With grid girls a topic of conversation earlier this month and with the FIA World Endurance Championship opting to remove them heading into the 2015 season, it seems interesting that now podium girls are a topic emerging in the wake of last week’s Chinese Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton won the race and did, like nearly any Grand Prix winner would do, spray the champagne on the podium post-race.
At one point he sprayed a podium girl in the face, and that has led to an uproar from Object – a campaign against sexism and “sex object culture” – in the wake of Hamilton’s spraying direction.
“If this if the case we think Lewis Hamilton should apologize for his actions and think carefully about how he behaves in the future. For most people, it would be apparent that she is not enjoying it,” Roz Hardie, Object CEO, told the UK’s Daily Mail.
“It is surely a very difficult position to be a grid girl and she would have had little option but to stand there and take it. That is something of which he should be aware. But instead, he appears to have abused her position.
“It’s unfortunate that a great victory has been marred by what appears to be selfish and inconsiderate behavior.”
The podium girl, Liu Siying, a 23-year-old Shanghai Institute of Visual Art graduate, actually didn’t mind the spraying.
“It lasted for only one or two seconds, and I did not think too much about it at all,” Liu said, via Sina sport.
Yes, this isn’t the best direction for Hamilton to be spraying the champagne.
However, shouldn’t the question be more regarding the point of podium girls being there to begin with, considering their presence would also mark them as “sex objects?” Food for thought…
Alas, the video above shows the still photos as shown during Yahoo Sports’ Mad Dash. The Hamilton portion runs from the start of the video through the first 44 seconds.