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Manly cheerleader during the NRL, Round 8, Melbourne Storm v Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles match at Brookvale Oval in Sydney, Friday May 1, 2009. Storm won 22-8. (AAP Image/Action Photographics, Robb Cox)
For all the talk of sporting codes needing to ‘change their culture’ in the wake of numerous sex scandals, there is one easy change they can make, something blatantly obvious, one of the final remnants of the sexist sporting age. The cheerleaders, grid girls, whatever you want to call them have to go.
It’s just embarrassing and antiquated.
Motorsport is probably the biggest offender in this regard and one of the most odd, if not concerning things I see at the numerous motorsport events I attend throughout Australia is grown men lining up with their kids to get autographs from the grid girls, be they the scantily clad Four X Angels or the like.
It’s a phenomenon I’ve been unable to get my head around.
The Angels perform throughout V8 weekends and they leave little to the imagination.
The 2008 V8 Supercar media guide boasts that the audience of the sport consists of 38% females.
Is that really surprising when the off track entertainment caters for blokey blokes?
It’s driving families and women away from the sport.
Motorsport can hardly claim to be a bastion of enlightened thinking when it comes to equality amongst the sexes.
When IndyCar race winner Danica Patrick was linked with a possible test in Formula 1, the sports commercial ringleader Bernie Ecclestone claimed she should be “dressed in white, like the other domestic appliances.”
Oh dear!
Obviously there is not a direct correlation between having grid girls etc and misdemeanours that have been in the news, but the point is it is a sexist and cheap way of promoting your sport. Sexist in the degrading sense and a cheap and inefficient way to promote your sport, pandering to a specific section of your audience while ignoring others.
Having experienced some of the ‘goings on’ at the Gold Coast Indy and the Clipsal 500, I would have serious reservations about taking children or family to such events.
It’s not just motorsport.
It’s amazing to me that certain news websites, while taking the moral high ground on the misdemeanours of sporting stars and culture of the NRL, are happy to link to the hottest league cheerleaders photo gallery or the like.
At a time when the NRL is facing serious questions about its cultural makeup regarding treatment towards women, is there a place for scantily glad cheerleaders at what should be a family friendly environment?
It’s important to distinguish here too between what image individual athletes present and what the code does.
The aforementioned Danica Patrick has posed for racy shoots with FHM and Sports Illustrated but she, and any other athlete, has the right to pursue whatever career opportunities they wish.
As my Roar colleague Natalie Medhurst states, the sexes should be treated equally and perhaps the different perceptions of male and females doing such shoots points to the inherent sexism still in sport.
There is a difference between the two though. Sporting events should be family friendly environments. The codes should set an example themselves.
For all the criticism that Patrick is a bad role model for such shoots, you have to ask why parents are allowing their kids to read the likes of FHM. Come race time and she is a driver like the rest.
The media has a responsibility here too and as mentioned the hypocrisy of the certain outlets that run trash stories like this and yet act as moral adjudicators in, for example, the Matthew Jones case is pitiful.
It may seem like a bit of harmless fun, but it’s one clear way sports can change their treatment of women.