of sex education was a part of the moral degradation of British youth and Cole’s film was used as a prime example for this moral pollution.[15] This is evident within Whitehouse’s book Whatever Happened to Sex? (1977), as she states that ‘Whether this plant geneticist has ever considered that to face a child with a live, visual presentation of the adult sex act, and explicitly to demonstrate masturbation, is to run the risk of inhibiting normal emotional growth’.[16] Moreover, these negative reactions can be seen to stem from the idea of sex education possibly corrupting children.

Furthermore, with the increasing controversy surrounding the film, members of the public began to write to Dr Cole voicing their disgust. Some of these anonymous letters said that Cole should ‘be committed to a mental institution for treatment’, whereas others said he had ‘taken something beautiful and pure and belonging to marriage and love and emotions, and turned it into pornography’.[17] Pornography throughout the 1960s was more openly sold and became increasingly explicit.[18] Arguably, there was an influx of pornographic material which disguised itself as educational, for example Alex Comfort’s bestselling guide The Joy of Sex (1972) sold hundreds of thousands of copies in Britain.[19] Within the book, it is regularly emphasised that the guide was written by a medical professional, however the illustrations that accompanied the text were very graphic and not medical at all due to the lack of scientific annotations of the drawings.[20] Therefore, the letters written to Dr Cole show that negative reactions towards Growing Up partially originated from the belief that pornography was being disguised as sex education, which would then result in the corruption of school children.

On the other hand, the reaction to the film was not just negative, but as Dominic Sandbrook has stated ‘the audience of school teachers, educationalists, moral campaigners and wide-eyed teenagers watched [the film] with a reaction of fascination, horror and indifference.’[21] Margaret Thatcher, the Secretary of State for Education and Science, was very passive towards the film and did not condemn or praise the film. Instead, she stated that publicity surrounding Growing Up should not deter the public from the entire subject of sex education as ‘some very excellent work on sex education is being done in the schools in a way of which the parents approve and which is tasteful and satisfactory to all concerned’.[22] There were even positive reactions to the film which mostly originated from younger audiences. David Limond has shown that after a showing of the film at the University of Oxford, the student newspaper would joke that the couple engaging in intercourse were very athletic and caused every male audience member to doubt themselves.[23] This therefore shows their positive amusement towards the film. As well as this, Jane Caunt – a sixteen year old girl from Hertfordshire – said the film was ‘good’ and it was reported that teenage audiences were ‘unanimously supportive of [Cole’s] efforts’.[24] Thus, it has been argued that sex education took a new direction at the beginning of the 1970s, which can be clearly demonstrated with Cole’s film. As a result, there was a variety of conflicting and contradictory reactions to these films, and Growing Up was an excellent example of this.

ATV Today and Jennifer Muscutt

This essay shall now focus on the media portrayals of Jennifer Muscutt, the teacher who took part in the masturbation sequence within the film and was shortly dismissed – and then reinstated – from her position, and it shall assess whether these portrayals corresponded with the diverse reactions towards sex education that are outlined above. Hampshire has argued that the changes in sex education during the 1970s meant that some interpreted this as a new era of freedom, whereas others saw a nation in moral decline.[25] However, the media did not wholly support either of these views towards the Jennifer Muscutt scandal; instead it constantly changed its opinion on the matter, and would often contradict itself.

ATV Today particularly portrayed Jennifer Muscutt in such a way, which is especially evident during an interview with Mrs Muscutt’s husband when she was suspended. David McQueen has stated that during 1970s, current affair programmes would often explore controversial issues and exposed hidden scandals.[26]

https://vimeo.com/117168205

This is shown during the interview with Mrs Muscutt’s husband, as ATV was trying to make this scandal more controversial by demonstrating that her husband was supporting her, which is apparent in the final interview question ‘[The film] certainly doesn’t embarrass you or it won’t affect your marital relationship?’.[27] This shows that ATV presumed that her husband would not be supportive, and by her taking part in the film, she was ruining their relationship, thus they were portraying Mrs Muscutt’s actions negatively.

