Peter Sagan, Podium Girls and Objectification

When I saw a picture in this morning's paper of cyclist Peter Sagan grabbing a handful of the bum cheek of a 'podium girl' while waiting to be awarded his second-place prize at the Tour of Flanders, the only thing that surprised me was how unsurprised I felt. We're all aware of the icky tradition of young, slim, large-breasted, long-haired (and usually white) women being used as window dressing to celebrate the achievements of male athletes, especially in motorsport. So it kind of felt like only a matter of time before someone took the treating of women as decorative objects in sport to its logical conclusion. Because if you reduce a person to an object, with no feelings, thoughts or autonomy of their own, then why would you see anything wrong with publicly grabbing them? I doubt Sagan is the first athlete to let his hand wander over the deliberately appealing flesh of a young woman in hotpants paid to fawn over him, but it looks like he's the first who got caught doing it on camera.

 

Of course the inevitable attempts to make light of Sagan's actions followed, with puns a-plenty about his 'cheeky gesture'. Apparently the fame and fortune of the professional athlete does make a difference when it comes to applying the law - if Sagan was an office worker who had been PHOTOGRAPHED molesting a female colleague, he'd be suspended for sexual harassment so fast his head would spin. Possibly dismissed on the spot, possibly even arrested. But because it took place in that crazy, hazy world of sport where women are nothing but window dressing and men's actions, opinions and compulsions are respected regardless of whether they're domestic abusers, rapists or murderers, so far we've only seen a social media firestorm and no threat of legal action. Hearteningly, most of the responses - from both men and women - have criticised Sagan for his actions, although there have been a few depressing defences. And even those who question the whole tradition of 'podium girls' have managed to do so without placing the blame at the feet of the girls themselves. But it's still concerning that an act of sexual assault that took place in front of the world's eyes has not attracted a whiff of police attention. Is this because harassment of women within male-dominated sports is seen as a) not a 'real' problem, just 'laddish banter', or b) admittedly obnoxious, but still something women should just expect? I suspect a bit of both.

 

I've had a tiny bit of experience with real-life podium girls, although not in a setting anywhere near as glamorous as the circles Peter Sagan moves in. But I've been at competitions at major UK motor racing circuits and watched as the podium girls were trotted out at the end of the races, and more than simply finding it sexist and obnoxious (which it is), I also found the whole tradition really embarrassing. What's 'glamorous' about standing shivering, covered in fake tan, squeezed into hotpants one size too small so your buttocks are hanging out, in six-inch heels that wouldn't look out of place in Spearmint Rhino, in the middle of the tarmac? And that's not slut-shaming - I celebrate, and regularly demonstrate, a woman's right to dress however the fuck she wants, and by that I mean as sexually provocative (or not) as she wants. But we can't deny that clothing speaks to power structures, and when you're the scantily clad one amongst a group of 30 fully-dressed men (plus a few of us token women), it's fair to say you're not coming from a level playing field. The podium girls were there to be looked at, to provide 'eye candy', to be visually pleasing and sexually appealing. I was there in jeans, a t shirt and a much-needed hoodie (I've never been to a race track when it was anything near actual hotpants weather) - it didn't matter what I looked like, because I was there to report on the race. If I was judged at all, it would be on my writing. Whereas we all knew what the girls were being judged on. A man on my team made dismissive comments about 'those tarts over there', but not because he was objecting to the sexism of the tradition - rather he thought they were not sufficiently attractive, and remarked that you get a more sophisticated class of podium girl at Silverstone. So these girls couldn't win - they were there for nothing but their appearances, but even those were found to be wanting. And so goes the message to women - remember to look perpetually sexually available, even a little bit 'slutty', but never, god forbid, must you look 'cheap'.

 

Still, as I watched the two girls finish up, get back into more comfortable looking clothes and drive away, I reflected that it didn't look like too tough a job. It was certainly a briefer day's work than my 8 hours spent inhaling petrol fumes - not that I was complaining, as I actually really enjoyed reporting on the races, but if you wanted a way of making easy money without having to know anything about motorsport, theirs was certainly the job you'd pick over mine. If I had the height, bustline, waistline, backside, skin tone, hair length and appropriate wardrobe to fit the podium girl template, would I be picking the podium over the pit wall myself? Who knows - it's too big an 'if'. It's depressing, though, that this is how women's roles are still divided. Either you're 'useful' - like I was that day - or you're 'decorative', like podium girls. You're not allowed to be both, because that might muddy the waters. And whichever side of the coin you choose, you'll be punished for it. Ugly girls have to be clever and funny because why else would men pay them any attention, right? And pretty girls don't have to bother being anything but, because their worth is only skin deep, isn't it?

 

In this sense Peter Sagan's actions have been helpful, if only because they spurred on commentators to point out "the absurdity in still having podium girls in 2013". Much like the 89,000 supporters of the No More Page 3 campaign, people are finally coming out of the woodwork to point out how dated, cringeworthy and insulting it is to still treat women like 'dolly birds' in an era where we pay endless lip service to the notion of sexual equality. And it's great that sports writers have used this opportunity to challenge the sexist tradition - Matt Seaton has a great piece in today's Guardian, asking "Does professional cycling really need to award winners kisses from "trophy" females? The whole spectacle is unbecoming - not just tacky and embarrassing, but retrograde and demeaning." It's just a shame that a woman had to be assaulted for the conversation to happen.

