German tabloid ends 28-year tradition of nude or semi-clad pinups in attempt to increase circulation to female readership
A man reads Germany's top-selling tabloid, Bild, featuring Eva, its last ever front page topless woman. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images
It was, declared Germany's biggest-selling tabloid, "a small step for women … a big step for all German men". After 28 years and 5,000 semi-clad and sometimes completely naked women, Bild announced that it was dropping its Page One Girl.
The development dominated the tabloid's front page, pushing stories on Greek debt and the farewell ceremony for Germany's disgraced president to the sidelines.
Bild – Europe's best-selling and the world's seventh biggest newspaper – presented the decision as a spontaneous attempt by male staff to atone for decades of "embarrassing" sexism – although commentators said it was more likely it was driven by commercial concerns.
Perhaps revelling in its last opportunity to show a naked woman on the front cover, the tabloid gave much more space than usual to "the beautiful Eva from Poland" who appeared to be pouting the words: "I am the last."
"It is perhaps a small step from the viewpoint of women," the paper wrote in an editorial-style report. "But it is a big step for Bild and for every man in Germany."
The paper said the decision had been made on Thursday, International Women's Day, when the paper was run and edited solely by men. Three hundred female staff from secretaries to section editors were given the day off.
But the German media commentator Christian Meier said that although Bild remains the most profitable title for the powerful Axel Springer AG publishers, its circulation figures have been declining for years and the paper desperately needs to attract new readers, particularly within the female market.
Meier said: "Part of their strategy to reverse that trend is to try to be taken more seriously as a modern boulevard newspaper. Having naked women on the front page just doesn't fit with that modern image, and their hope will be that they'll win younger, and especially female readers.
"To call this a historical decision would be an exaggeration, particularly as it's rather late in the day. But it's certainly raised eyebrows."
The paper said it was accommodating the wishes of female public figures as well as members of its reader committees, who for years have protested against such a prominent presence of naked women.
Friday's edition also reprinted a headline from May 1970 – "Women have less in the head than men" – and announced that "this headline is of great embarrassment today".
But in a blow to its suggestion that attitudes have changed irrevocably, the paper added that 42 years after making the claim, the German brain specialist, Hans-Joachim Kretschmann, was still sticking by his theory.
Before the introduction of its official page one girls in 1984, Bild had frequently sought out loose news connections to justify putting topless women on the front page, such as the French penchant for topless sunbathing in 1973.
Bild was in part inspired by the Sun, which started page 3 girls in 1970, which propelled many women, such as Samantha Fox, to stardom.
Its editor, Dominic Mohan, recently chose to defend page 3 at the Leveson inquiry, calling it "a 42-year-old British institution that celebrates natural beauty," and "part of British society".
Mohan said that while there had "been quite a lot of criticism" of page 3, he believed the controversial daily image was "meant to represent the youth and freshness".
The tabloid declined to comment on Bild's move, though in a sign that even the red top is prepared to make limited concessions, the Sun's newly launched Sunday edition does not feature a semi-clad model, but a lightly clad celebrity, mirroring a policy adopted on Saturdays.
Such relative modesty is a concession to the notion that more women buy the paper at the weekends, as the title hopes to be less off-putting to a female audience.
For its part Bild, according to the media analyst website Meedia, "is suddenly mutating to be sympathetic towards women. They want to be a little bit more intellectual, bourgeois, and to be taken more seriously."
But the tabloid's legendary commentator, Franz Josef Wagner, bemoaned the page one girls' demise in a partly tongue-in-cheek, semi-poetic homage meant to offer solace to Germany's like-minded men.
"Were I a gardener I'd say you were my forsythia shrub," Wagner wrote. "I think the editor-in-chief is mad – how can he ban the girl of our dreams?"
Bild said it did not want to become prim and proper, and would seek to retain its "sexy image" but implied that future pictures would be considerably less brazen.
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