Misogyny in F1: Halo

Lets begin this by congratulating Doriane Pin, who recently won the F1 Academy Championship. Pin’s growth this season has been remarkable to watch, and she proves time and again that she has both the skill and the mindset to rise to the very top. ♥︎

On to my rant of the week, Halo. This was a ‘broadcast for Women’ as they described it and this wouldn’t have been a problem, if they showed women’s sports and created a space for women to enjoy sports together. Instead, the PR manager of their TikTok/Instagram decided to make a highly offensive and sexist post captioned, ‘ how the matcha + hot girl walk combo hits’ with background video of MALE football players. Additionally, their use of pink font is just demeaning to many women. Them posting male f1 drivers also caused outroar as it was meant to be a page that focused on Women excelling in sports.

To add on that, it fed into the stereotype that women know nothing about sports/f1 and need it to be dumbed down for them to understand. I, for one, can disagree highly as most of the educated, sports related conversations I’ve had was with women, not men. If anything, some men, especially on social media, love to undermine women who are into sports by saying they don’t have ‘wheel knowledge’ and are only there for the “attractive men”. Labelling female sport fans as ‘fan-girls’ which is an extremely harmful narrative to spread as it delegitimises women as a whole who are into the sport because they enjoy it.

The message to this is to think before posting anything, especially when the post has misogynistic undertones that is extremely harmful to an already damaged reputation Women fandoms have. Women are not dumb and don’t need pink font and matcha to understand how races work.