Podium Girls - What's the Point?

(image courtesy of stuff.co.nz)

Ah podium girls.

They are one of the most meaningless anachronisms of sport from a time when only men played professional sport and Americans were still building bomb bunkers in anticipation of a nuclear war.

Somehow, they have continued in this day of age where women are now CEOs of multi-national corporations, where the pay difference between genders is ever shrinking, and yes, where women are now earning money playing sport - Lydia Ko, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova case in point.

Indeed, such sexist images have started disappearing - or at least in the case of cheerleading, re-engineered to be more politically correct.

Funnily enough, in motor and bike racing, podium girls remain a feature of the sport particularly in these days of increased television and media coverage.

Yet, the presence of podium girls and the behaviour of athletes around them is more and more under the microscope as Lewis Hamilton found out in Shanghai on the weekend - http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/motorsport/67736164/Lewis-Hamilton-criticised-for-spraying-Formula-One-hostess-with-champagne.

The last time an athlete got into trouble with a podium girl was when Slovakian star speedster, Peter Sagan, was caught pinching the bum of Belgian podium girl, Maja Leye after finishing on the podium of a stage of the Tour de Flanders.

(image courtesy of the guardian)

In my opinion, podium girls are absolutely stunning women who serve absolutely no purpose other than to harden the cocks of a good proportion of the viewing public, i.e. men, some of them might even go and masturbate or do some horrendous thing behind the scene which we'd rather know.

In a more PC sense, podium girls continue to strengthen the natural objectification of women by men and it seems that the sports that have them support that. Formula 1 might as well be sponsored by Penthouse at this rate.

Unless..

Unless, the women who appear as podium girls see it as a respectable way to enhance their careers as models - I haven't heard anyone who has said that though.

In that case, perhaps the reaction to Lewis Hamilton's spraying that Chinese podium girl was about redressing the gender balance that this world has carefully crafted in the last 10 years.

Nevertheless, it is a bit difficult to see a world without podium girls for now unless the sports act on them like they did with tobacco sponsorship.