Some envy them, some desire them and others despise them, but who are NZ's promo girls? Cheree Kinnear investigates.
It was one of the most awkward press conferences in New Zealand boxing history.
Sonny Bill Williams was seething. In the autumn of a legendary sporting career, he was feeling charitable enough to participate in a poorly produced Australian fight night - The Banger Under the Hanger - to raise money for the homeless.
The low-level media event he could handle, but the introduction of scantily clad ring girls tipped him over the edge.
Dressed in metallic gold swimwear with leather suspenders and heels, the two girls paraded around the room. There was no subtext, no subtlety: this was window dressing for the boys.
Williams, a relatively recent convert to Islam, wasn't wearing it. The press conference shuddered to a halt as the code-hopping superstar first asked them to leave and then demanded an explanation for their presence.
They exited stage left, no doubt chastened by the experience. The uncomfortable scene perfectly illustrated the polarising presence of promo girls and their connection to modern sport.
You may love them. You may hate them. But how often do you actually hear from them.
Welcome to the secret world of promo girls.
While thousands of petrol heads and casual fans await the arrival of their favourite drivers and the full-throated noise of a Supercar's V8 engine, Michaiah Simmons-Villari is concentrating on the delicate sound of her high heels click-clacking across the asphalt grid.
She files onto the track, grid number in hand. She's wearing lycra shorts, a crop top and a bright-red lipsticked smile. Picture perfect from head-to-toe, she knows she's making people stare.
Not all the looks are benevolent, however. While many watch on in fascination, enjoyment and maybe even lust, Simmons-Villari knows there are others who scoff and roll their eyes in thinly veiled disgust.
"I felt like they looked at me like I was a hooker or a stripper," the former grid girl and now owner of Deluxe Events says. "It was classed in that category.
"People really looked at me like I was scum. I was treated quite disgustingly in certain situations."
The former Miss Porsche Motorsport has worked in the promotional modelling industry since she was 17, after an impressed photographer persuaded her to enter a model search.
Enticed by the extra cash and the opportunity to step out of her comfort zone, Simmons-Villari signed with an agency and started working as a grid girl at some of New Zealand's biggest motorsport events.
Simmons-Villari was soon in hot demand but she quickly realised the "glamour" job came with less glamorous pitfalls.
"It was really hard to be abused just for doing a job," she said. "In my eyes, I wasn't doing anything wrong.
"I don't understand why people can look at it and think that there's something wrong with it."
But many do. In a sporting world where women are fighting harder and harder to be recognised on equal footing with men, grid girls, ring girls, promo girls - call them what you like - are seen as an anachronism; an embarrassing reminder of an age when women in sport was a reference to women hanging off the arms of sportsmen.
Grid girls were first introduced by Formula One in the 1960s and having a group of hand-picked beautiful women lined up across the track prior to a race, dressed in skimpy outfits, has since become an iconic part of motorsport.
But the presence of grid girls and promotional models in the wider sporting world has always had its criticism, with some fans labelling it as unnecessary, sexist and a way of encouraging the objectification of women. Lately, that noise has become deafening.
Last year, Formula One appeared to finally act on the criticism by axing the presence of grid and podium girls at all races on the Formula One and Two calendars, stating that their presence no longer resonated with the brand.
"Clearly it's at odds with modern day societal norms," Sean Bratches, Formula One's managing director of commercial operations said at the time.
"We don't believe the practice is appropriate or relevant to Formula One and its fans, old and new, across the world."
Formula One's bold move heaped praise from prominent feminists who hailed the end of grid girls as a victory for women.
It was publically applauded by the Women's Sport Trust and other sporting codes alike.
Darts, a sport whose popularity was born in the sort of booze halls once considered the domain of red-blooded males, quickly followed suit. They stopped using walk-on girls for all televised tournaments in the name of "inclusive family viewing".
The removal of the jobs rocked the promotional modelling industry, at the same time sullying the reputations of women who were proud to be a part of the long-standing tradition.
While many praised the move as progressive, it didn't take long before former grid girls and promotional models around the world stood together in protest.
Even Formula One Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel spoke out against the bans, calling grid girls "a beautiful thing".
"I like women. I think they look beautiful. The bottom line is that there is too much of a fuss nowadays," he told media last year ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix.
"All the women that took part as a grid girl in the past did it because they want to. I'm sure if you ask any grid girl … if they're happy to stand there, their answer will be yes."
Insisting that she never once felt pressured into doing any promo girl job, Simmons -Villari was heart-broken to see it removed and said it was a shame that so few people took the time to understand how the bans would affect the women themselves.
"I don't think it's fair, I think it's wrong … Nobody ever forces the girls to do that job, they do it because they love it," Simmons -Villari said.
