{"id":42180,"date":"2018-02-10T03:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-02-10T08:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=42180"},"modified":"2018-02-09T10:30:39","modified_gmt":"2018-02-09T15:30:39","slug":"protecting-some-women-from-their-own-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/02\/10\/protecting-some-women-from-their-own-decisions\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting (some) women from their own decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kirio Birks<\/a> on the Formula One “grid girls”:<\/p>\n

Objectification, we are told, is degrading. Why? Because any job that requires employees to be sexually attractive and gazed upon for that reason necessarily dehumanises them. It encourages others to treat them as pretty \u2018things\u2019 rather than as autonomous people with their own lives, passions, thoughts, and desires. Or so the thinking goes. \u2018Grid Girls\u2019 \u2013 models employed by Formula One for promotional purposes \u2013 have just discovered that their role is to be discontinued. As Formula One\u2019s managing director of commercial operations explained: \u201cWhile the practice of employing grid girls has been a staple of Formula 1 Grands Prix for decades, we feel this custom does not resonate with our brand values and clearly is at odds with modern day societal norms.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in their hurry to spare Grid Girls the indignity of the male gaze, nobody making this argument seems to have stopped to wonder whether Grid Girls might have an interest in defending what they do. Instead, a collective of ostensibly progressive voices leapt to their defence without bothering to ask the girls themselves if they needed defending at all. In response, Formula One abandoned its Grid Girls so that it can be seen to be moving with the times and hip to contemporary mores. In doing so, Formula One\u2019s executives have implicitly conceded that they have spent too long objectifying women instead of empowering them. They would like it to known that they\u2019d rather see women driving the cars, or as members of the engineering teams, or just about anywhere other than track-side holding a driver\u2019s name-board and looking beautiful.<\/p>\n

What baffles me is that a move supposed to empower women came at the expense of other women, and only because a minority of outsiders found Grid Girls inappropriate, problematic, and otherwise an offence against good taste. But even if Grid Girls are being objectified, then \u2013 contra the explanation offered above \u2013 it\u2019s not at all clear that objectification is wrong in and of itself. It is acceptable to use people as a means to an end \u2013 that\u2019s called employment. Grid Girls obviously know that they will be objectified and they make an autonomous, informed decision to take the job anyway. They are not harmed, they are paid for their time and their work, and many of them have come forward to say, with understandable indignation, that they enjoy<\/em> what they do. Needless to say, this has not impressed those feminists who applauded their redundancies. But surely a woman has a right to be the object of somebody else\u2019s desire if she wants and surely it doesn\u2019t matter if she is being paid for it?<\/p>\n

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Get me on @thismorning<\/a> so I can defend us #gridgirls<\/a>
Because of these feminists, they\u2019ve have cost us our jobs! I have been a grid girl for 8 years and I have Never felt uncomfortable! I love my job, if I didn\u2019t I wouldn\u2019t do it! Noone forces us to do this! This is our choice! pic.twitter.com\/PUWcyB5BeG<\/a><\/p>\n

— Lauren-Jade (@laurenjadepope) January 31, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n