This eye candy is tasteless

Lorraine Sommerfeld

Auto show press previews are interesting events, for a variety of reasons.

Gorgeous new cars are snickered out like candy flung from a bag. Award winners are announced to a crowd that is a dense mix of dark suits and those aiming cameras: the car executives calculating the mileage they can milk from winning those awards, and the press who can now know which picture to thrust onto the front page.

In the early goings, maintenance workers are still wiring displays, patching up carpet and adjusting the blinding lights that will drive up the temperature even in a cavernous concrete hall. Men wielding feather dusters fawn over already spotless cars, lest a speck of dust somehow causes a prospective buyer or reporter to move on.

More of these invisible workers erase single fingerprints from Plexiglas barricades and chrome stanchions, instantly removing dropped candy wrappers or discarded coffee cups from anywhere within their designated turf.

Who are the invisibles? Ken, 48, is a carpenter with 25 years' experience who worked two weeks last year. He is happy for the two days of work he'll have here at minimum wage, removing imaginary marks from immaculate cars. "As long as we look busy, it's fine. We just have to keep moving," he explains.

Donovan, 18, admits his mother told him to get up and take this job, a few days of work before he begins his semester at Michigan Institute of Aviation Technology. "I'm going to be an airplane mechanic," he says proudly. He loves to be around the cars. It's a bonus to be paid.

Where are the women, you might wonder? Well, most are dressed in provocative outfits and leaning against cars. They scarcely move; their five-inch heels prohibit any sudden movement. Occasionally one will sit in the car, to demonstrate how one might actually drive, but a surreptitious glance from a suit nearby always hauls her back to her feet, smile never faltering.

I thought we were past this. Beautiful young women who can't even tell you the name of the car next to them. For several years it seemed just some of the European manufacturers were still going this route. It presents a journalist with a problem: you want a picture of a vehicle, but just the vehicle. I feel rude asking a young woman to move. When you've made eye contact with someone standing two feet from you, it also seems rude not to acknowledge her. When she's barely dressed, it's difficult.

I asked one brunette beauty if her feet weren't killing her.

"Well, I've only been here four hours, so it's not too bad yet," she admitted. "But they told me that this car is going to be part of a world-famous exhibit, so I'm pretty excited."

It wasn't, but I hadn't the heart to tell her. In her thigh-high black boots and micro mini skirt she was virtually indistinguishable from every other young beauty in a similar outfit.

My colleagues and I all noticed a greater preponderance of female ornamentation. It was the norm 25 years ago, but now in every single manufacturer's booth there are at least as many female executives as men. Why is this exploitation okay with them?

As we made our way to the rear of the building, I stopped cold. A display by the Korean company CT&T for its electric vehicles featured several young women, pouting at imaginary cameras as they guarded tiny draped cars. One girl was dressed as a quasi-dominatrix in a patent leather outfit and thigh-high boots. At the next car, a blond stood with one hip jutting out and wearing a micro plaid skirt, knee socks, and dishevelled shirt and tie. In the forefront, a third girl was jaunty in a police officer's uniform – except it featured a skirt that barely grazed her thighs.

A dominatrix, a naughty schoolgirl and cop who looked like a stripper. Make you want to buy a car?

Lorraine Sommerfeld's column appears Saturdays in Wheels and Mondays in the Star's Living section.

www.lorraineonline.ca

More videos from Wheels.ca and our partners