Agador Spartacus said:
She was this fully capable woman who was kicking ass in her role. Only to immediately fall into the bed of the driver.
The only other woman was a bumbling idiot of a pit crew member.
There's just been such a push in F1 to change perceptions around women in racing, and this is the flying in the exact opposite direction.
Bechdel test was easy on this one.
Bro... you left out the mom. That was a pretty significant role.
I'm somewhat sensitive to the whole woman succeeding in a man's world narrative due to two lines of work that I've been in for the past 30+ years.
1 - US Army Tanker - 0.0% females during my time in service in the 1990s. It think it was around 2016 when they opened that career field to females. I don't know how many women are in it now but, I'm sure it's far fewer than 10%.
2 - Information Technology Infrastructure - Hardware / Software - 5% females, 95% males (I have receipts if you want to see them).
With respect to Formula 1, I'd guess it's somewhere between being a Tanker, or being in IT. So, maybe 3% female.
With 20 drivers, 3% gives you 0 drivers.
With 10 teams, 3% gives you 0 Team Principals, Chief Engineers, etc., etc., etc.
22 pit crew @ 3% gives you 2/3 of a female pit crewmember - so having one is legit
My experience with females in male dominated careers is:
20-25% are lesbians - so that takes them out of the male romantic pursuit
Almost all of them are really good at their job, at least as good or better than half the men. And if you really want to dig in to it, the Indian females are almost always better than half the Indian men. But I digress.
Did they play up the miscues by the rookie female crew member? Sure. But as mentioned in the movie. It is a team sport and she pulled it together. I thought the development and progression was good for her character.
At least she didn't have a septum ring purple hair and neck tats. On the other side of the coin, she didn't have double Ds and a bunch of scenes in a low cut top. She was just kind of normal.
Back to women in a male dominated career field. Do the handful of females get romantically involved with the males? I'd say yes, about 50% of the time - again, my experience, your mileage may vary.
Me personally, I have far more gay guys hit on me than females but, I've had a couple of females at work who didn't want to take no for an answer and believe me, I don't have Brad Pitt's looks and in this movie - raw masculinity. If you're a girl who likes boys, I can see the attraction. Does it happen IRL? All the time.
Anyway, back to your critique, you want F1 realism but you also didn't like the actions of the females with significant roles in the movie.I would liked to have seen the girls/women who are actually around F1 in real life.
I've attended the Singapore F1 race twice (2018 & 2019) and I saw plenty of trophy wives and promo girls. Unfortunately this movie was lacking in both of those departments.
To promote more women and a real F1 experience, they could have at least included a post-race BABYMETAL concert, right?
