Why is it only middle class feminists who have the right to do what they want with their bodies?
FOR A certain type of woman, glamour modelling has long represented a path to opportunity. Not necessarily a happy path, nor an easy one; but one that has nevertheless served many— from Kelly Brook to Katie Price (now both multi-millionaires) — surprisingly well.
Now, it seems, that well-worn route to stardom beloved of so many comely girls with big ambitions and matching assets is fast disappearing.
In the latest wave of postWeinstein purges, and undoubtedly in response to the hysterical reaction to the undeniably seedy Presidents Club dinner, where young women were hired as ‘hostesses’ and then treated like pieces of meat, Formula One’s ‘grid girls’ have been banned from the 2018 season.
These sexy young women — who have traditionally been a fixture of the racing scene — didn’t perform any ostensible function that actually has any impact on the sport, but simply stood trackside, presented the odd trophy and gave male punters something pretty to look at while the cars were at the other end of the track.
According to Formula One spokesman Sean Bratches, the practice of employing grid girls has gone out of fashion and is ‘at odds’ with modernday values.
The move comes just days after the Professional Darts Corporation announced that it, too, was going to trim back on totty by getting rid of the walk-on girls.
No doubt other maledominated sports where pretty young women in tight dresses and bathing suits are a regular fixture — snooker, boxing, wrestling and so on — will feel duty-bound to follow suit.
Of course, there are many who claim this as a major victory in the fight against sexism and inequality. A new feminist dawn in which young women are no longer forced to debase themselves and their bodies simply for the entertainment of men.
Women of glamour, rise up against the oppression of the patriarchy: you have nothing to lose but your nipple tassels.
Except, of course, they do. They 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 many of these young women simply wouldn’t have otherwise.
And all for what? So that their less attractive and allegedly intellectually superior sneering sisters can pursue an anti-male agenda which, if it reaches its logical conclusion, will end up with the human race disappearing off the face of the planet altogether on account of no man daring to speak to any woman ever again.
Scores of perfectly happy women, who are employed to do something they appear to (for the most part) enjoy and which brings great pleasure to many, will now find themselves out of a job. What are they supposed to do?
And yet all this is celebrated as some great triumph — mostly by middle-class female journalists, commentators and MPs — who have no concept and probably no interest in what these girls think, just as long as they get to stop men doing what men are naturally programmed to do: enjoy looking at attractive young women.
For that, folks, is Feminism 2018: working-class glamour girls on the dole; middle-class intellectuals on the make.
The irony, of course, is that those very same pressure groups demanding an end to glamour-girl culture are the very same who are forever blethering on about how it’s a woman body and she should be able to do what she wants with it.
These are the hard-line abortionists, the free-the-nipple loons (who believe women have the right to show their nipples on social media) and the pro-prostitute campaigners.
Woe betide anyone who tries to place restraints on their freedoms.
And surely the same principle should apply to every woman? Except it doesn’t. In the warped post-Weinstein ideological landscape of Me Too and Time’s Up, self-determination applies only if it falls within the approved parameters.
And that does not include doing anything that might bring any enjoyment to men.
Like judgmental Victorian spinsters, today’s feminist moralisers look at the likes of Charlotte Wood and Daniella Allfree — the two darts walk-on girls who spoke up this week about how much they enjoyed their jobs — and find them in dire need of being patronised out of existence.
And so, while the BBC’s former China editor, Carrie Gracie — who resigned from her job over unequal pay (despite being offered a rise when she complained) — delivers a lecture to MPs of quite spectacular sanctimoniousness, countless women preparing for a lucrative season of Lycra-wearing in F1 are scanning the small ads in Tesco.
Great job, ladies.