F1 grid girls

loosecannon said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

I have to disagree, you should use every tool in your toolbox to get ahead. Life and nature is set up for survival of the fittest and if that accounting job has two equally qualified applicants and one is genetically superior then why shouldn't that person get the job? I am not good looking or particularly smart and have had to work harder than others to get where I am and what is wrong with that? Is it fair? Well, no but life isn't fair. Nature isn't fair, we feed squirrels but poison rats. 

I have to disagree there. I think we should work on making life more fair and less like nature's savagery.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

So, what's your plan to keep the more intelligent, better looking, more driven people from getting farther ahead than other people?

In reply to loosecannon :

Just keep them from unfairly using their immutable traits as an advantage where they're irrelevant. All the good looking people are free to use their looks to dominate modelling, all the smart people are free to use their smarts to dominate rocket science, and all the driven people are free to use their drive to dominate sales or whatever. But the good looking people shouldn't be free to use their looks to dominate accounting.

ebonyandivory said:

GameboyRMH said:

ebonyandivory said:

You are wrong. There is most definitely something inherently feminine about appealing to the majority of your male viewers.

So do you WANT motorsports to be a sausagefest? If not, shouldn't there be some Grid Guys?

 

I find it odd that you jumped to that conclusion. I personally would rather stay focused on the debate. That question kind of did me in though, have a good day guys.

No jump necessary. You say the grid girls are there to appeal to male fans. There are no grid guys to appeal to female fans. Should there be, or is it fine that there are few women in motorsports fandom (and competition)?

In reply to GameboyRMH :

If everything is supposed to be fair, and everybody gets a trophy then why have competitions like racing at all? We seek ways to differentiate ourselves. Our differences are what make us human. We're not stamped out on an assembly line. Having different strengths and weaknesses makes us stronger as a race. Everybody has to know themselves well enough to figure out what their specific strengths and weaknesses are, but they should be able to play the cards they've been dealt however they see fit to provide the life they want to live.

GameboyRMH said:

ebonyandivory said:

GameboyRMH said:

ebonyandivory said:

You are wrong. There is most definitely something inherently feminine about appealing to the majority of your male viewers.

So do you WANT motorsports to be a sausagefest? If not, shouldn't there be some Grid Guys?

 

I find it odd that you jumped to that conclusion. I personally would rather stay focused on the debate. That question kind of did me in though, have a good day guys.

No jump necessary. You say the grid girls are there to appeal to male fans. There are no grid guys to appeal to female fans. Should there be, or is it fine that there are few women in motorsports fandom (and competition)?

I have the day off so I’ll jump back in. 

My point here is this: if Gameboy wants to run an automotive event and want to put muscular, scantily-clad men on display and you feel that doing so will draw a larger, more diverse crowd and therefore make your event more successful, by all means go right ahead. Just don’t tell other people they need to do the same.

And just ask yourself, how do you prove that an attractive person “got the job” because of their looks? Are you policing their thoughts? Or are you implying that if you’re very attractive, you can’t be as intelligent or as worthy of a given employment than a less attractive person. By your logic, you seem to be saying you’re EITHER very attractive or very smart.

But YES, it IS fine if there are very few women at motorsports events. The majority of women I know aren’t interested in Motorsport. Should I assume that you’d be comfortable dragging women to a Motorsport event because you think they should like it?

FIYAPOWA said:

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

In my career field (IT), I've noticed that "boobs" appears to be a requirement to be a "talent scout" or "recruiting professional".  

1/3 of the males in IT fit that requirement. 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Grid girls appeal to male fans, grid guys *might* appeal to female fans.  I speculate that since there are little to no equivalent to "grid guys" in any arena, that women aren't motivated the same as men.  If it was a good idea, I would think some marketing professionals would have picked up on it long ago.

Kind of a chicken and egg question: are the grid girls there because the male fans like them, or did the grid girls attract the male fans to the sport?  See also, cheerleaders.

Does this sort of thing actually drive feminists crazy?

Or is some journalist or lawyer the perpetrator of the assault on this practice? I believe these kind of complaints are often perpetrated buy someone who has something to gain notoriety or financial. Either way they are furthering their own goals not looking out for the greater good.

The obvious solution is to add an equal percentage of cabana boys holding umbrellas! But A very high percentage of viewers are male, a few of them will be offended buy gals being replaced by dudes. How many viewing men will they loose compared to how many gal viewers will they pick up if they use cabana boys? And yes what about Cheer leaders most are gals.

