Emily Atack backs call for school uniform ban in porn

Actress Emily Atack has supported calls for the government to ban the use of school uniforms in pornography.

The campaign was started by a group of teenage girls from The Cooper School in Bicester who say uniforms have been "tarnished… and warped by sexualisation".

Their petition has been signed more than 40,000 times and comes in response to new government legislation making it a criminal offence to possess or share pornographic content featuring adults pretending to be under 16.

But the students say the new law does not go far enough and a "loophole" means uniforms could be worn by those claiming to be playing someone over 16.

Taking to social media earlier this week, Atack shared a BBC News story about the campaign with her 1.8 million Instagram followers

Alongside, she wrote "with you all the way" - accompanied with a red love-heart emoji.

The actress has starred in TV shows such as the Jilly Cooper adaptation Rivals, but is best known to UK audiences for her role in the seminal noughties sitcom The Inbetweeners.

In it, she played Charlotte Hinchcliffe - a recurring, and highly-sexualized, schoolgirl who was an on-off love interest of Simon Bird's character Will Mackenzie.

"She was the popular girl at school," she previously told the BBC. "The issue is, that yes, it's a fictional character, but obviously people associate you with the characters that you play."

In 2024, Atack told The Guardian she "naively didn't think what narrative was being painted for me" by the character.

The Cooper School's Little Feminist Book Club, which started the campaign, previously said: "We're not 'sexy schoolgirls'. We're not objects. We're students, and more importantly, children."

They argued school uniforms were used in pornography to "evoke childhood and school-age identities".

Willow, 14, said she does not wear her uniform in public if she can avoid it: "I go home and change, because I feel vulnerable."

A 2018 survey of 1,004 girls in the UK found 35% of 14-21 year-olds said they had experienced unwanted sexual attention while wearing school uniform in public, according to children's charity Plan International UK.

In April this year, the government agreed new legislation making it a criminal offence to possess or share pornographic content featuring adults pretending to be under 16, as part of the Crime and Policing Act 2026. It is set to come into force in November.

But Clare McGlynn, professor of law at Durham University and author of Exposed: The problem of Extreme Porn, said school uniform does not necessarily fall into this category.

"Where someone says they're pretending to be 17 and in school uniform, that's not covered by the law," she said.

"Let's face it, the reality is that school uniforms are trying to portray a young girl."

Minister for victims, tackling violence against women and girls and international justice, Alex Davies-Jones, said: "Young women and girls should not have to grow up seeing their school uniforms sexualised, and I commend these pupils for speaking out about something they feel so strongly about.

"Pornography must never normalise or glorify the sexual abuse of children. That's why we are changing the law so possessing or sharing pornography which depicts an adult pretending to be a child under 16 will be an imprisonable offence."