On the other hand, by not interviewing Mrs Muscutt’s for her own testimony and only her husband, ATV is ultimately portraying Mrs Muscutt first and foremost as a wife. Additionally, the opening shots in the interview are of the school which she works in and there are pupils waving out of windows. The interviewer asks questions such as ‘Don’t you feel that this will affect the relations between her and her pupils at school?’[28] and the result of these techniques emphasises Mrs Muscutt’s role as a teacher. Furthermore, by showing Jennifer Muscutt as not being a sex icon means that her actions are presented as not intentionally pornographic, which undermines the argument put forward by the NVLA that Growing Up was pornography in disguise. Additionally, when ATV did interview Jennifer Muscutt after she was reinstated into her teaching position, the interview portrays her as ditzy and dumb, by not cutting out unflattering shots of her pulling exasperated faces.[29]

https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117168207

By portraying her as naïve and dim, ATV is not condoning her actions, but instead they are making the statement that she did not understand that what she was doing was wrong, thus they appear to be disagreeing with the idea of her being dismissed, but simultaneously reproving the film.

To add to the further confusion of how ATV perceived Mrs Muscutt, a final interview with a spokesman from Aston University appears to depict her presence in the film in a positive light.

https://vimeo.com/117168206

The shots of the protestors who were outside of Jennifer Muscutt’s hearing are depicted as peaceful and orderly, as there is no rioting and little shouting occurring.[30] Additionally, the student who was interviewed was very well-spoken and the questions asked by the interviewer, unlike those in the previous two interviews, are not leading and show little bias on behalf of the interviewer, which makes the student’s point about Muscutt being reinstated seem more legitimate. In the interview, it is acknowledged that there was a petition calling for the appeal the dismissal of Jennifer Muscutt which had 3500 signatures. Therefore, ATV gave the opportunity for the protestors to voice their opinion, and interestingly, there was no opposing interviews of any parties who wanted Jennifer Muscutt dismissed permanently. This suggests that ATV was not opposed to her actions at all, but seem to support Jennifer Muscutt and want to see her reinstated. Moreover, D.L. LeMahieu has argued that mass media would regularly modify their outputs in response to changing public demands or opinions, and these three separate interviews supports this argument.[31] The interviews show that ATV was influenced by the general public consensus towards Growing Up and Jennifer Muscutt’s role in the film, as ATV had mixed portrayals of whether Muscutt’s actions in the film were appropriate.

Conclusion

To conclude, it can be argued that sex education during the 1970s took a completely new direction from the documentaries and films produced in the 1960s. In films such as Growing Up, there was a focus on the emotional aspects of sex and how to make it pleasurable, rather than the films produced in the 1960s which usually tried to persuade younger viewers to abstain from sex. However, due to this new type of sex education, this polarised public opinion into two groups, the traditional moralists who saw sex education, and Dr Cole’s film, as pornographic and damaging to schoolchildren, and the other groups who took either a passive, positive or amused view of the film. These public reactions influenced the coverage of the Jennifer Muscutt case in particular, as platforms such as ATV did not know how to portray her and the situation in its coverage, which is why there were often mixed messages within the footage.

 

[1] David Limond, ‘”I never imaged that the time would come”: Martin Cole, the Growing Up Controversy and the Limits of School Sex Education in 1970s England’, History of Education 37:3 (2008), 418.

[2] Siân Nicholas, ‘Media History or Media Histories?: Readdressing the history of the mass media in inter-war Britain’, Media History 18 (2012), 376.

[3] James Hampshire, ‘’The Ravages of Permissiveness’: Sex Education and the Permissive Society’, Twentieth Century British History 15:3 (2004), 292-3.

[4] Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics & Society (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2012), 251.

[5] Midlands News, ‘Sex Film at the Cinephone’, first broadcast 15 November 1963, Media Archive for Central England (hereafter MACE), University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117165892.

[6] Learning to Live, DVD, dir. Guy Fergusson and Phillip Sattin (UK, 2011) at 03:15.

[7] Look Around, ‘Sex Education,’ first broadcast 13 July 1962, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117165893, at 04:08.

[8] Look Around, ‘Sex Education’, at 08:11.