Give the girls some eye candy to look at and lets move on to something more relevant. By trying to make something good for all they will remove what makes F1 unique.

Wait, don't the gal viewers oggle the drivers? As a man I am offended by female viewers oggling the driver man flesh!

GameboyRMH said:

In reply to loosecannon :

Just keep them from unfairly using their immutable traits as an advantage where they're irrelevant. All the good looking people are free to use their looks to dominate modelling, all the smart people are free to use their smarts to dominate rocket science, and all the driven people are free to use their drive to dominate sales or whatever. But the good looking people shouldn't be free to use their looks to dominate accounting.

Isn't the grid girl thing a case of good looking people being told they shouldn't be allowed to dominate modeling? What if NASA or Space X said that in order to be more fair, they were going to intentionally hire people with lower IQs? The entire reason modeling exists is to use appearances to sell stuff.

In reply to bentwrench :

I would think that if there were enough girls that wanted eye candy to look at (market research), there would be the "grid guys".  The funny part is that the feminists just didn't want there to be grid girls - they didn't ask for grid guys.

On a related note, Hooters, Twin Peaks, and the like do not have a male counterpart - I would almost assume that someone determined that girls weren't into it enough for it to be profitable.

FIYAPOWA said:

In reply to bentwrench :

I would think that if there were enough girls that wanted eye candy to look at (market research), there would be the "grid guys".  The funny part is that the feminists just didn't want there to be grid girls - they didn't ask for grid guys.

On a related note, Hooters, Twin Peaks, and the like do not have a male counterpart - I would almost assume that someone determined that girls weren't into it enough for it to be profitable.

How dare you insert reality and logic into this thread?

I don't really care one way or the other about the whole grid girl thing, but as much as we would like to deny it, judging books by their covers is pretty much human nature and there's not much that we're going to be able to do to stop that.  Despite what Sprite would have you believe, image is everything when it comes to getting the customer in the door.  Yes, you have to deliver once they're in there, but what gets them in the door is image.  Is that unfair for us ugly types?  Sure.  Should we try to make like more fair?  Absolutely.  Are we actually capable of re-wiring the human brain to take emotion out of every decision?  Good Lord, I certainly hope not.  Same goes for interviewing for a job -- the most qualified person may or may not get the job, but image is going to dictate who gets a second interview.

ebonyandivory said:

In reply to sleepyhead :

You ran a gym in the real world? And you decided to hire obese trainers? I’m respectfully guessing you didn’t. But when you do, please report back.

And I know I’m not discussing whether or not you can be healthy with a higher BMI. That’s not even part of the discussion.

No I haven't, and I don't have to have in order to deconstruct your imprecise use of language.  Obese does not inherently correlate to "unhealthy fat to muscle ratio".

The reality is your hiring was (hopefully) less predicated on their looks, and more on the ability to do the job.. which included quantitative measurements of front squat, back squat, dead lift, mile run, pull ups, etc.  As well as their ability to lead/inspire/motivate, which can be evaluated through feedback (again, quantitative).  Beauty is subjective, qualitative, and the argument I'm making is that it an inclusive society will work to minimize qualitative evaluation of people... especially if the pool for qualitative evaluation is skewed to an abnormally small subset of available applicants (young and "beautiful).

ebonyandivory said:

GameboyRMH said:

 If you accept that sex appeal has anything to do with a grid girl's job, then if this role is to continue in something resembling its current form, there should be some balance of grid guys to attract female fans and competitors, no?

Men don’t want this job. Boys, if left to do what their brain tells them, do not want to be a Girl Scout.

Men aren’t genuinely offended by jobs that are uniquely held by women. 

The VAST majority of human beings understand and accept that women and men differ from each other in wonderful, amazing, life-sustaining ways. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

My wife is the strongest person I know. She’s also one of the smartest. And she can do ANYTHING she sets her mind to including working side-by-side with me building a deck on the house. And she’ll ALWAYS be better than me at several things because of her female characteristics. And she doesn’t give a E36 M3 that I’m better at several things because of my male characteristics.

And no, there shouldn’t be “grid-guys” just because there’s grid-girls. That’s a juvenile thought process.

this to me amounts to a pile of a "No True Scotsman" fallacy... and I don't agree with your definition of masculinity nor the concomitant implication of femininity.

