Melinda Messenger has revealed why she supports Formula 1 for having dropped grid girls.
Messenger, who worked as a grid girl for four years, told Loose Women that she often had moments of feeling “vulnerable and exploited”.
The former model told the show: “I didn’t have a kind of aspiration to be a ‘grid girl’, I was offered the job. I’d just become famous as a model, I was doing some TV. Then the Jordan [racing] team asked me if I’d be one of their ‘grid girls’.
“It was decent money, I got to take my brother on to watch the races, I thought, ‘Why not’?
“There were moments when I felt quite vulnerable and quite exploited but I just sort of accepted that that’s the way it was, I accepted, ‘Well, this is part of the job’. I don’t think I was really able to fully recognise it at the time at the age I was.”
She continued: “Now, course, I’m almost 47, and I’ve sort of reflected on these things a lot and I am really aware of it.
“I’m also aware that the perception of women are affected, very subtly, and not so subtly, by these roles that we’re given and the roles that we play, so it’s really important that this changes.”
The 46-year-old said that being a mother had had a “huge effect” on her opinion, admitting that she “really wouldn’t want” her eldest daughter to follow her career path in the sport although she would support her choices.
Messenger added: “There’s a huge number of women and girls out there that don’t necessarily have a public voice, who don’t want to always be represented in this way and have the kind of impact that that sort of judgement and the connotations that are sort of given to women when they’re objectified."
