I highly doubt that the motorsport community will ever come to a consensus on this issue. However, each side has raised valid arguments. Drawing on comments made in the free response boxes of last year's survey, as well as what has been said on social media under the #gridgirls hashtag, allow me to elucidate the basic points.
In Favour of Keeping the Grid Girls Tradition Unchanged
1. Grid girls are fans and love their jobs
Contrary to what the majority of the 'against' crowd believe, most grid girls do it out of a love of the sport (and the money, because money is always good). They want to work in a highly competitive industry, and they have what it takes to perform their role. Grid girls also perform better in spelling and grammar than their supporters, contradicting the 'brainless bimbo' stereotype. Some use the cash to support racing careers of their own.
2. They perform an important role for sponsors
Many companies hire pretty girls to represent their brands, both in and out of motorsport. Advertisers know that the fastest way to catch a man's attention is with a pretty girl. Sex sells.
3. They bring beauty and glamour to the sport
It is the opinion of most grid girl supporters that they make the sport more beautiful by being in it. This is, essentially, an extension of the 'sex sells' argument. Beauty is very subjective and hard to define, but most men are hard-wired to find a fulsome pair attractive for evolutionary, survival-of-the-species reasons.
4. It's tradition and motorsport is boring without scantily-clad grid girls
Grid girls have been around for as long as anyone can remember. Women have been posing next to cars since before feminism gained traction (in about the 1960s). Why get rid of the tradition now?Having spent years seeing pretty girls adorning cars, a mental association has been formed between the two.
5. Deciding what women can/can't do and can/can't wear is body policing
In one of the few feminist arguments to come out of this side, it was pointed out that grid girls are adults who can make their own decisions about how to earn money and express their femininity. Observers on the internet deciding what they should or shouldn't do is taking away their agency as women.
Ambivalent
There is a group of motor sport fans who don't have an opinion one way or the other on grid girls. They watch motorsport for the track action, not for the build-up and post-race celebrations. Many of them think that there are bigger issues than feminism yet to be dealt with in motorsport. Some of this group are undecided about where to throw in their lot on such a divisive issue for fear of being bullied online.
In Favour of Re-Thinking or Ending the Grid Girls Tradition
1. It’s an out-dated tradition
When grid girls first appeared on the
scene, women generally didn't have careers. Being a human signpost or applauding wallpaper was the best most women could hope for in terms of involvement in motorsport. Now women run teams that win Le Mans (Leena Gade, it seems, is a hero to fans in favour of women in the sport); new century, new tradition.
2. It undermines women working in motorsport
Women perform a wide variety of roles in motorsport these days, but we often don't see them in the coverage. Partly, the lack of visibility is because there are more women working in design offices and other behind-the-scenes roles than there are female team bosses and racing drivers. Partly, this is because the cameras are firmly trained on the women who got their grid passes for being pretty.
3. Grid girls will all eventually need to find employment elsewhere
Beauty is fleeting. The downward force acting on an object is equal to its mass multiplied by gravity. Grid girls need pert
bosoms to be considered attractive, so
once their bodies feel the effects of gravity, they need to switch careers. WEC's move is just hastening their transition to skill-based roles. Apparently, schmoozing – which is surprisingly hard to do – isn't a legitimate skill for this group.
4. The tradition shows women as sex objects
Grid girls are present solely for male pleasure. They are never given coverage that shows their love of the sport, their technical know-how, or any of their skills. The women who graduate from being grid girls to performing more technical roles in the industry constantly fight the misconception that they succeeded because of their looks rather than their brains.
5. The tradition sends negative messages to young girl fans
By flooding the coverage with grid girls, it takes screen time away from skilled female personnel, who are held up as role models to girls who aspire to become engineers or racers. It sends a subliminal message that there's no room in motorsport for women who would prefer to be valued for their skills not their beauty.
6. Grid girls are not representative of the female population
How many 'average sized' women are grid girls? How many women with disabilities are grid girls? How many women of colour are grid girls? If we're honest, it's mostly thin, pretty, white women who get hired as grid girls – even in countries like Malaysia that have very few natural blondes in their population. There are beautiful women in each subset mentioned, and yet they receive little or poor representation.
7. The tradition teaches young boy fans unhealthy ways of relating to women
The arguments put forward under this sub-heading are too diverse to sum up in a few sentences. They range from the inaccuracy of the 'conquering hero' trope (man wins battle; man gets girl), to more complex arguments about how, by making women unattainable in men's minds, we are reducing men's confidence and/or increasing the incidence of gender-based violence.
8. Grid girls' outfits are too revealing for a family audience
A surprisingly wide range of people expressed this opinion. This is perhaps the one point that the political far right and far left agree on. While in principle this is an extension of the 'sex object' argument, enough people expressed it to warrant its own heading.
In Conclusion
With such a wide array of arguments for and against grid girls, is it any wonder that Gerard Neveu took the decision to end the fight once and for all? It's hard for a CEO to please everyone all the time, especially when every alternative suggested is met with complaining from at least one sector of the community.
I think that dispensing with grid girls altogether might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There must be a happy middle ground that will keep the majority happy, while still respecting the views of the minority. Perhaps to achieve this we as a community need to learn the basics of peace-making, and see what needs the other side is trying to meet with their arguments.
Nevertheless, it took courage for Neveu to make a decision that would alienate some of the series' drivers and supporters. The justification he gave for his decision was, 'For me that is the past. The condition of women is different now.' Regardless of whether we agree with Neveu, he should be applauded for taking such a big risk with the series.