"Can you see someone on TV standing behind them with a gun and saying you have to stand here in this lycra outfit? The girls are happy, they're loving it, they're enjoying it, they look forward to it.
"To have that opportunity taken away from them is a shame, because for me, I have so many amazing memories of doing that, being on the grid … Nobody forced me to do it, I did it out of my own free will."
The biggest motivator for women who choose to dabble in the world of promotional modelling is the money.
Although the industry is not as lucrative as it used to be, more often than not the girls use the weekend gig as a way to fund their way through university or to contribute to their long-term savings.
Working as a promo girl helped Simmons -Villari buy her first home at just 21, and said many of the girls who now work for her use the job as a way to get ahead.
"It's a good way for the girls to make money and if they're doing a few jobs a week they can earn the same as what they would earn in a salary doing a normal job," Simmons -Villari said.
"I even have a few mums who work for me and this is how they support their children."
Not everyone has been impressed by the amount of cash up for grabs for promo girl around the world.
In 2015, American UFC champion and Olympic judo bronze medallist Ronda Rousey spoke out against ring girls after it was revealed that some were earning more than the female fighters themselves.
The then-undefeated bantamweight sparked a heated feud with Arianny Celeste, the UFC's longest-tenured ring girl and who firmly believed that promo girls earned every cent they made.
"I don't know if the ring girls get paid too much or the fighters don't get paid enough," Rousey told media at the time. "There's definitely a lot more in what the fighters do than what the [ring girls] do."
The actual presence of promo girls isn't often what cops the most attention and criticism though. Rather it's how the women are dressed.
In order to gain the best, ahem, exposure for their brand, clients request their promo girls wear tight, revealing outfits.
Simmons-Villari agreed that their primary role is to make the sport look "sexy" but says critics often missed the point.
The sponsors pay for the sport and they find it easier to sell their product if there is personality involved.
"If you're in Formula One and you've spent a million dollars sponsoring [to get] your logo on the side of the car that's cool, but the camera is more likely to focus in on a pretty girl waving and smiling with your logo on the front of her shirt."
An Auckland-based promo girl, who chose to remain anonymous, said she too believed that there was more to the job than modelling alone and said engaging with audiences was what she looked forward to the most.
"I love it when little kids come up to me and ask for a photo with me," she said. "The best part for me about doing promo work is getting to meet people and people coming up to me wanting to take photos."
The 28-year-old Administration Manager has represented Demon Energy as a 'Demon Energy Babe' at motorsport events across New Zealand and worked as a ring girl over the last eight years.
"Why shouldn't females be involved in male sports?" she asks.
After growing up competing in beauty pageants and performing as a dancer, she viewed the job as another way to entertain audiences and meet new people.
She enjoyed the change of scenery from her daily desk job, although admits to having endured some inappropriate experiences.
"I've had a few drunken people slip their hand in inappropriate places and you just end up shooing them away or telling them that that's not OK," she said. "Because you're in that industry you will always have some minor bad experiences."
Despite this, she slams the idea that promo girls were endorsing the objectification of women.
"I hate when people say, 'You're asking for it.' Why can't I dress the way I want to dress without fearing that someone's going to touch me or say something like it's rude or inappropriate?
"I've never felt objectified by it because otherwise, I wouldn't be doing it."
Prior to the decision of axing grid girls, Formula One had attempted to change the sexy stigma which surrounded the job by dressing the women in more appropriate, professional clothing.
Short skirts made way for pants while crop tops were swapped for polo shirts and it didn't take long for other brands and organisers to follow the new covered-up trend.
Labelling the changes as neither a good nor bad thing, Simmons-Villari says it was nice that companies are recognising that having promo girls dress in less is not necessarily more.
"They're requesting older, more mature, intelligent girls, so it's interesting that there's definitely been a shift in what companies are wanting, which obviously is a sign of the times," she says.
Even with the shift in emphasis, promo girls are still accused of sending negative messages to young girls about the role of women in sport; they have been fed the idea that the job title is something to feel ashamed of.
The reports of the industry as being catty and malicious are also grossly overstated, says Simmons-Villari. Most of the girls, she says, are dropped off to work by their parents who view the job no differently than they would if their daughter was waiting tables.
Even though women may never walk onto a Formula One track as a grid girl, escort a Darts champion to the podium, or lift the round number in a boxing ring again, Simmons-Villari was confident that promo girls would always be present in sport.
"At the end of the day nothing really can replace that personal interaction and that personal touch that brand ambassadors can bring to an experience for punters," Simmons-Villari said.
"It set me up for life, for who I am today. I'm proud of the way that we are moving as a society [but] don't ban it.
"Just change it. Just improve it."