[9] Callum Brown, ‘Sex, Religion, and the Single Woman c. 1950-75: The Importance of a ‘Short’ Sexual Revolution to the English Religious crisis of the Sixties’, Twentieth Century British History 22:2 (2011), 41.

[10] Roger Davidson, Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe (New York: Routledge, 2009), 104.

[11] Growing Up, DVD, dir. Martin Cole (UK, 2011) at 03:01.

[12] Unknown author, ‘Sex Education: An Interview with Dr Martin Cole’, Muther Grumble, Issue 6, June 1972, accessed 20 April 2016, http://www.muthergrumble.co.uk/issue06/mg0625.htm.

[13] Weeks, Sex, 273.

[14] Miriam Corrinne Morehart, ‘’Children Need Protection Not Perversion’: The Rise of the New Right and the Politicization of Morality in Sex Education in Great Britain, 1968-1989’ (Masters Diss., Portland State University, 2015), 66.

[15] Hampshire, ‘Ravages’, 292, and David Limond, ‘I hope someone castrates you, you perverted bastard’: Martin Cole’s Sex Education Film, Growing Up’, Sex Education 9:4 (2009), 411.

[16] Mary Whitehouse, Whatever Happened to Sex? (Hove: Wayland, 1977), 29.

[17] Katy McGahan, ‘Growing Up’, in The Birds and the Bees DVD information booklet, 31.

[18] Weeks, Sex, 280.

[19] Dominic Sandbrook, State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970-1974 (London: Allen Lane, 2010), 428.

[20] Alex Comfort, The Joy of Sex (London: Octopus Publishing Group, 1972).

[21] Sandbrook, Emergency, 420.

[22] Governmental debate about Sex Film ‘Growing Up’, 6 May 1971, available at http://goo.gl/zZ263v.

[23] Limond, ‘time would come’, 420.

[24] Sandbrook, Emergency, 421, and Limond, ‘castrates’, 413.

[25] Hampshire, ‘Ravages’, 296.

[26] David McQueen,’1970s Current Affairs – A Golden Age?’, in British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade, eds Laurel Foster and Sue Harper (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 76.

[27] ATV Today, ‘Jennifer Muscutt Suspended,’ first broadcast 19 April 1971, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117168205, at 02:05.

[28] ATV Today, ‘Suspended’, at 00:43.

[29] ATV Today, ‘Jennifer Muscutt Interview,’ first broadcast 5 May 1971, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117168207, at 01:09.

[30] ATV Today, ‘Jennifer Muscutt Reinstated,’ first broadcast 5 May 1971, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117168206, at 00:28-00:38.

[31] D. L. LeMahieu, A Culture for Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 18.

 

 

