F1 grid girls

In reply to sleepyhead :

Ok, I’ll pretend along with you that you didn’t understand my point even though you found  my language to be imprecise.

Nope. I chose very fit people that didn’t know what the hell they were doing. I suspect, perhaps incorrectly that you assume that I’d hire fit, attractive people that could ALSO do their jobs well and you’re just trying to make a point. Come on, tell the truth...

GameboyRMH said:

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!

Which is why parents TEACH their kids about their incredible potential and don’t let television raise our kids for us.

ebonyandivory said:

Which is why parents TEACH their kids about their incredible potential and don’t let television raise our kids for us.

That's parents against all of society (they can see races on YouTube or IRL), I genuinely wish you luck.

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.

I fully intend to use my looks to dominate accounting.   

In reply to sleepyhead :

I think that the grid girls are largely irrelevant to motorsport itself, however, I am not making marketing decisions for F1, and I'm not privy to the inner workings, so there could be a myriad of reasons for eliminating the grid girl position.  Given the rash of #metoo moments recently, I'd assume it's an image thing where they are trying to be more politically correct, and that eliminating the grid girl position will not hurt their market.

I suspect they didn't receive a tsunami of complaints, but that they (perhaps wisely) decided to get rid of the problem before it becomes a problem.

sleepyhead said:

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 hate to disappoint you but I have no definition of masculinity nor femininity. I’m just using my narrow view of the last several thousand years of the existence of man and womankind. No concomitancy, no Scottish people putting sugar on their breakfast.

GameboyRMH said:

ebonyandivory said:

Which is why parents TEACH their kids about their incredible potential and don’t let television raise our kids for us.

That's parents against all of society (they can see races on YouTube or IRL), I genuinely wish you luck.

Let me introduce you to my three kids including two immensely independent and strong-willed young girls. Theyd appreciate your wish of luck but certainly don’t need it.

Both my girls love big lifted trucks and going to car shows with their dad. I suppose someone here will psychoanalyze that too.

In reply to ebonyandivory :

I have three girls myself, and never once has my top 100 concerns in their life been "dear God don't let them be influenced by the F1 grid girls"...  

The only complaint I have is that only one is a racer lol.

Psssst......GameboyRMH...........the grid guys are the .....................wait for it......................THE EFFEN DRIVERS!!!!!

who knew???

Keith Tanner said:

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.

So by that line of thinking, you shouldn't have to advertise at all.  I seem to recall Flying Miata has a pretty strong presence on Facebook, which is now "TV of the New Age."

Much of TV advertising is less about getting people to buy your product and to simply let them know your product exists. 

In other news... Niki Lauda - "how dumb can someone be?"

759NRNG said:

Psssst......GameboyRMH...........the grid guys are the .....................wait for it......................THE EFFEN DRIVERS!!!!!

who knew???

Hardly, they're not wearing flattering outfits and being used as attractive decorations most of the time. I mean I like to see Danica's pretty eyes through the helmet, but it's not the same, is it?

759NRNG said:

Psssst......GameboyRMH...........the grid guys are the .....................wait for it......................THE EFFEN DRIVERS!!!!!

who knew???

I just giggled when I read that I was “perpetuating the gender imbalance”.

Serious question: is it a struggle to ignore there is imbalance in life because there are differences is life?

When I got married, my wife wore a beautiful white gown and I wore a handsome black tuxedo. I’m perpetuated the E36 M3 out of that stereotype didn’t I.

Sorry to break it to a couple of you here but some of the imbalances in life aren’t inequalities created by evil people.

if thousands of women started flocking to watch the races, world anyone stop them at the gate? No, but that’s not happening and it sure as hell isnt because of grid-girls 

#Cheerdad

ebonyandivory said:

I just giggled when I read that I was “perpetuating the gender imbalance”.

Serious question: is it a struggle to ignore there is imbalance in life because there are differences is life?

When I got married, my wife wore a beautiful white gown and I wore a handsome black tuxedo. I’m perpetuated the E36 M3 out of that stereotype didn’t I.

Sorry to break it to a couple of you here but some of the imbalances in life aren’t inequalities created by evil people.

Maybe sometimes they are. What's so very masculine about racing that women's natural cavewoman instincts supposedly urge them to avoid it?

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Ask women. Ask the very people you seem to be sticking up for without being asked to. I dare you to ask 20 women if they want to hang out at a racetrack all day. I’ll wait here

Incidentally, it always amuses me to see people, perhaps not you, claim to be the champion of women but then assume they can’t defend themselves and need to be protected.

ebonyandivory said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Ask women. I dare you to ask 20 women if they want to hang out at a racetrack all day. I’ll wait here

I'm not debating the effects, I'll readily cede to you that most women today are not interested in racing. I'm debating the cause. Why do women supposedly want to avoid racing purely out of their own free will so much more frequently than men?

