DO WE STILL NEED LITHE LOVELIES TO SELL CARS?
It’s 2014, yet auto shows still promote their wares with scantily-clad women
One never knows, in these politically charged times, what will happen if a member of the XY tribe dares even posit an opinion on the inequities that befall those of the XX chromosome.
I am pretty sure Justin Trudeau had only the best of intentions in recently suspending two of his party’s MPs for alleged indiscretions. Yet he has been pilloried from the left and the right despite the seriousness with which he took those allegations. If the most sensitive man in Canadian politics cannot navigate the troubled waters that are modern misogyny, surely the best path a barely post-Neanderthal Luddite like yours truly could choose would be a cone of silence.
Which, of course, means I have to open my big yap, if only to say that the last (OK, not last, but still major) bastion of openly discriminatory sexism in the corporate world is the auto shows I have attended these past 28 years. How the automakers — not to mention the show organizers and everyone else responsible for the modern motor show — get away with the overt sexism that was the recent Los Angeles Auto Show, is quite beyond my comprehension.
You — yes, I mean all corporate public relations executives at car companies, especially those at some high-end luxury marques — know exactly what I’m talking about — all those scantilyclad women you hire to lounge, recline and otherwise caress the new products you are trying to showcase in a positive manner.
Obviously, no one has brought this to your attention, but the draping of young women over sheet metal is just so passé. The automotive industry — like virtually all others — has changed.
I realize the most ardent of feminists would say “too little, too late,” but let’s at least acknowledge that Mary Barra, chief executive of the once and (perhaps) future largest automaker in the world, occasionally wears skirts to the office. Like- wise, an increasing number of the engineers who design our cars — from super to econo — sometimes carry purses to work. And, as the marketing departments of your very own firms are constantly pointing out, women make more than half of the buying decisions on new automobiles.
Nor are the automakers the only part of the industry touched by estrogen. Most major media covering the L.A. affair at the gigantic Convention Center could claim a sizable portion of women among their reporting and editing teams. Where 20 years ago the entire automotive press oozed testosterone, at least a quarter — perhaps even a third — of the scribes reporting on the Los Angeles Auto Show/Connected Car Expo sported Miss, Mrs., or, more likely, Ms. prefixes to their name tags.
Do these professionals really deserve alienation for no other reason than they wear Chanel instead of Old Spice? Are you really willing to risk alienating the fastest growing segment of the auto journalist workforce and the huge portion of the consuming public they represent?
Besides, what does the need for such base titillation say about the confidence you have in your product? Does your Alfa Romeo 4C really need a bustière-busting model to attract the attention you so crave? What does a sixfoot mannequin in CFM Manolo Blahniks actually contribute to the marketing of a family-oriented four-door sedan? Seriously, Maserati, does your Alfieri so lack in allure that no one will pay it attention without a bevy of attendant high-heeled and miniskirted brunettes?
And, if for some reason, you can’t resist this sexualization of the auto show, can you at least render it more representative of the public you serve? If I, a male auto scribe, am to be enticed by a coffee-proffering nubile young woman in skimpy décolletage, should not my female counterparts be entitled to be served tea and crumpets by sugar-bunned Chippendale models in tight tuxedoes? Should not there be — and, ladies, forgive me if I am not au courant with the latest Fifty Shades of Grey lexicon — a tightly-packaged hunk posing beside all the German luxury cars?
And why, oh why, should female auto enthusiasts — an increasing percentage of the gearhead community, I might add — not enjoy a Pirelli calendar full of buff firefighters in sensual — I mean artistic — poses? If this overt sexism must continue, is it not time that both genders attending an auto show have their own amusebouches?
And contrary to what the lads lounging at the water cooler might think, such an animal already exists. I can personally attest to their existence because my own cousin Pierre — yes, with at least some of the same genetic code as your visually challenged Motor Mouth, he somehow came out looking like an in-his-prime Tom Selleck — makes a decent living shilling at auto shows for those few high-end automakers who have somehow caught on to the fact that purchasing power is no longer reserved for those who dress on the left. Nonetheless, he’s in the minority, his Magnum, P.I. good looks completely overshadowed by the Maria Sharapova look-alikes who overwhelm so many auto expositions.
This is the 21st century. If you’re unwilling to dispense with the sexualization of your product, at least make it more equitable. What’s good for the gander, after all, is also good for the goose.
For those of you who might think this week’s Motor Mouth is yet another case of politically correct piling on, let me set the record straight; I have never understood the sexualization of things internally combusted, even when I was a testosterone-infused youth. Indeed, I think I worried my dear old mother to no end when, one day, when I was 15 or thereabouts, I lamented Norton Motorcycles’ (very popular at the time) use of scantily clad demoiselles in their advertisements.
Now, I am not against the artfully-displayed mammary protuberance per se, but I did complain to mom that the models’ (admittedly long and lithe) legs were obstructing my view of the Commando’s Isolastic engine. I didn’t like it then and I like it even less now.