Rita Panahi: Grid girls aren’t the ones being oppressed
FEMINISTS celebrated the axing of F1 grid girls but as usual seem happy to celebrate a far more potent symbol of female oppression, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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ON the same day that so-called progressives celebrated a symbol of oppression, scores of women were deprived of employment in the name of women’s rights.
There was rich irony in Formula One axing grid girls on World Hijab Day.
The absurdity of feminists in the West embracing modesty culture while their disempowered sisters in the Muslim world risk arrest, imprisonment and worse to free themselves from the hijab would be comical if it wasn’t so tragic.
Modesty culture and Muslim veils are born of a deeply misogynistic doctrine that demands women cover up. It was invented by men and forced upon women to control, separate and subjugate.
Author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was forced to wear the veil, describes garments such as burqas, niqabs, chadors and hijabs as “gradations of mental slavery”.
“The veil deliberately marks women as private and restricted property, non-persons. The veil sets women apart from men and apart from the world; it restrains them, confines them, grooms them for docility … It is the mark of a kind of apartheid, not the domination of a race but of a sex,” she wrote.
It is hard to overstate how regressive modern feminism has become when it applauds an instrument of real, tyrannical misogyny and adopts a puritanical approach that robs women of the opportunity to earn a living.
Being a grid girl is not something that all young women aspire to, but to paint it as some hideous example of exploitation is incongruous. These young women choose to work in that capacity and are well rewarded for their efforts.
I’ve known a couple of grid girls over the years: one a leggy blonde whose regular role was with a leading financial institution, and the other a feisty university student who held down a number of jobs while completing a postgraduate degree. Both were clever, capable and strong women, who would look forward to the Australian Grand Prix.
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Now, women like them who have been blessed with good looks, and work hard to stay in shape are deprived of a source of income to spare the feelings of a few perpetually aggrieved activists who have no interest in the sport.
Even the world’s biggest prude would struggle to describe the outfits worn by grid girls in recent years as titillating or provocative.
Several grid girls have come forward to slam the decision, including Charlotte Gash, who said she was “disgusted that F1 has given in to the minority to be politically correct … it’s a source of income for women and we don’t want it taken away from us”.
From the scantily clad “ring girls” at the boxing to the chic “podium ladies” at the Tour de France, beautiful women at sporting events are nothing new.
Feminists won’t be happy until they are all out of a job. There are already renewed calls for NRL clubs to dump cheerleaders.
Women Sport Australia spokeswoman Louise Evans is among those applauding F1 for abandoning an “archaic practice”.
‘women in sport should be celebrated as strong, skilled athletes, not as a titillating decoration. It’s time other sports scrapped ring girls, walk-on girls and podium girls,” she said.
Feminism should be about choice. Women should be free to use their looks to generate an income.
In the twisted logic employed by progressives, it is acceptable for the likes of Miley Cyrus and Beyonce to wear next to nothing on stage and even less in their videos because they are powerful and identify as feminists, but grid girls are for some reason unacceptable.
It’s utterly absurd to have one standard of behaviour for the rich and privileged and another for ordinary women.
The nudity and sexualisation of the former is deemed empowering, while the latter are seen as hapless victims who are being objectified.
Your typical grid girls may not be as powerful and well connected as top models and pop stars but that doesn’t mean their work isn’t equally emboldening for them.
Feminists do not have a right to impose their own judgment on those who choose to work as grid girls, cheerleaders, promotional models, or in any other role where appearance is critical. But then, a movement so bereft of principle that it abandons the most oppressed women in the world and aligns itself with World Hijab Day is obviously hopelessly broken.
Thankfully, there is a fightback, led by courageous women who endure abuse and threats of violence to expose the degradation of modesty culture. Many of those women have been ostracised by their families for rejecting the veil.
Yasmine Mohammed is part of the growing #NoHijabDay campaign and feels betrayed by the Left’s embrace of Muslim veils.
“I risked my life to fight my way out of the darkness into the light, only to find people in the light fetishising the dark. Alicia Keys posted a photo of a woman in a niqab and talked about its beauty, so I responded with a photo of a slave in chains … people don’t get that it’s the same thing,” she said.
“They don’t stop to think — would I want to be forced to wear a hijab? Of course not! So why would a woman in a different geographical location feel so differently? We’re all human.”
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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