here is an unsorted list of things i think about when i think about nicole piastri:
her dad was a rally mechanic in the 80s/90s (as was chris piastri's dad), a time when rally was at the height of its popularity and extremely dangerous. so she grew up around a highly dangerous form of motorsport
the primary emotion through which she experiences oscar's f1 career seems to be really intense anxiety (e.g., when daniel came out of semi-retirement, nicole's first reaction was to feel bad for his mum)
her oldest child is her only son (and i think a lot about boy moms here). she has three daughters who live with her (or who lived with her until adulthood), while her son doesn't and hasn't for ten years. even so her family system revolves around oscar and his career. the central cog of their family system is the one member who is never there
at times nicole seems to take oscar's emotional distance personally. i think she feels a bit neglected by him. hence her appeals on twitter, the (lightly) embarrassing anecdotes she tells the press, the story of her calling him heartless. i think it bothers her that people see her son as cold and unfeeling, because that reflects poorly on her as his mother. i think in part it bothers her because she agrees
based on her account of the story: it appears likely that the decision for oscar to attend boarding school in england from the age of 14 on was made without nicole present, and she tried hard to talk oscar out of it
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sigh. okay mark webber forcefem manifesto. or: how mark webber's lifelong failure of masculinity could very interestingly translate to kink. (slightly nsfw images ahead)
okay FIRSTLY. i don't have a specific pairing in mind for this fic. as i alluded to in this screenshot:
ann is definitely a candidate for gender reasons i will get into in a moment. but oscar also works for other, related reasons that. those being: at its core, forced feminization is about subverting expected gender dynamics in such a fashion as to emphasize and exaggerate perceived failures of masculinity.
(i'll get to oscar in a bit. but i think understanding ann comes first.)
see this forcefem caption:
(deniedbetahusband4 i owe you everything. btw)
so. the mark webber of it all.
couples playing with forcefem take the classic form of man who is feminized and dominant woman who does the feminizing. sissies are being forcibly feminized by their female partner as 'punishment' for failing as a Man. sissies no longer have the right to penetrate their female partners (or to use their cocks at all); they are the ones penetrated, sometimes by their female partner, sometimes by an outside man. they pleasure their female partner through oral sex. sissies can feel pleasure, but not masculine pleasure, only feminine pleasure through penetration. forcefem plays with how we socially understand the role of women in sex; it says that these acts are what make women women, and by doing them, you become one.
you can probably see where i'm going with this.
the subverted gender-power dynamic and sexual taboo that power forcefem already exist in mark's life, particularly in his relationship with ann, his older wife. his professional success (or lack thereof) and his sporting career are also fuel in the fire of mark webber's failures of masculinity.
if you are mark webber, you arrive to your f1 career later in life than many of your peers (particularly seb, lewis, and fernando); you are only just not successful; you are perennially second-best, inferior to your younger teammate; you're overlooked; and, on top of that, you have a much-older partner who you've been with for a long time, a woman who controls your career and your life (the source of your masculine identity). ann, a woman, the woman mark is in a relationship with, has an enduring position of authority over mark. he does not have authority over her = failure as a man. mark's team--who also control mark's career and the success of his masculine identity--favor his teammate, seb. he does not have authority over another man and is subjugated to this other, younger man = failure as a man.
the arenas that reinforce masculine power are generally career/sporting success and personal sexual relationships. and mark is literally 0/2 there. double failure as a man = woman.
and YET. he is literally MR AUSSIE GRIT. which he feels so strongly about in his own self-mythology that he LITERALLY NAMED HIS MEMOIR THAT. he so clearly YEARNS to think of himself as this, like, guys guy down-to-earth aussie bloke. it's evoking a very specific traditional brand of australian athletic masculinity, yet he's been subjugated on both fronts of his life where he would find gender affirmation. his insistence that he is MR AUSSIE GRIT TRADEMARK reveals a defensiveness about his own masculinity and suggests a deeper insecurity about his failure to measure up as a man.
