Sarai Walker - Dietland

Sunset

Every day on page three of the Daily Sun there was a full-page color photo of a topless young woman. The British newspaper, which interviewed prime ministers and helped decide elections, had been printing photos of topless young women on page three for decades. These “Page Three Girls,” as they were affectionately known, sometimes went on to achieve great things in modeling or reality TV. A couple of them ended up strangled by ex-boyfriends or jealous lovers, but that could happen to any girl. Over the years, there had been halfhearted campaigns to ban the photographs in the newspaper, but they were never successful.

The newly installed CEO of Empire Media, who oversaw the newspaper division, was only forty years old and a woman. She represented a new generation in the company, but like her male predecessors, she carried on the page-three tradition in the Daily Sun and ignored any complaints she received. Empire Media owned newspapers and television stations in the United Kingdom, the United States, Hong Kong, and Australia. “The sun never sets on Empire Media,” their founder liked to say. The CEO was aware of what had happened in Los Angeles to Simmons and Green—Empire Media’s many publications and news channels had chronicled it all. “Who is Jennifer?” the front page of the Daily Sun had asked. In her own way, the CEO was fond of Jennifer, whatever she was. The mystery was good for business. The CEO was fond of her until, one day, she wasn’t.

One morning she received news that her twin brother and his young son had been kidnapped on a trip to Scotland. It was several days before the kidnappers made contact and until then the CEO and her family didn’t know what they wanted. When their request finally came, it was laughable. The CEO laughed. The kidnappers didn’t want money. What they wanted was for the CEO to end the topless models on page three. “No more naked girls,” said the note, signed with the name Jennifer. “Show us some cock.”

Amateurs, she thought. They didn’t know who they were messing with. Her twin brother’s wife, unhinged by panic and rage, demanded that the CEO give the kidnappers what they wanted. The CEO thought her sister-in-law was a spoiled woman, prone to irrational behavior. “We have to negotiate,” the CEO told her. “We don’t give in to terrorists.”

“They have my husband and child!” she screamed. “Give them all the cock they want!”

The CEO refused, despite her close relationship with her brother. She had a reputation in the business for being ruthless, which she couldn’t afford to lose now. It wasn’t easy being a woman in a man’s world. She and the police in London waited for further communication from the kidnappers. It came in the form of a blond scalp stuffed inside a Jiffy Pack, delivered by the postman. The whole family was blond, but forensics determined the scalp with the receding hairline was from the CEO’s twin brother rather than from her nephew.

The next day on page three of the Daily Sun there were no tits, but a naked man instead. Each day after that, a naked full-frontal man appeared in the newspaper, as directed by the kidnappers.

“Savages,” the CEO called these criminals. The scalping had convinced her they were American.

When the cocks started appearing on page three, there were immediate protests from media watchdog groups, from parents and government ministers, who claimed the photos were indecent. Many newsagents began to keep the Daily Sun behind the counter, lest anyone be offended. Some of them refused to sell it at all or even touch it. The circulation dropped by half during the first week. In media surveys, men said they were too embarrassed to read the paper. “I’m not gay,” said a man who was interviewed. The CEO knew cocks were bad for business. Breasts she could get away with. Women knew their place, but with men it wasn’t as simple.

As the cocks continued to roll off the presses, the hunt for the kidnappers intensified, as did the news coverage. Empire Media executives were well connected throughout the Metropolitan Police, Parliament, and MI5. All American Jennifers living in the United Kingdom fell under immediate suspicion.

One such Jennifer appeared on The Cheryl Crane-Murphy Report via satellite from London. Jennifer Chu, a thirty-two-year-old from Seattle, was studying for a master’s degree in international relations at the London School of Economics. She had been detained by the police for twenty-four hours and interrogated.

Cheryl Crane-Murphy was perched at her desk in New York, wearing an American flag pin on her lapel. “It’s not a good time for American Jennies, is it?”

Jennifer Chu nodded. “Talk about needles and haystacks. The name Jennifer is as close to a generic woman’s name as you can get. There are tons of us out there.”

“What I really want to know is—and I think I speak for all of my American viewers here—what the heck is going on over there in the U.K.? Are there pictures of naked ladies in the daily newspaper or what?”

“Not anymore,” said Jennifer Chu, trying to suppress a smile. She explained that when she first arrived in London, she was shocked to see topless models in the newspapers, to see the iconic red telephone booths filled with graphic advertisements for prostitutes, to walk into any corner shop or newsagent and be faced with explicit pornographic magazines. “This city is like one big red-light district. I know these kidnappers are, like, evil and stuff, but I think they’ve done a public service.”

The cocks continued to appear on page three of the Daily Sun and as they did, the kidnappers turned their attention to another target. Townsend’s was a chain of newspaper and magazine shops spread across Britain, popping up in every train station and shopping center and airport. The front of every shop was stocked with the usual fashion and home decorating magazines, the financial publications and gossip rags, but there were also myriad lads’ magazines, as they were called. The lads’ magazines weren’t on the top shelf, but were at eye-level for everyone to see. The graphic covers featured naked women, often in pairs or even in triplicate, rubbing their barely concealed nipples together, putting their tongues in each other’s mouths.

In the wake of the Empire Media scandal, the CEO of Townsend’s received a threatening note, which the police deemed to be credible. The note, signed Jennifer, demanded that the lads’ magazines be removed from every branch of Townsend’s and replaced with soft-core gay male porn. The CEO took immediate action. The lads’ magazines were exchanged for those that featured images of buff young men, hairless and muscled and bronzed, with bulging underpants (if they were wearing underpants). The men played with their nipples and flashed their man patches.

After the renovation, Townsend’s was filled with women and girls. It was funny to see images of semi-naked, sexed-up men. For women it was like being in a carnival funhouse, where nothing was as it was supposed to be. News reports claimed that men felt uncomfortable going into the shops, since the women were leering and laughing. Businessmen in Armani suits tried to conduct themselves with dignity, but it was difficult to do with all those perfect male butts in their faces, with those men staring at them with a look that said fuck me.

In London, images of men with fuck me looks were beginning to proliferate. Threats of kidnap and murder had spread, and images of female bodies were disappearing rapidly and being replaced with male ones. Men’s body parts were scattered around the city: men’s lips, torsos, legs, and buttocks. Pieces of men would flash by on the sides of buses, enough to brighten any girl’s day. Before, the covers of the men’s and women’s magazines alike had featured women, but now most of them featured men instead. London was being renovated, and the wallpaper covering every surface of the city was no longer decorated with women. The default Londoner, the implied viewer of everything, was no longer male.