Podium Girls

[Linford]

Yes it was for you. No, I'm not elaborating as, given your MO, you won't listen.

If you don't think your POV has the robustness to stand up to me or mine, then I can understand why you are keen to use throwaway comments.....

 

[Monsieur Remings]

Yep, MsrR, hands up, I admit it, failing miserably to take the thread seriously anymore and resorting to bored trolling - have fun all, out of this one now .

Good man, given some of your comments you're doing yourself a favour.

 

[Fab Foodie]

I've been liked by Linf and Radchenister

 

[bianchi1]

I'm struggling a bit with this topic, because I'm not connecting girls that ride bikes better than me or do maths better than me or do anything better than me with girls that look nicer than me and hand out flowers better than me. I'd be happy to hand out flowers if it helped or having Baroness Dr Susan Greenfield handing out flowers or Professor Steven Hawkins, I didn't think it that important, though given a choice of flower hander-outer I would not be unhappy if they were attractive or otherly interesting (like a former sport star). I sadly admit that I also enjoy looking at pretty girls (and on occasions men too), on TV, on the tube, the high street wherever. If that makes me a bad person, then I'm a bad person.
I've also been thinking about my own daughters and how would I feel about them being Podium girls and I can't say I'd object. I've also asked the Biology Student daughter what she thinks and she's OK with Podium girls. There again she is doing some 'clothes modelling' later this week so maybe she's not the right candidate to ask...

This post sums up exactly how I feel. I have a daughter who is excelling at school and yet loves her hair straighteners, make up and for that matter ogling various untallented boy bands. I have a son who's head is turned by a pretty girl, but would rather spend a day kicking a ball with Messi (he's still young)

The day members of the opposite sex (or sexualities) stop placing a value on beauty is a long, long way off. Until then sex sells, it always has.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Don't give up ...

 

[Monsieur Remings]

I'm struggling a bit with this topic, because I'm not connecting girls that ride bikes better than me or do maths better than me or do anything better than me with girls that look nicer than me and hand out flowers better than me. I'd be happy to hand out flowers if it helped or having Baroness Dr Susan Greenfield handing out flowers or Professor Steven Hawkins, I didn't think it that important, though given a choice of flower hander-outer I would not be unhappy if they were attractive or otherly interesting (like a former sport star). I sadly admit that I also enjoy looking at pretty girls (and on occasions men too), on TV, on the tube, the high street wherever. If that makes me a bad person, then I'm a bad person.
I've also been thinking about my own daughters and how would I feel about them being Podium girls and I can't say I'd object. I've also asked the Biology Student daughter what she thinks and she's OK with Podium girls. There again she is doing some 'clothes modelling' later this week so maybe she's not the right candidate to ask...

There's nothing sad about enjoying the opposite sex Fab Foodie, that's not what I'm saying. I reckon the human race might be a bit scuppered if that were the case...

My point, like so many others have put so well, is that cycling is a sport that involves women at all levels and to involve, pointlessly in my own opinion, podium girls who look nice and perpetuate the idea that that is what womankind alone should represent, is counter-productive to the sport itself. This isn't as tough a concept as some are making it. People can read as much into this thread as they like but it's as simple as that - the objectification of a human being as a limited entity in itself and good for only one thing in the context given and that, as I've said, is crap. Not to mention oppressive.

As a father of a daughter myself, like yourself, I don't want the prevalent image of the sport to be one where she, if she decides to take up cycling, is considered more of a podium girl than a Victoria Pendleton. She'll have plenty of time in her life to be as attractive as she wants to be to the right person, as opposed a piece of eye-candy on a stage that should know better, given the abilities of some of the same sex within that same sport itself.

 

[Radchenister]

Ah MsrR, you are so charming, 'given some of your comments', lol, your critical analysis is scalpel like ... pft ... now's the time for you to look up sociocentricity.

Night all .

 

[Linford]

I've been liked by Linf and Radchenister

You make sense sometimes

 

[Linford]

And another thing...this thread will never get totally candid opinions out of some of its contributors with TC and TMN acting as the emancipated milk monitors

 

[Fab Foodie]

My point, like so many others have put so well, is that cycling is a sport that involves women at all levels and to involve, pointlessly in my own opinion, podium girls who look nice and perpetuate the idea that that is what womankind alone should represent, is counter-productive to the sport itself. This isn't as tough a concept as some are making it.

Well this is the bit that I'm not quite on board with because I don't in my mind (thus far) equate podium girls as perpetuating what womankind alone should represent .... hence I don't object that some want/choose to look pretty and hand-out flowers.

 

[Linford]

[QUOTE 2409670, member: 45"]I was once dropped by a young woman on my ride home from work in Birmingham. She was quite cute.[/quote]


I was totally dropped on a cross country run up Leckhampton Hill by a '5ft nothing' girl in my school year (like I'd just started running in reverese).....I later found out that she was running long distance in county races with the Cheltenham Harriers which made me feel a whole lot better.

 

[MacB]

Here's a link stolen from a post by Julian on YACF which I think is worth a read, the thread was about casual sexism by the way:-

http://www.shakesville.com/2013/02/i-am-not-political-football.html

the only thing I'd add is our 'clever men' are a bit below par but they are trying bless them

 

[400bhp]

If you don't think your POV has the robustness to stand up to me or mine, then I can understand why you are keen to use throwaway comments.....

 

[Monsieur Remings]

Well this is the bit that I'm not quite on board with because I don't in my mind (thus far) equate podium girls as perpetuating what womankind alone should represent .... hence I don't object that some want/choose to look pretty and hand-out flowers.

I mean in regard to the sport. Do you think after the Podium Girls facade that the genuine achievements of British female cyclists would or could be taken as seriously as they would if there weren't podium girls? I genuinely don't think they would be taken as seriously. They become secondary because within the sport itself the idea is perpetuated that women are there for the flowers and kisses. People might offer to do it the other way around but I'm not sure the same thing does happen the other way around...?

As I say, it denigrates the female sport of cycling and aside the bollocks that some people are spouting it has nothing to do with the issue of attractiveness, it's about objectification.

 

[srw]

Well this is the bit that I'm not quite on board with because I don't in my mind (thus far) equate podium girls as perpetuating what womankind alone should represent .... hence I don't object that some want/choose to look pretty and hand-out flowers.

It's symbolic, isn't it? The only place that women exist in professional cycling is as eye-candy (and bum-pinching-fodder) for men who should know better. Imagine if Roger Federer had had his Wimbledon trophies presented by Serena and Venus Williams in miniskirts rather than the Duke of Kent in a tweed suit. That's the closest parallel I can draw.