to ME. those are all of the ingredients to create a psyche that would nut with impunity upon hearing the sentence "SISSY CLITTIES DONT FUCK PUSSY THEY GET LOCKED IN CAGES BY THEIR MOMMY."
oscar comes into this in the sense that he's an outside to mark's relationship. i think to some extent that mark and ann have to pretend like they are the #1 most normal average couple in the world or else their founding myth of their relationship would implode completely. but oscar doesn't have that reservation; he doesn't have a marriage to preserve like mark does. oscar is the new hope who casts mark's own masculine failures into clear relief. he is also someone who is supposed to be under mark’s thumb, someone who mark advises and mentors. there is a right way for hierarchy to exist in their relationship and as the older more experienced man, mark should be at the top of that hierarchy.
yet oscar really does not want to be like mark. he wants to be successful, and mark was not as successful as oscar would be, because mark failed as a man (because trust that losing is failing as a man. being a loser means you are a WOMAN!!!!). so oscar might be hyperaware of mark's failures, and find some security and reassurance in subjugating mark through forcefem/sissy play. if i'm feminizing mark, that makes me masculine, that makes me powerful, that makes me Not Like Him, which makes me a winner.
An interesting tidbit is Oscar was actually asked if he ever felt stressed about all the $$$ his family was putting into his jr career. He answered no (rich ppl things, appreciate the honesty lol!) bc money was never brought up to him and that he’s lucky to come from a well off family.
He did say however, that the emotional sacrifices his family were making DID stress him out, esp after bad races. He mentioned his dad having to move with him & work in between races, when obviously his dad would rather be in Australia with the rest of his family— and he mentioned the stress his mom was under having to raise his 3 sisters by herself and making sure they don’t feel left out. He also said he’s sure it wasn’t easy for multiple reasons to let him pursue this lol
this is what i mean btw when i say that the piastri family system revolves around oscar and his career, the central cog of their family system is the one member who is never there. i saw someone vague posting about that bit of this post i made about nicole a few months ago, like well we don’t know what their family dynamic is like, his sisters have their own personalities, they have a lot going on, blah blah blahhhhhhhh. incorrect buzzer sound WRONG!!!! we know literally all we possibly need to know about that family dynamic just by looking at its most basic characteristics: a couple goes to great lengths to send their eldest child, their only son, to the heights of his sport. and they put all of their resources into it, money, time, emotions. there’s no way that they’d have the mental and material resources to devote the same to one of his younger sisters—not that your average family would bother, really.
simply put, i don’t see a way of going about that which WOULDN’T impact literally every aspect of family life for his sisters and parents. it certainly impacts them now, christ, like these girls are undoubtedly getting recognized as Oscar Piastri’s Sisters first and themselves second. you’re going to tell me that their famous brother—who is twenty times more successful than the most successful person i’ve ever personally known in my life—wouldn’t live in the shadows of literally everything they ever did? don’t piss me off.
in that same vein, it really annoys me when people gives famous ppl/athletes & their families too much leeway, or act like it’s possible/probable these high profile people are exempt from participating in societal structures. like sure maybe you can give a normal stranger the benefit of the doubt, but these are people who have significant power & belong to the class of society enforcing & benefiting from those structures. no kidding the rich family of an elite male athlete isn’t going to Do The Work to protect their son’s mental wellbeing from the substantial stress an elite sporting career puts a child under. i mean like, nicole tried, but she could have tried harder and she didn’t
i fear i do not have very coherent through about the girl!lando and danica/bianca comparison beyond vibes and how all of them would say/have said or done stuff publicly that as soon as you see it you just know it’s gonna look horrible and set us back years, not completely their fault bc they are just human but holy shit where is your pr team.
i would like to hear your thoughts on what type of woman would be allowed on a big motorsport, do any of these resemble your interpretation of the fem drivers or any other actual girl drivers we know (ex: f1 academy ladies) (ps: i would also love your, if you have it, meta on the f1 academy girls)
your post have made me think on how the public and even fandom reaction to recent events changes if the drivers where all girls, the gax beef, ferrari flopping, red bull in general, whatever is happening to antonelli, liam lawson omg.
another funny thought is thinking of how the genderbent would affects the reputations of drivers the general public likes, like peak daniel..
