the unbridled sexism of four-wheeled pubs
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The wind is blowing in Arizona. Thelma and Louise dumped their better half for a convertible ride that went horribly wrong. In the final scene of this Ridley Scott film (1991), Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis soar from the top of the Grand Canyon, in a final and fatal momentum of freedom, aboard their 1966 Ford Thunderbird.
This initiatory epic, which has become cult, marks a turning point in the history of the representation of women in cinema. By clinging to the steering wheel, the two friends from Arkansas take their destiny into their own hands. A small revolution in the collective unconscious since for years, whether in the seventh art or in advertising, driving, speed, travel, the very idea of escape, were reserved for men.
Beautiful bodies…
Women, on the other hand, liked big cars…or at least the men who drove them. Unable to make a crenel or to change a wheel, they distinguished rather badly the difference between the gearbox and the handbrake. When they took the wheel (dead at the turn), they preferred to be naked, so as not to crease their clothes. Such has been the image of women conveyed by automotive advertising campaigns, which have historically confined them to the role of passenger, or even accessory. The sexy young hostesses of auto shows have long served as bait to encourage these gentlemen to buy.
However, the first woman had her license in… 1898. Her name (we are getting hooked!): Marie Adrienne Anne Victurnienne Clémentine de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Duchess of Uzès, whose history has retained that she was also the first woman to receive a ticket for speeding (she was driving at 15 km/h). In 1926, she founded the Women’s Automobile Club of France – even though racing was forbidden to them. At the time, and for a long time to come, the supposed coquetry of women and the dirty character of the automobile seemed incompatible. In the 1960s, at auto shows, girls could be splashed around in the foam instead of the engine to prove the vehicle’s watertightness. Woman-object, always: for years, commercials for premium cars explicitly compared feminine curves and bodywork, chests to suspensions.
In 1993, a TV spot causes a mini-scandal and becomes a sort of standard for sexist automotive advertising. In this black and white film for Audi, a woman in her forties, a sort of embodiment of Parisian chic, walks with her head held high and her gaze determined on a bridge in the capital. Behind her, a car is idling. In voiceover (male), we hear: “He has the money, he has the power, he has an Audi, he will have the wife. » Then the scene shifts to a park, the same driver brakes because a balloon springs up in his path. He stops and throws the ball back to two little girls. The woman witnesses this moving gesture (he could have crushed them after all). New voiceover (female this time): “Men think that a nice car serves to show the thickness of their wallet, but it also serves to show the beauty of their soul. » Back on the bridge, where the woman gets into the sedan. By car Simone.
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