So, there's still sexism in football....

...next week, Pope in 'Catholic' shocker, and the week after that, 'bear utilises woods for his lavatorial needs' scandal. Why anyone is surprised that a field of interest which remains closed to women, hostile to women and is largely built on the premise of excluding women turns out sexist chumps such as Andy Grey and Richard Keys, I don't know. I've always thought of women who loyally follow the supposedly 'Beautiful Game' a bit like I think of turkeys voting for Christmas, but then I do view most team sports as an excuse for a bit of organised savagery anyway. What's most dismaying about the whole scandal and the debates it's thrown up, is how many women have clamoured to, if not exactly defend Grey and Keys, then play down their inexcusable behaviour in the name of Not Being One of those Annoying Wimmin Who Can't Take A Joke.

Allison Pearson was at it in yesterday's Telegraph (really need to persuade my family members to desist from bringing it into the house, it's giving me far too many easy targets), moaning that "You can't be too careful these days. Make a sarky remark about the opposite sex and before someone can wave a red card, you're heading for relegation." The gist of her article is that the PC Thought Police have gone mad, persecuting people for a bit of "grumbling to each other" and hysterically crying misogyny whenever someone dares to suggest that they're not so enamoured with this whole 'respect for those pesky XX chromosome-types' idea. My first thought is to wonder if she would dare write this article if Gray and Keys had been caught saying "Black people don't understand the offside rule. Did you hear Ian Wright complaining about racism in football? Yeah, give us a break, son.". My second is to despair at the way Pearson resorts to the typical defence of 'why's it OK for women to be sexist and not the other way round?'. It's such a lazy response, but it's currently being trotted out all over the shop. Fortunately, another smart blogger pre-empted pretty much exactly what Pearson ended up saying in defence of the dubious pair:

"Women are just as bad as men. If not worse. In fact, definitely absolutely worse. Probably. Almost definitely. A woman once looked at me funny and all of that. Loose Women, they're allowed to sit there and say things about men, which is just as bad as all the misogyny in the entire world; honestly, you have no idea what it's like to be on the receiving end of a sweeping generalisation from Coleen Nolan - you have no idea in the world what it's like. It hurts. It hurts like hell. But men are supposed to just sit there and take it, but we're the real victims. We're the real victims because we're on the receiving end of some pretty nasty criticism from women, and that hurts. I mean, what kind of world is it where you can't just sit around and talk about smashing some woman, and calling her it, and say you're probably going to be hanging out of the back of it? That kind of harmless banter has been going on for years, and there's nothing wrong with it, because it's completely harmless, and if you say it's not sexist then that means it isn't."

[Anton Vowl, http://www.enemiesofreason.com/]

Compare with Pearson's irony-free complaint that:

"The all-female panel of ITV's Loose Women has made a career out of chuckling over blokes and their inadequacies. Just try to imagine a Loose Men presented by Premiership footballers: "Tonight, Ashley and John will be lightly roasting Janine, who they think they met in a club last night." They'd never dare broadcast it."

Ah, the Loose Women defence. Do so many allegedly intelligent, educated individuals really believe that a table of five middle-aged women cackling about sex somehow redresses the balance for millennia of discrimination, segregation and violence against women? LW is no feminist victory or the result of some mythical 'campaign to bash men' - it's trashy daytime TV of the lowest common denominator, and it doesn't do anyone, male or female, any favours in terms of extending their political consciousness. To trot it out as an example of how the balance has supposedly insanely slipped to the point where men are objectified, trivialised and humiliated like women are on a daily basis is just plain bollocks. Or should I say just plain tits, for the sake of that mythical 'PC brigade ' that's supposedly always watching?

Women like Pearson want to depict themselves as able to 'rise above' the boorish mumblings of knuckle-dragging men, to show that they're not po-faced reactionary feminists who 'can't take a joke'. But the unfashionable truth is that there is still very little that's funny about sexism in a world where it results in women losing jobs, money, rights, bodily autonomy and even lives just because of their gender. I would hope that the 'Loose Men' show that Pearson envisions would never get past public broadcasting standards, but sadly that hasn't stopped the very behaviour she describes occurring both in footballing world and beyond. If the sexual exploitation and abuse of women was just a sad and distant memory for our progressive society, then maybe we could joke about it. As long as it remains a terrifying reality, it's just not very fucking funny. Maybe next time a group of female footballers are accused of raping a lone man in a hotel room after a drunken night out, and the man is lambasted and excoriated in the tabloids for his tight trousers, alcohol consumption and sexual history, men can truly complain that they know what discrimination feels like. Until then, female apologists for shitty, ignorant sexism that would never be tolerated were it prejudice in any other form (e.g. race), really need to STFU.