(shoutout to girl!lewis, wherever universe she is i know she’s been needing a big hug…thinking of her treatment terrifies me)
You're absolutely right that every single motorsports personality would be perceived entirely differently by the media and the public. That is because personas—especially sporting personas of male athletes, in a male-dominated space—are inherently gendered. There fore if these athletes were women, their personas would be gendered in a fundamentally different way.
As for what sort of woman would be allowed in Big Motorsport — we don’t have to speculate much about this! A lot of scholarship has been written about women in motorsports, and most relevant to us, which sorts of women are admitted to that ecosystem. There are limitations to this: different motorsports series operate in different ways. A NASCAR driver is not gendered the same way as an F1 driver, ergo the bounds of acceptability would look different for women between the two series too. F1 hasn’t had a female driver since the 90s (Giovanna Amati), and not one who regularly qualified to compete since the 70s (Lella Lombardi).
That is to say we don’t have a real-life reference for what sort of woman would be allowed to drive full-time in F1 today. This isn’t so much a fluke but rather by design of the motorsports landscape. If F1 wanted women in a seat they could have a woman in a seat. In other words, what sort of woman would be allowed in F1? None.
Regardless, there are a few women who made it high up in other elite motorsports series that shed some important life on which women are able to reach those heights and the nature of that experience.
This article by John Sloop provides an insightful media analysis of Deborah Renshaw, the only woman in the 2002 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Sloop says this of Renshaw’s ascension to elite motorsports:
Renshaw was being held forth as the ‘‘prototype’’ of female drivers by those in NASCAR circles who thought female drivers would be a way to expand the demographic of NASCAR’s fan base. In short, she was positioned as a marketable female, combining driving skills with ‘‘ladylike’’ attractiveness.
To Sloop, the following characteristics made Renshaw an acceptable woman for her NASCAR team to sign:
She was feminine and ‘ladylike’
Occupied a flexible but undeniable femininity based on context; she was well-spoken and respectable in off-track interviews, professional but nonthreatening at the paddock, and casual and easygoing around the other guys
Talented enough to achieve good results in feeder categories
Leaning into her own femininity while being vocally insistent that womanhood has neither helped nor hindered her. She overemphasized her own merit, maintaining that she earned her achievements and her seat through her own hard work and talent
Sloop doesn’t spell it out super super clearly, but I’d also add that a component to a lot of these traits is that women who call the generally conservative, patriarchal consensus into question in a major way also wouldn’t be quite so tolerated. Perhaps she occasionally uses feminist talking points, but she’s not quoting theory, she’s not making this a central part of her public persona. She has to believe, on some level, that she is the exception to the rule, that there is no real reason why she shouldn’t succeed (or at the very least, not publicly express otherwise).
These are traits that got her a seat in her NASCAR series, though these traits were not enough for her to face a backlash and retaliation significant enough to derail her career significantly.
Susie Wolff is probably the closest we’ve come to a woman in F1. She falls in line with a lot of Sloop’s observations of Deborah Renshaw: she’s feminine and ladylike, known for being attractive (and in particular petite and blonde); she’s well-spoken and has been for her entire career; she was talented in the feeder categories, and made it to F3 before an injury lost her her sponsorship and then her seat; and, at least for her active racing years, she’s been conservative with how much being a woman has impacted her career (and especially her racing ability and mentality).