I tend to assume that any organization overtly using scantily clad attractive women to try to help 'sell' it in any way...Probably isn't selling anything that good.  Truly great products sell themselves, and need no such cheap gimmicks.

It's kind of like any organization that has to call itself 'world class'...Isn't.

Grid-kids, however, is an outstanding idea!

Driven5 said:

I always assume that any organization overtly using scantily clad attractive women to try to help 'sell' it in any way...Probably isn't selling anything that good, and is most likely selling to the ignorant and gullible.  Truly great products sell themselves.

 

My mom convinced me as a kid that if they had to advertise it on TV, it must not be any good. I think I still carry that with me to some extent. And now I spend a lot of my time working in marketing! Oh, the irony.

In reply to sleepyhead :

Would the brand of the gym be affected based on the looks of the personal trainers?  I would think yes - fit, muscular, ripped, cut, (however you call it) personal trainers will attract more clients than a bunch of dad-bod trainers, even if the less-lean trainer is technically more qualified.  So that criteria for hiring tends to lean towards the younger applicant than the older ones.  

In the case of grid girls, the position itself caters to younger, thinner, and female as criteria.  If the market drove the gym for more male trainers, it would be dumb to hire more female trainers and vice versa.  If the F1 fan market drives hiring grid guys, then they should go for it.  The unanswered question is if eliminating the grid girl position entirely is political correctness gone awry or if the F1 fan market drove the change.

I think we don't have "grid guys" because we have hunky race car drivers. Kimi is my man crush.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I feel the same way about radio.  TV ads these days are almost entirely for major corporations, which pretty much all advertise on TV.  So it's really kind of a ambivalent for me.  Radio however is more local...And yes, I generally consider radio ads as red-flags about a business.

STM317 said:

GameboyRMH said:

In reply to loosecannon :

Just keep them from unfairly using their immutable traits as an advantage where they're irrelevant. All the good looking people are free to use their looks to dominate modelling, all the smart people are free to use their smarts to dominate rocket science, and all the driven people are free to use their drive to dominate sales or whatever. But the good looking people shouldn't be free to use their looks to dominate accounting.

Isn't the grid girl thing a case of good looking people being told they shouldn't be allowed to dominate modeling? What if NASA or Space X said that in order to be more fair, they were going to intentionally hire people with lower IQs? The entire reason modeling exists is to use appearances to sell stuff.

No. You could reasonably argue that it's partly a modelling job, in which case it would be fine to hire attractive people. But unless, like ebonyandivory, you're fine with perpetuating the gender imbalance in motorsport, you should have a problem with only hiring female models, which overwhelmingly attract men.

Pretty girls are pretty, and I'm not going to lie and say I don't enjoy seeing them. But I'm embarrassed by the grid girl thing, and I think it contributes to the chicken and egg of what girls grow up to be; these are professional models who've chosen their current gig, I believe, and that's fine. But when racing is boys in cars and girls as decoration, that has an effect on what kids think about as their roles. Someone earlier said more or less that it's like this because society influences them to grow up to do "girly things", but this is that very mechanism in action.

I have zero expectation of changing anybody's mind, and I'm checking out of this thread. I only posted this because I felt guilty not doing so because silence is always taken as agreement.

Ransom said:

Pretty girls are pretty, and I'm not going to lie and say I don't enjoy seeing them. But I'm embarrassed by the grid girl thing, and I think it contributes to the chicken and egg of what girls grow up to be; these are professional models who've chosen their current gig, I believe, and that's fine. But when racing is boys in cars and girls as decoration, that has an effect on what kids think about as their roles. Someone earlier said more or less that it's like this because society influences them to grow up to do "girly things", but this is that very mechanism in action.

QFMFT!

In reply to FIYAPOWA :

I suspect the that F1 got pressured to open it up, and decided that rather than get into an endless cycle of complaints from both ends about representation, that it was easier to eliminate the position and deal with the heat one time.

"In the case of grid girls, the position itself caters to younger, thinner and female as a criteria"
the point is, the reason it does is because of a reinforcing cycle of defining what 'beauty is' that is (imho) based on post-50's (ish) western standards... i.e. artificially defined... and that does not have to so narrowly defined, and if you take a broader look at beauty standards across time and location, you'll find a myriad different things were valued as physically attractive.

Beauty, if it is in the eye of the beholder, is everyone, and in every facet.  And I think that that reality should be encouraged by our society, and business.

In reply to Ransom :

I appreciate you speaking up Ransom!