GameboyRMH said:

ebonyandivory said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Ask women. I dare you to ask 20 women if they want to hang out at a racetrack all day. I’ll wait here

I'm not debating the effects, I'll readily cede to you that most women today are not interested in racing. I'm debating the cause. Why do women supposedly want to avoid racing purely out of their own free will so much more frequently than men?

Why are you asking me? Ask women. Take a poll. My opinion doesn’t mean anything.

ebonyandivory said:

Why are you asking me? Ask women. Take a poll. My opinion doesn’t mean anything.

Oh I thought you had good reasons for stating that it's fine that there are so few women in motorsports. I guess I'll start asking around.

GameboyRMH said:

ebonyandivory said:

Why are you asking me? Ask women. Take a poll. My opinion doesn’t mean anything.

Oh I thought you had good reasons for stating that it's fine that there are so few women in motorsports. I guess I'll start asking around.

Oh I do. But no matter how many times or how many ways I wrote it you disagree.

It IS fine because unlike you, I assume women know what they want to watch, attend, get “into” etc.

I assume a  woman can make up her own mind and doesn’t need a man to walk her though life.

Ive see this referred to as the soft bigotry of low expectations.

ebonyandivory said:

GameboyRMH said:

Oh I thought you had good reasons for stating that it's fine that there are so few women in motorsports. I guess I'll start asking around.

Oh I do. But no matter how many times or how many ways I wrote it you disagree.

It IS fine because unlike you, I assume women know what they want to watch, attend, get “into” etc.

I assume a  woman can make up her own mind and doesn’t need a man to walk her though life.

And I believe that women can be and are affected by the society around them, just like men. I guess we can agree to disagree on that.

Holy crap, this is a fast moving thread! I scrolled up at first and then backed up four pages to see if it was a zombie thread but, alas, it only began a few hours ago. That alone should tell us something, though I'm not exactly sure what that is.

ebonyandivory said:

In reply to sleepyhead :

Ok, I’ll pretend along with you that you didn’t understand my point even though you found  my language to be imprecise.

 

Nope. I chose very fit people that didn’t know what the hell they were doing. I suspect, perhaps incorrectly that you assume that I’d hire fit, attractive people that could ALSO do their jobs well and you’re just trying to make a point. Come on, tell the truth...

As a general rule, I do tell the truth... although I'm aware enough to know that no one is perfect.

you said that you didn't want to be forced to higher "obese people"... I was attempting to point out that your own selection criteria had almost certainly pre-selected for obese people... since people with a high muscle content can tend to fall into the "obese category" based on their height since muscle weighs more than fat.

I will admit that I don't know fair employment laws well enough to know whether you're allowed to discriminate in favor of only hiring "beautiful people"... if you've been successful at doing that, congratulations.  Is that the only way to be successful at running a gym.. I don't honestly know, although I suspect there are enough people that a gym could cater to "parent bod" trainers teaching other parents.  My observation of one Crossfit gym would support it.  Is there room for you to hire some swole seniors to expand into the 'get seniors fit' market?  maybe?

None of this is forced.  Some of this requires encouragement... and I contend that that encouragement shouldn't misconstrued as "politically correct run amok".  It's some of our society asking some of the rest of our society to consider a broader amount of the rest of our society.

ebonyandivory said:

sleepyhead said:

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 hate to disappoint you but I have no definition of masculinity nor femininity. I’m just using my narrow view of the last several thousand years of the existence of man and womankind. No concomitancy, no Scottish people putting sugar on their breakfast.

You do, and it's right there in... well grey and grey.  If you can't, or won't, see it... I'm not going to force you, or sit here and explain it.  If you can't or won't, well... that's highly informative to me too.

re:inherent differences
Yes, men and women have differences.  No, I don't feel those differences are binary... and I feel that spectrum of "maleness" overlaps with the spectrum of "womaness";  for one example: there are some women who are stronger than men, even though the strongest of men are considerably stronger than the weakest women.  then again, from a running perspective, at distances beyond 50miles... the difference is within the statistical noise.  I could make the same case for every other aspect of men and women.

Ok, who needs to step away from this for a bit? Anyone? Show of hands? 
I'm not going to lock it, but let's slow the personal attacks WAY THE F DOWN please. 

We cool? 

Inequality is wrong, but all the trendy mock outrage and digital activism is the pendulum swinging too far the other direction.  

The notion that measures should be taken to achieve some kind of artificial gender balance in motorsport sets a scary precedent.  

In fact, in this hypersensitive climate I would suggest than a lady so-inclined and possessing talent would have an easier time catching a driving gig than a guy.   

--Father of three girls who, despite my best efforts, like all of the girly things in life and are doing just fine.