Something that Susie adds is her candidness with the role of sponsorship in her career. As we know, attaining personal sponsorship, having connections to money, is one of if not the single most important factors determining success in a racing career. Aside from various physiological and cultural trends amongst women (less desire to race from a young age, on average less muscle mass than men, etc), access to sponsorship is a huge impediment to the progression of a female racing driver’s career. Susie herself encountered this when she lost her hard-won F3 sponsors after an ankle injury.
By her own admission, most of Susie’s sponsors would not have sponsored a man; they came to motorsport for Susie, to sponsor a woman. Susie often frames this as a positive: being a woman actually earned me x opportunity that men couldn’t get! Very glass-half-full of her. What Susie mentions less often is that this pool of woman-focused sponsors is smaller and less lucrative than the pool of sponsorship that her male peers had access to. It is not just that Susie had to rely on women-focused sponsors, it’s that they were the only ones she could rely on. She did not have access to other sponsors, because Susie is a woman, and these other sponsors were not interested in working with a woman.
The sponsorship available to women in motorsport is, or has historically been, brands or names interested in specifically using their femininity to advertise. It seems to me that a racer’s reliance of these sponsors would only increase as she made her way up the junior categories to more prominent, and therefore expensive, categories. That is to say: the sponsorship opportunities available to most women in motorsport rely on these women having marketable femininity. That is also to say: less marketable femininity would be less sponsorable. That is to say: I don’t think there is much space here for masculine women.
This is why I am so insistent that girl!drivers would not be able to be particularly masculine, at least not in any substantial public way, or at the beginning of their careers in elite motorsport series, when acquiring independent sponsorship would assume vital importance. Perhaps their persona could shift as their career evolves. I think a lot about Lewis Hamilton on this regard, how he was able to use his platform to overtly advocate for social justice once his place in F1 was unquestionable and undeniable. His persona evolved, and he was able to make his Blackness a more overt, public-facing element of it. My gut is to draw a connection to a hypothetical woman at the peak of motorsport: she’d be able to inhabit less digestible forms of femininity once her place in the sport was undeniable.
Hope this makes sense! Women in motorsport, in particular female motorsport personalities, is something that I’m very interested in, and hoping to do more reading about shortly.
how does a georgiehead even begin to unpack imola 2021....i've probably already written about this at length and also it is the premise of the first fic i ever posted in this fandom, haymaker. let me set the scene....
imagine you are george russell. it is the second race week of 2021, your third season in f1. you back yourself 1000% to do something great in f1 but you've been relegated to the back-markerist of back markers going on three years. you're at your wits end with finishing p19 and just want to be in the MERCEDES which you've DRIVEN IN A RACE and you almost won before team error thwarted that result. and meanwhile there are all these ~rumors about your future, lots and lots of speculation about who is going to partner lewis hamilton at mercedes next year since valtteri's contract was up. you? valtteri? esteban ocon? who is it going to be? who could deserve the honor?
needless to say you are THIRSTY to prove yourself. you are DESPERATE to show your worth.
imola did that year what imola does and it rained. and williams did that year what williams had NOT done in years at that point and produced a car that could kinda finish in the points sometimes. and f1 did that year what it had been only pretending to do for years prior and actually enforced the cost cap.
so keep these things in mind: (1) it was raining = leveling factor = tricky conditions (2) george had yet to score points in the williams after over two seasons and was near homicidal about it (3) mercedes were under more pressure than they had been in years prior because of the cost cap, and because red bull were catching up.
so, IMOLA, and it's raining. lewis gets pole, checo and max are behind him in second and third after qualifying. we care about them (duh) but look lower for the drama in question: valtteri bottas qualifying 8th and george russell qualifying 12th. during the race, valtteri loses another position and george gains a few.
then, lap 31, THE DRAMA: after a bad pit stop putting him on slicks, lewis is trying to catch max. lewis laps george, who's in 10th, but in doing so lewis slides off and gets caught in a gravel trap. in extricating himself from the trap he makes contact with the wall. his race is almost over except he is SAVED by the RED FLAG.
