Grid girls... just the latest bit of fun to be killed off by feminists!
If they’re not simply there for adornment, why do it in skin-tight Lycra crop tops?
Feminists! It’s all their fault. Everything. All of it. Every last bit. It’s their fault that men can no longer call a spade a spade, or a woman a nice bit of totty; it’s their fault that you can’t feel up anyone’s bottom without first asking their permission; it’s their fault that guys are not allowed to raise money for charity by taking part in a sponsored grope-a-thon; it’s their fault that good, decent people going to the Formula One next season will not be able to ogle any female thighs or cleavage and will instead just have to watch cars whizzing round and round a track for hours on end.
This is the world we live in, people, one where we have to pay men and women the same amount of money and respect females as human beings in their own right rather than just a pair of tits and an arse!
As an ugly, fat feminist (no need to waste your time leaving a comment now!), I am completely overjoyed by the news that some pretty, slim women have found themselves out of a job, because obviously that’s what feminism is all about: petty, seething jealousy, which is, after all, one of the defining characteristics of the female of the species. It’s not about sending out a message to future generations that a woman’s value isn’t only found in her looks. No. It’s about making sure that all attractive birds are locked away in cupboards like 21st-century Cinderellas, where they can live miserable, sexless lives like us feminists, who are driven not by a desire for equality and fairness but for Flavio Briatore. We’d all burn our bras for that particular stud-muffin, wouldn’t we, gals?
In this post-weinstein world that we now live in, where apparently it is totally unacceptable for rich, powerful people to use their positions to abuse others, you can’t even talk about grabbing a woman’s pussy without some dullards trying to derail your presidential chances. How PC is that?
But seriously.
I’ve been reading the uproar surrounding the demise of grid girls with incredulity, largely that anyone could truly believe that it’s cool for women to be paraded around like cattle at market. Grid girls are necessary, said Bernie Ecclestone this week, because it helps the drivers to know where they need to stop. But if that is the case, and they are not simply there as adornment, then why couldn’t the grid girls do it in something other than skin-tight Lycra crop tops, and why couldn’t they be joined by grid guys? Others have argued that this is simply a case of middleclass feminists punishing pretty women who, in the words of one commentator, “have a lot to lose, starting with a steady income, financial independence and the prospect of nabbing a career in showbusiness or, failing that, a rich boyfriend. In other words, options. A future. Something that these young women simply wouldn’t have otherwise.” Now, they are left “scanning the small ads in Tesco”.
Attitudes such as this are, of course, what feminists fight against. I don’t have a problem with someone choosing to be a grid girl, just as long as it isn’t presented to said girl as her only option. Just as long as she knows that if she wants, she could also be an engineer or a team principal, or even a Formula One driver herself. Just as long as she knows she has the same options as the next boy.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Rebecca Cooper, a former grid girl, said that “no one is forced to turn up and wear anything they’re not comfortable with… if we didn’t like the uniform, we didn’t have to do the job”. But this is disingenuous. Presumably, if Rebecca decided she didn’t want to be trussed up in a catsuit by one brand, there were not a host of others offering up the opportunity of working the Grand Prix in a more sedate style.
Opportunities, options, future… all of these are things that feminists believe in. The right to not feel like you are past your sell-by date at the age of 27, the right to not be judged by how you look, the right to wear a nice dress and some awesome make-up without feeling that this excuses an errant hand on your bum or a breast. These are not big asks, not unreasonable expectations. It is time people stopped behaving as if they were.