Dialogue: Promotion a giant leap back for all

A few years ago, when I was trying to impress a new boyfriend, I found myself at a drag racing meet at Meremere.

It wasn't my usual scene and, frankly, I survived the weekend by treating the experience as social research.

Imagine my surprise when the highlight of the Saturday afternoon was a wet T-shirt competition.

Huh? Naively, I had granted such events urban legend status. Surely these people couldn't be serious. But, apparently, they were - and such events were not only rife in this hard-core culture but also readily accepted by both sexes.

Where had I been? I had been climbing the corporate ladder, trying to make it in a man's world, breaking through the glass ceiling, creating positive role models, just as the bra-burning women's libbers had done for my contemporaries. That's where.

For a brief moment I felt like throwing in the towel and accepting the $1000 incentive my boyfriend cheekily offered should I get my gear off.

Despite powerhouse women successfully establishing influential roles in politics, commerce and the media, it was obvious, that at a grass roots level, things hadn't changed that much.

The trickle-down effect had not occurred. There were a host of women who had obviously been in quarantine since the 60s and thus had no qualms about females being treated as sexual objects.

Cut to present day and the Big Boys' Toys exhibition. By now we've had two children and this time I trot along to this event because it's supposed to be a family outing, albeit a biased one.

At the exhibition I discover scenarios one step away from women draped over car bonnets. Promotional Girls.

This phenomenon went underground for a couple of decades during the more militant days of feminism. But in the backlash against political correctness, and under the guise of not taking ourselves too seriously, they are back with a vengeance.

Promotional Girls started creeping back by way of pubs where they cleverly administered free booze, meaning there were few complaints from customers.

Now they have come into their own at this annual celebration of testosterone. Predictably, many a bloke, upper lip sweating and spittle forming at the corner of his mouth, obediently lined up to relieve the charming hostesses of a brochure despite not being in the immediate market for new tyres or indeed an improved method of shaving. (How did the razor exhibit qualify as a big boys' toy?)

Meanwhile, primetime TV on a Saturday night was fed Miss Teen USA. We witnessed Miss Texas wrestle challenges as baffling as "would she wear a midriff sarong ensemble or a bikini on a desert island?" All this followed news of a Christmas party floorshow by naked women.

Bimbo-ism is back. And here's the dichotomy. While some of us find such regressive behaviour unacceptable, we are equally conscious of coming across as uptight, bitter, hairy-armpitted old bores who need to loosen up.

To say that Promo Girls and wet T-shirt entrants are letting the side down implies an us-against-them mentality. More to the point is that if an inch is given, a mile is taken before we can say regressive sexist gender stereotyping. We comfortably and thankfully drop awkward words like chairperson from our vocabulary - assuming that, 30-odd years on since the start of the women's revolution, things had gained a sort of critical mass. Little did we know that we would scratch the surface and find that the masses haven't really changed. Old habits die hard.

A few years ago the intelligentsia fostered the return of page three girl mentality through new expensive glossy magazines aimed at men. This upwardly mobile lad-ism was embraced as it wasn't considered sexist but witty and ironic. But of course 90 per cent of the population were blissfully unaware of the need for such irony.

While some men in touch with their female sides find Promo Girls sad and offensive, I am sure many are delighted they are back. It's not because they want social power over females again, (although I'm sure they wouldn't refuse it), they just like gawking at their tits.

It's all too easy to let such regressive behaviour slip though the net in these days of the each-to-their-own philosophy. We are both individualistic and apathetic - that is, if we detect a hint of group movement or commitment to a cause we run a mile.

A male friend tried an open-minded approach to promotional girls, offering "There's an honesty about it."

Well, sure, there is something to be said for being true to yourself.

But, sadly, while females of this genre take one small step forward for individualism, it's one giant leap backwards for everyone else.