what red flag you ask? well of course this is the red flag of the hour.
so literally RIGHT after lewis goes into the gravel, george is catching up to valtteri. and he wants it. oh george wants it SOOOOOOO bad. he wants to pass valtteri more than he's ever wanted anything. the optics of the williams passing the mercedes, in this current climate of whispers deciding if george deserves his promotion... aboslutely mouthwatering. george is chubbing up in the seat. he's already imagining the shit-eating grin he's going to give to toto later on when he teases him about passing his driver, knowing with full confidence that george is going to be toto's driver next year.
so george catches valtteri that lap. he gets right next to valtteri's car, driving off the dryline to do it (remember this is a wet race), and it's at that moment when he wants it the most that god wakes up. upon waking, god remembers that he's meant to be punishing george russell for the sin of desire. and george leaves too much space between his williams and valtteri's mercedes, and his tyre catches grass. he hits valtteri, sending the mercedes into the wall. george himself hits two separate walls before coming to a stop.
it's a massive crash by all accounts. they're both okay, but they'd each been going 200 mph/320 kph. the race is red flagged, there's damage to the track walls and debris everywhere. the stewards deem it a racing incident, but it's a racing incident that's george's fault.
the crash is decidedly Not Good but george constructs an intricate Torment Nexus of his own making with his reaction. he immediately blames valtteri for the crash over the radio (what the fuck was he doing? honestly, is he a fucking prick or what?) climbs out of his car, and marches right over to where valtteri is to blame him in person. he punctuates this with a slap to valtteri's helmet before storming off.
yikes! not good. but well it doesnt stop there :p
to add to what was already a really bad look. george's post race interview doesn't really do anything to take responsibility. and he actually sort of intimates that valtteri ran him off the track because of the drama surrounding george possibly taking valtteri's seat:
"well obviously i was very pissed off with him at the time, you know I'm fighting for p9. p9 for him is absolute nothing, almost meaningless. he did a move that you'd do if you were fighting for victory on the last lap of the race. so it begs the question why he'd do that for p9. perhaps if it was another driver, he wouldn't have."
so. what comes next, dear reader, is that i am going to ask you to do what no one in their right mind should do, but here we are discussing imola 2021, so needs must.
imagine you are toto wolff that evening. one of your drivers--the one whose foot is half out the door already--had a mediocre race that ended when the driver you already know is going to take his place next year crashes into him. mercedes is already struggling with how to be successful with this new cost cap, and this is only going to make things harder. and it's all happening in house. well, to you it's all happening in house. george has been in your house for like six years at this point.
and then george essentially drags out the family business for the entire world to hear, simultaneously causing eight different logistical mindfucks for the big boss to handle. but george definitely needs a speaking-to.
on that front, toto is in luck! it just so happens that george had already planned to travel back to wherever with toto on his PJ. :) who cheered!!!! not george. but i did!!!!!!
as for what happened on that private jet, who can say the specifics. we know that toto was deeply unhappy. we know that george got an earful. we know he came away fully aware of the financial position he'd put mercedes in. we know that toto fully impressed in george that mercedes expected george to consider how his actions made merc look. AND, CRITICALLY. at some point in that conversation toto told george "i am hardest on the ones I care about most." what the fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the fallout of all this is that george was absolutely lambasted by social media (and media media) afterwards. people bring it up to this day as a reason to hate him. george has done his apology tour as well, he's apologized online, apologized to valtteri, etc etc. probably apologized to lewis and the queen of england too while he was at it. george is the first to admit that his worst trait is blaming others in the heat of the moment. which is fair and not a good trait! but i don't think it's a show of, like, ontological evil to react unfairly after a crash that bad at that speed. i think anger is often an emotion that arises in times of intense fear and adrenaline.
