Friday 20 August 2010

A-Level Girls

The annual bun fight of; 'A-Levels have got easier / oh no they haven't because students' work harder' bores me silly. It happened when I took them nearly 20 years ago and nothing's changed since. So generally I have no comment to make.

However I thought I would highlight this rather sneering article by Political Scrapbook:

In a few hours tomorrow’s front pages will be released. Scrapbook will wager a penny to a pound that, like every year following A-Level results, the attractive young girls won’t be confined to page 3. And it’s not just the red tops that are at it. As this transgression from The Guardian illustrates, the so-called quality newspapers will tantalise their middle-aged readership when it thinks teacher isn’t looking (all in the interests of quality journalism, of course).

Papers show pretty girls on the front page shocker. Blimey how disgraceful! Although it's not such a problem as having to share a hall with said pretty girls and trying not to be distracted when taking exams.

A few women of my acquaintance hate football but take a surprising interest in any of my FourFourTwo magazines which show pictures of David Beckham or Jose Mourinho (which it does very frequently, hmm I wonder why?)

I wonder if Political Scrapbook would be just as sneering then. Probably not, because that's different isn't it?

2 comments:

  1. You've missed the point.

    Nobody minds pictures of totty in the papers, whatever the excuse.

    What is objected to, and I agree completely, is that the exam pictures are always girls.

    Boys looking at the papers end up thinking exams are a girl thing. Adding this on to the relentless feminisation of the whole education process (co-operation not competition, coursework not exams, etc etc), and it just makes the gender imbalance worse.

    These things matter and the media should be sensitive to them.

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  2. I have to disagree WY. I've taken plenty of exams - GCSE, A-Levels and at Degree level - and not once did I suffer a complex that exams are a girl thing because pictures in the papers were always girls; either, before, during, or after the exam processes. I'm not sure anyone else did either at the time.

    Newspapers have always used the 'pretty girl tactic' and isn't going to change anytime soon. Besides girls are just a distraction all round at that age, the odd front page once (or twice) a year is not going to make much difference.

    I do agree with your comments about the dilution of the competitive aspect though.

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