Bibliography

• Arthurs, Jane. Television and Sexuality: Regulation and the Politics of Taste. New York: Open University Press, 2004.
• ATV Today, ‘Jennifer Muscutt Interview,’ first broadcast 5 May 1971, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117168207.
• ATV Today, ‘Jennifer Muscutt Reinstated,’ first broadcast 5 May 1971, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117168206.
• ATV Today, ‘Jennifer Muscutt Suspended,’ first broadcast 19 April 1971, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117168205.
• Brown, Callum C. ‘Sex, Religion, and the Single Woman c. 1950-75: The Importance of a ‘Short’ Sexual Revolution to the English Religious Crisis of the Sixties’. Twentieth Century British History22:2 (2011): 189-215.
• Carter, Cynthia and Stuart Allan. ‘The Visual Culture of Television News’. In Using Visual Evidence, eds Richard Howells and Robert W. Matson, 139-152. London: Open University Press, 2009.
• Cole, Martin. Growing Up. UK, 2011. DVD.
• Comfort, Alex. The Joy of Sex. London: Octopus Publishing Group, 1972.
• Curran, James and Jean Seaton. Power Without Responsibility: Press Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain. London: Routledge, 1997.
• Davidson, Roger. Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe. New York: Routledge, 2009.
• Davies, Christie. Permissive Britain: Social Change in the Sixties and Seventies. London: Pitman Publishing, 1975.
• Fergusson, Guy and Phillip Sattin. Learning to Live. UK, 2011. DVD.
• Hampshire, James. ‘The Ravages of Permissiveness: Sex Education and the Permissive Society’. Twentieth Century British History15:3 (2004): 290-312.
• LeMahieu, D. L. A Culture for Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
• Limond, David. ‘I hope someone castrates you, you perverted bastard’: Martin Cole’s Sex Education Film, Growing Up’. Sex Education 9:4 (2009): 409-419.
• Limond, David. ‘”I never imaged that the time would come”: Martin Cole, the Growing Up Controversy and the Limits of School Sex Education in 1970s England’. History of Education 37:3 (2008): 409-429.
• Look Around, ‘Sex Education,’ first broadcast 13 July 1962, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117165893.
• McQueen, David. ’1970s Current Affairs – A Golden Age?’. In British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade, eds Laurel Foster and Sue Harper, 76-92. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010.
• Midlands News, ‘Sex Film at the Cinephone’, first broadcast 15 November 1963, MACE, University of Lincoln. https://vimeo.com/album/3218377/video/117165892.
• Morehart, Miriam Corrinne. ‘’Children Need Protection Not Perversion’: The Rise of the New Right and the Politicization of Morality in Sex Education in Great Britain, 1968-1989’. Masters Diss., Portland State University, 2015.
• Murray, Gillian. ‘Regional News and the Mid-Twentieth Century ‘Housewife’: Exploring the Legacy of Afternoon Television in Midlands News Programmes in the 1950s and 1960s’. Critical Studies in Television 9:2 (2014): 54-73.
• Nicholas, Siân. ‘Media History or Media Histories?: Readdressing the history of the mass media in inter-war Britain’. Media History18 (2012): 379-394.
• Sandbrook, Dominic. State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970-1974. London: Allen Lane, 2010.
• Sandbrook, Dominic. White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties. London: Little Brown, 2006.
• Seymour-Ure, Colin. The British Press and Broadcasting since 1945. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1991.
• Silies, Eva-Maria. ‘Taking the Pill after the ‘sexual revolution’: female contraceptive decisions in England and West Germany in the 1970s’. European Review of History 22:1 (2015): 41-59.
• Unknown author. ‘Sex Education: An Interview with Dr Martin Cole’. Muther Grumble. Issue 6. June 1972. Accessed 20 April 2016. http://www.muthergrumble.co.uk/issue06/mg0625.htm.
• Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics & Society: The regulation of sexuality since 1800. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2012.
• Whitehouse, Mary. Whatever Happened to Sex?. Hove: Wayland, 1977.

 

 

Central News East, 14.03.1986. ‘Topless Models.’ By Lauren Wells

https://vimeo.com/152985840

In 1970 The Sun printed the first photograph of a topless model on page three. Former art director for the tabloid, Vic Giles, claimed that in the first week of the features existence ‘circulation figures were climbing at a fantastic rate and continued to do so.’[1] The Media Archive for Central England (MACE) reveals a wealth of material on the topic of topless modelling, from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. One film clip of particular interest appeared on Central News East in 1986 and features interviews with ‘successful’ glamour model, eighteen year old Debee Ashby, Nottingham glamour model Sue-Lee and with the general public. Whilst the piece pertains to present public perceptions of topless models, we are instead presented with a heavily biased presentation of topless photographs in newspapers as ‘just a bit of fun’. This clip provides an insight into attitudes of producers of regional news broadcasting towards the sexualisation of the female body. If these photographs were to be enjoyed as a joke, then the suggestion is that the sexualisation and objectification of women was also an issue that was not to be taken seriously.