one more thing. as a rule i don't love what-ifs in sports. but something to think about, that i know george himself has thought about: the 2021 season came down to the difference between first and second at the last race. mercedes pushed development to the last cent and couldn't afford upgrades they wanted to make, in particular a floor upgrade estimated to cost around half a million. the estimated cost of the damage done to valtteri's car by the crash was around 1.3 mil iirc....
well. anyways. thats imola 2021. ive seen my diva at her lowest and i loved her anyways <3
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Okay so I’ve been thinking about what the Choscar dynamic could actually look like in normal canonverse yaoi. No pussies no self lubricating assholes just choscar who are race car drivers. I have a pretty clear idea of what Oscar -> Charles would look like, but I’ve thought less about what Charles -> Oscar would look like. I think that their personal relationship might be necessarily bit unilateral (as in, Charles has the upper hand) and that makes pinning down what draws Charles to Oscar CRUCIAL in developing a believable dynamic between the two of them that would result in sex/a romantic relationship/what have you.
Oscar -> Charles: I think Oscar makes his interest in Charles pretty obvious tbh. Whenever they share a podium/cooldown room/press conference/general breathing space, Oscar makes a point to speak to Charles. In these moments Oscar is clearly trying to be charming. I think he recognizes the influence and status Charles has and aspires to it — Charles is charming and insanely likable and his personality catches attention without him even trying. I don’t think that this is the same for Oscar, though I think he wants it to be. I think that, combined with the fact that Charles is an established, very talented racer for a very important team, compels Oscar. He might be curious about Charles, what makes him tick, how he’s able to achieve a balance between the unfiltered messy emotion of Lando and Oscar’s own relatively flat affect (bc I do think that people commenting on Oscar’s lack of emotion gets to him, I think he’s made an effort to be more emotive on the radio & let his personality through more. I just don’t think that sort of thing comes super naturally to him).
Also Charles is gorgina beautiful and sexy and getting with him would definitely be an Accomplishment. whats not to love!!!
Charles -> Oscar: more complicated because what, really, does Oscar specifically have to offer Charles from Charles’s perspective. I can’t imagine that Charles would find Oscar’s personality all that compelling and Charles could definitely pull someone hotter and more exciting and more accomplished… which I think means that whatever connection they have has to be externally motivated for Charles. i.e. it has to come from circumstances that make Oscar more important to Charles. And I think what that has to be is the championship battle.
Thinking from Charles’s POV this season. For many reasons, Charles deserves to have a championship-contending car more than Oscar. He’s put in his time; he’s been a consistently spectacular driver even when he’s had a shit car (and he’s had a shit car far beneath his skill level for many years); and he’s shown loyalty to a team that should be on top, and yet time and time again fails to deliver on their promise to give him a championship. And then there Charles is, watching the McLarens— a team that should be at the front yet clawed its way up from far lower lows than Ferrari— run away with a championship, and it seems likely that Oscar is going to win it on his third year in the sport, his third year with his first team in F1. (<- take this with a grain of salt I’m personally rooting for lando in the championship but also i’m not really a mclaren far so i don’t care. but ALSO this is #yaoi so don’t worry about it)
It might be difficult for Charles to watch Oscar have the chance to win like that and not go about it in the way that Charles would consider to be the correct way. Oscar is in a position that Charles has dreamed about, that Charles is certain he’d win in; it’s so easy for Charles etc be so prescriptive about the way Oscar should be going about it, especially off track — especially since Charles ISN’T in that position, and realistically has never been, at least not over the course of an entire season. Perhaps he doesn’t think Oscar is celebrating it in the way he should, or that he’s being too accepting of circumstances out of his control, or giving the heartfelt outpouring of love to his team that Charles so badly wants to give back to Ferrari.
