THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Britain's biggest tabloid newspaper has long had a Page 3 girl, smiling,attractive and topless. Of late a campaign has begun to end what some cal "a British tradition".

Britain’s best-selling Sun newspaper has called the topless women that are famously featured on its Page 3 a “British institution” — on par, seemingly, with a full English breakfast or quietly queueing at bus stops.

But for a new wave of feminists who are as tenacious as they are Twitter savvy, the Sun’s daily dose of bare breasts is not a quirky tradition worth celebrating, but a poignant example of modern-day sexism that urgently needs covering up.

The plainly named “No More Page 3” campaign has emerged as one of the highest-profile of the many feminist activist groups that have recently sprouted up in Britain, fueled by social media and online tools that are connecting feminists from Brighton to Birmingham.

For its part, the Sun is characteristically unrepentant when it comes to the calls to drop its signature pictures.

In an interview with the BBC last month, editor David Dinsmore said that the paper polled focus groups and that “the result comes back a resounding, ‘Keep it there, don’t take it away!’ ” He added, “I’m making a paper for the readers.”

When pressed on what Page 3 brings to readers, Dinsmore replied: “A smile.”

Not to everyone.

This is occurring at the same time that, across the pond, Canada's laws against prostitution have been declared unconstitutional by that nation's highest court.

Canada’s highest court struck down the country’s anti-prostitution laws Friday, a victory for sex workers who stepped up their fight for safer working conditions following the serial killings of prostitutes by a pig farmer in British Columbia.

The 9-0 Supreme Court ruling found that the laws violated the guarantee to life, liberty and security of the person. But the ruling won’t take effect immediately because it gave Parliament a one-year reprieve to respond with new legislation.

Prostitution isn’t illegal in Canada, but many of the activities associated with prostitution are classified as criminal offenses.

The high court struck down all three prostitution-related laws: against keeping a brothel, living on the avails of prostitution, and street soliciting. The landmark ruling comes more than two decades after the Supreme Court last upheld the country’s anti-prostitution laws.

The decision upheld an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling last year that struck down the ban on brothels on the grounds that it endangered sex workers by forcing them onto the streets.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, writing on behalf of the court, said Canada’s social landscape has changed since 1990, when the Supreme Court upheld a ban on street solicitation.

“These appeals and the cross-appeal are not about whether prostitution should be legal or not,” she wrote. “They are about whether the laws Parliament has enacted on how prostitution may be carried out pass constitutional muster. I conclude that they do not.”

What a crazy mixed up world we live in.