Kiss Them Goodbye

The spectacle of podium girls at big sporting events is an outdated chauvinist throwback. It’s time to end it.

- Barbara Ellen

Some may be blissfully unaware of the existence of so-called ‘podium girls’, who are still a regular sight at an array of major European sports events. Even those who are only vaguely aware of their existence may have assumed that they were phased out at some point in the 1970s—along with bikini-clad women reclining uncomfortably on bonnets of Winnebagos at car shows.

You may be surprised to learn that the archaic culture of podium girls (otherwise known as ‘grid girls’, ‘walkon girls’ and sometimes the more decorous-sounding ‘tour hostesses’) is far from dead and buried. In fact, in some places, it’s hanging on as stubbornly as ever.

For the uninitiated, podium girls are the young women who have traditionally been brought on to present prizes and chastely kiss winners on the cheek at major international sporting events. Either that, or they exude glamour on the sidelines—handing out leaflets, welcoming VIPs and in some sports (such as boxing), serving as human message-boards, sashaying across the ring, holding cards that tell the crowd what round it is. (In the circumstances, it might be more useful for them to point out what century it is.)

The problem is that unlike, say, cheerleaders at sports fixtures, who at least combine beauty and whirling pom-poms with their own skillful brand of athleticism, podium girls are all about smiling passivity. Silent, obliging, submissive, this is glamour writ with the smallest, sweetest ‘g’ imaginable. A glamour that knows its place, and doesn’t bite back or demand respect, or even seem to realize that women have been permitted to vote for a good few years now. So, perhaps it comes as no surprise that certain kinds of men (and certain sports) are determined to hold on to podium girls, and all that they represent.