From the outset of this film topless modelling is presented as just a bit of fun, which Patricia Holland argues was the very attitude taken towards the feature, and female sexuality in general, by The Sun.[2] In the first scene, reporter John Mitchell is shown looking at photographs of topless models in tabloid newspapers. His opening statement; “If you usually read The Guardian, The Telegraph or The Times, then this is what you’ve been missing,” instantly presents the idea that the photographs of “Nubile young ladies, scantily clad”, are something which one ought not to miss out on, a joke in which everyone should be involved, again mirroring the attitude of The Sun. The camera is positioned looking down onto the papers with the bare chested women displayed for all to see, and in a jovial mocking voice Mitchell quips “Careful, that’s enough!”, at which the paper is closed. The camera angle positions the viewer as though they themselves are reading the paper, yet the male voice over and the masculine hand holding the papers clearly represents Page Three as being subject to a predominantly male gaze. Mitchell’s playful presentation of the piece presents Page Three as something a bit ‘naughty’ but also something which should be joked about, despite the reportedly increasing number of people who found the daily tabloid feature offensive. On the 14^th of March 1986, Central News East was broadcast at its usual time of 6:00pm,[3] (other material in MACE reveals that this was not the only report on topless models broadcast at this time of day). That the producers chose to show bare breasted women on ‘tea-time’ news broadcasts gives a clear indication of their stance on the matter, if they had deemed it unacceptable or improper to display bare breasts to such a wide audience then the programme would have likely been shown after the watershed. That one rarely sees a bare breast before 9pm on British television today perhaps suggests that women’s bodies were not, at the time of this films making, as highly sexualised as they have become in recent years.

Towards the end of the clip, interviews are carried out on the street in a vox pop format, in an investigation into public reactions to Page Three girls and ‘Star Birds’ (topless models who appear in the Daily Star). This section provides an interesting insight into the reception of Page Three models in the 1980s. John Mitchell interviews “the ladies” whilst Sue-Lee interviews “the fella’s”, the word ‘fella’ adding to the jovial tone of the piece. The gender splitting of the interviewer and interviewees, five men and five women of differing ages, also suggests a presumed gender bias on the issue, however, both the men and the women interviewed demonstrate a fairly open and welcoming attitude to Page Three models, with both genders suggesting the pictures are “beautiful”. However one women interviewed is not quite as impressed as the others and states; “Well you don’t want to see that with your breakfast in the morning,” suggesting more of a disapproval of the media in which the photographs are presented, and thus their availability, rather than topless photographs in general. The difficulty in analysing these interviews lies in the rest of the piece being almost entirely positive in its depiction of the Page Three feature, and it seems that the people on the street were not quite randomly selected, and the responses were carefully chosen to put across the views of Central News East. However, if we do take these interviews to be representative of public attitudes, if not national then at least regional, we can discern that Page Three was more or less accepted in the midlands in the 1980s, yet the film does not definitively suggest why. By analysing this film, and others like it, it could be suggested that the positive representation of topless modelling in regional news broadcasting, and the apparently positive reaction of the public was a result of the ‘permissive society’ that had come under attack in the 1960s and 70s.[4] However, this apparent decrease of stereotypical British prudishness and an increase in ‘permissiveness’ seems, in the midlands at least, to be occurring in the 1980s rather than the 1960s, where it supposedly began in London, possibly as a result of second wave feminism and also the gay liberation movement in the 1970s, which promoted ‘sexual pleasure for its own sake.’[5]

Page Three may be deemed to be promoting the sexualisation of the female body and the objectification of women, although this is of course arguable, and in this vein can appear to some as anti-feminist. One may assume that with the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975 and the subsequent improvements made to the legislation in 1986,[6] alongside the numerous election victories of Margaret Thatcher as the first woman Prime minister, that Britain in the 1980s would have still been gripped with the sense of feminist power which had been so prevalent a decade before. However, surprisingly, in discussions surrounding Page Three, the feminist voice is almost entirely absent, with feminist magazine Spare Rib’s only commentary on this issue being an article attempting to dispel the myths of topless modelling as a glamorous industry.[7] The writer in Spare Rib notes that she entered into the career in rejection of ‘the repressive values’ of the community in which she grew up, thus presenting topless modelling as a pro-feminist industry because it allowed women to explore their sexuality. However the article’s main focus is on the negative lifestyle attached to topless modelling, and thus condemns the industry. [8] Perhaps Mrs Thatcher’s hard-line stance on what she saw as the ‘poison’ of feminism, and her lack of engagement with ‘women-friendly’ policies such as equal pay and childcare provisions, influenced ATV to ignore the feminist voice on this topic.[9] Although, the voice of feminism is well hidden in the MACE archive, the film still attempts to address the issue of the sexualisation of women. Sue-Lee questions a man in the street on the matter and he replies; “I don’t look at it like that, I look at it as beauty”, and when John Mitchell interviews Sue-Lee, asking if she is concerned about being viewed as a sex object she replies “if people haven’t the mentality to see me for what I am and the person I am inside then they have the problem, not me.” This dismissal of the issue seems to be further reiteration of regional news’ representation of Page Three as harmless fun.

