'I prefer bazookas to burkas'

They reckon glossy adverts using svelte models have put feminism back in the dark ages. We say that’s nonsense and, here, arch-feminist JULIE BURCHILL, who once lived with a woman, says why she believes females must continue to take their kit off.

RIGHT at the start, let me say I am a TOTAL feminist.
I believe in equal pay and equal rights for the sexes.

I even said, when I was younger and sillier, that it was the duty of every woman to make two grown men cry each and every day.

Of course, I’m older and wiser now — one a day will do fine.

Why then am I, almost alone among middle-aged female hacks, completely unconcerned by the images of perfect young near-naked bodies which are increasingly appearing around us, advertising everything from handbags to house music?

Those who know me personally may sourly point out I’ve always had an eye for a pretty girl so my view of such full-on, stripped-down, pin-up pulchritude might not be unbiased.

But, hand on heart, I swear I never leer at visual representations of naked girls in a lesbionic lather. They’d have to actually be in the room, breathing, for me to do that.

I simply think, “She’s nice!” or “No tits!” and turn the page. I get no thrill from naked pictures but I find no offence in them, either.

Admittedly, I find people over 18 who drool over pictures of unclothed humans slightly weird. They’re obviously sailing on the HMS Ain’t Gettin’ Enough.

As someone who has never had any trouble getting three-dimensional cuties to get their kit off without paying for it, maybe, as a Christian, I shouldn’t judge those who can’t.

But equally weird are those who get upset about naked photos, be they of curvy, lad-mag totty or titless, high-fashion hottie. What are they scared of? And DON’T tell me that voluntary, well-paid, kit-offing is an offence against everything feminists have historically fought for.

Snobbery

How in the name of Marx does it degrade a non-academic, attractive girl who likes attention to make a lot of money for a limited period when she could be wasting her youth and beauty in a subterranean call centre for the minimum wage?

The eminently sensible (now retired) Page 3 girl Michelle Marsh, who earned £100,000 a year, said: “At the end of the day I could work nine to five but I would not be travelling the world earning such good money.”

Who could possibly argue with the clear-eyed logic of that? Well, envy, snobbery and hypocrisy have a way of clouding the vision.

Many is the ageing swinger, be she actress or academic, who happily got her nipples out for the hippies in the Sixties and Seventies but now looks down on girls who get their kit off for fun and/or money.

It’s not just an age thing, but a class thing. At a time when social mobility is actually reversing, glamour modelling is to girls what football is to boys. It’s a means of escape from the minimum wage drudgery which might otherwise be their lot.

That it isn’t really a sex war issue can be summed up in two words: gay porn. Gayers LOVE looking at photos of gorgeous young men — does this mean they hate men? I don’t think so! People like looking at attractive people — think of that famous survey where babies smiled more at photographs of pretty faces — and the more they can look at, the better.

If a gorgeous girl like Keeley Hazell wants to take her breasts in her own hands — ooo, missus — to get a little fun and money, maybe she is a better feminist than her sister who meekly accepts the hand Mother Nature dealt her and sees her breasts for the unpaid benefit of her husband and children.

If hackettes want to get worked up about sexual politics, why don’t they concern themselves with the real agony that millions of people suffer every day simply because they are female?

Abuse

What about the rape and forced marriage of girl children, female genital mutilation, sexual trafficking and slavery, the abuse and rape of women and girls for the pleasure of the moronic masturbating masses crouched over their computer screens?

Or women burned to death for failing to provide an acceptable dowry, stoned to death for having sex, murdered for falling in love with someone of another religion, executed for wanting an education?

With all this horror going on daily, how can anyone get worked up about some Western bird voluntarily dropping ’em for a few hours for a decent wodge of readies.

The reason is, I suspect, one of two things and neither of them has anything to do with feminism. One is PC; the other is me, me, ME!
Many people are scared to criticise the worst excesses of Islamofascism while being hysterically sensitive to the perceived wrongs of our own culture, especially when it comes to the oppression of females.

Let a woman get stoned to death for adultery in a Muslim country and five’ll get you ten some dopey posh cow will say it’s their “culture” and therefore “racist” to object. Let some British brickie call a barmaid “love” and it’s a case for the European Court Of Human Rights.

Some particularly crazed, civilization-hating and self-loathing Western female commentators have actually compared the voluntary wearing of high heels to the barbaric, crippling Eastern tradition of forced foot-binding, and voluntary cosmetic surgery to the Third World tradition of mutilating the genitals of girl children.

Presumably these dingbats don’t recognise the concept of consent.

Shallow

Then there’s the personal, rather than political, hypocrite. This woman often experiences feelings of inadequacy on seeing photos of perfect bodies. But if a woman is so shallow she judges people, including herself, on that basis then, frankly, she deserves to feel inadequate.

It’s a fact that both women and men reach the peak of their physical beauty in their early twenties — after that you’d better start relying on other qualities or you’re going to have a miserable old time of it.

Stopping other, younger women from showing theirs isn’t going to make you any prettier or happier.

Lots of worry warts will whine that photos of naked women mark the start of a slippery slope to sexual enslavement. But if they look at the cold logic of the situation they will see it is in countries as diverse as Sweden and the US — where you can’t move without getting your eye put out by a nearby nipple — that women have unprecedented freedom to learn, love, work and worship freely. And yes, to go naked as the Lord made them on beaches and billboards during the summer of their lives.

On the other hand, where there is no public female nakedness you will find zero rights for women.

Where the female body is forcibly covered in public, you will find mass sexual enslavement.

Which is the more offensive? If you really find freedom more frightening and distasteful than the lack of it when it comes to women taking their clothes off, then I suggest it is you, and not the likes of Keeley, who has the wrong attitude.

A few weeks wearing the badge of shame that is the burka might sort out your priorities a treat, my sour sisters.

And if you find inner peace by dressing like a parrot’s cage that someone forgot to take the drape off of, good for you!
Just don’t expect the rest of us to follow you.