Despite Central News Easts ‘it’s not hurting anyone’ attitude towards Page Three, sexualisation of the female body was an issue which many felt strongly about and in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Around the same time that Page Three was gripping the headlines, feminists were concerning themselves with debates surrounding the sexualisation of women in pornography.[10] Whilst some feminists viewed pornography as supporting male dominance over women, others advocated the proliferation of sexual representations of women, as it not only acknowledged them as sexual beings but opened up discussions of female sexuality.[11] This may suggest that those who supported Page Three, were not distinctly anti-feminist, but rather some saw the feature as promoting the woman as a sexual being and granting her freedom to express her sexuality. Many of the models interviewed on various ATV programmes seem to be attempting to promote this positive, liberating perception of their profession, although this view is not represented by the presenters of the programmes. Central News East chose to dismiss the dissenters by interviewing not one, but two women who worked in the industry, and presenting the piece from an almost entirely male view point, to provide a thoroughly one sided view of the matter, but with the suggestion that they were reflecting the general views of the ‘people on the street.’ To the producers of Central News East, it would appear that Page Three was not an issue worth debating seriously, it was just a bit of fun after all.

Lauren Wells (History & Heritage, 2016)

[1] Vic Giles, ‘The bare facts about the origins of Page 3’, The Guardian, 21^st January 2015, 3.

[2] Patricia Holland, ‘The Page Three Girl Speaks to Women, Too’, Screen 24 (1983), 94.

[3] Peter Dear and Peter Davalle, ‘Today’s television and radio programmes’, The Times , 14^th March 1986, 31.

[4] James Hampshire and Jane Lewis, ‘The Ravages of Permissiveness’: Sex Education and the Permissive Society’, Twentieth Century British History 15 (2004), 292.

[5] Nickie Charles, Gender in Modern Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 113.

[6] Celia Briar, Working for Women? Gendered Work and Welfare Policies in Twentieth Century Britain (London: University College London Press, 1997), 118.

[7] Julie Wilson, ‘Modelling Myths’, Spare Rib 141 (1984), 18.

[8] Wilson, ‘Modelling’, 18.

[9] June Purvis, ‘What Was Margaret Thatcher’s Legacy for Women?’, Women’s History Review 22:6 (2013), 1016.

[10] Ann Brooks, Postfeminisms, Feminism, cultural theory and cultural forms, (London: Routledge, 1997), 205.

[11] Brooks, Postfeminisms, 206.

 

Bibliography

Briar, Celia. Working for Women? Gendered Work and Welfare Policies in Twentieth Century Britain. London: University College London Press, 1997.

Brooks, Ann. Postfeminisms, Feminism, cultural theory and cultural forms. London: Routledge, 1997.

Charles, Nickie. Gender in Modern Britain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Giles, Vic. ‘The bare facts about the origins of Page 3’. The Guardian. 21^st January 2015, 3.

Hampshire, James and Jane Lewis. ‘The Ravages of Permissiveness’: Sex Education and the Permissive Society’. Twentieth Century British History 15 (2004): 290- 312.

Holland, Patricia. ‘The Page Three Girl Speaks to Women, Too’. Screen 24 (1983), 84-102.

Purvis, June. ‘What Was Margaret Thatcher’s Legacy for Women?’. Women’s History Review 22:6, (2013): 1014-10182.

Primary Sources

Central News East. ‘Topless Models’. Media Archive for Central England. 14^th March 1986.

Dear, Peter and Peter Davalle. ‘Today’s television and radio programmes’. The Times. March 14, 1986: 31.

Wilson, Julie. ‘Modelling Myths’. Spare Rib 141 (1984): 18.