Which I think would lead to a central tension in their own sporting philosophies as they relate to their own teams. McLaren and Ferrari are two very different teams with very different ethos and support cultures surrounding them. In a way that maps onto the way they deal with their drivers, though it doesn’t take much to see that Lando has a very different relationship with McLaren than Oscar does. But even then, Lando and Oscar’s relationship to McLaren is far less— for lack of a better word— emotional than Charles’s relationship is with Ferrari (perhaps because the McLaren ethos/support culture is far less emotional than Ferrari’s - def don’t mean that in a bad way for either team rly!).
Oscar is loyal to McLaren because there’s nowhere better to be at the moment, nowhere that might benefit him as much as McLaren in the foreseeable future. But that loyalty hasn’t exactly been tested, not in the way that it has, over and over, for Charles. (I think the way Oscar and Alpine’s relationship ended also could play a role here, but I digress.) As far as F1 careers go, Oscar’s had it easy. Both he and his team have proven themselves capable of winning, without leaving much room for doubt. Obviously the same cannot be said of Charles. Charles wants to win SO badly WITH Ferrari. When he dreams of winning the championship he’s wearing red. And he’s wanted that for longer than Oscar has had a tangible future in F1! And the struggling frontrunner team to actually make the recovery is not his. It’s McLaren…
I’m not sure how this would come to a head. maybe something something Ferrari contract renegotiations and Charles considering leaving/being courted by McLaren/something like that idk… ideas accepted but I just wanted to get these thoughts down…
Once again NOT to imply f1 drivers are facing misogyny in real life, but it feels pretty natural to map their irl levels of vanity, ugly ducklingness, and how much they care about what people think onto their r63 counterparts' performance of femininity like let's analyze the data, let's build a matrix
George: maximum vanity, maximum ugly duckling, maximum caring obviously
Lando: max vanity, med ugly duckling (r63 I think she'd have figured her hair out much earlier though), med caring (maybe controversial? But the bad self esteem comes in waves)
Max: min vanity max ugly duckling negative caring (the way straight guys on reddit would be angrily horny about max is deeply compelling to me)
Oscar: min vanity, med ugly duckling, med caring (even though everybody pretends he doesn't at all!)
A girl charles or carlos would throw off the vanity scale though bc being vain is different when you've just always been traditionally hot 🤔
I LOVE THIS IDEA can we sort of visualize this as a, like, radial chart perhaps and add two traits: Actual Hotness as Understood by Public (AHUP) and evilness.
on a scale of 1-5 for all of the girl!drivers i've ever bothered to have a thought about:
GIRL GEORGE
vanity: 5/5 the #1 thing she's made fun of for
ugly duckling: 2.5/5 she basically likes how she looks currently but full body cringes upon thinking of her pre-2022 straight bangs
caring: 5/5 oh georgie.
AHUP: 3.5/5 (not enough for her. that's celebrity ugly)
evilness: 4/5 (it maybe should be 3.5/5 but she's seen as more evil than she is and is forced to defend herself which just creates a feedback loop in which she becomes more evil)
GIRL LANDO
vanity: 4.5/5 she's very vain but she's not that creative about it
ugly duckling: 3/5 debuting next to world's most beautiful [gender] (however you picture it) is enough to make a goofy 19 year old with frizzy hair and a gapped teeth suicidal
caring: 3.5/5 she cares less than people who characterize her as an
AHUP: 3.5/5 she's more cute than hot, though ppl who like compact tiny women are obsessed with her
evilness: 2/5 if only she were more evil....
GIRL MAX
vanity: 1.5/5 not NOTHING but she can't be fucked to do more
ugly duckling: 4.5/5 i think she actually probably got a bit less feminine as her career progressed but at first she was ok looking kind of cute, and would let people dress her up so she was pretty
caring: 2.5/5 CONTROVERSIAL MAYBE.... but i think max cares a lot more than he makes it seem. like why are you so defensive about not caring if you don't care. but of course i think she cares very deeply about what her peers think of her
AHUP: 1/5 except in the lesbian community.
evilness: 4.5/5 she's less evil than her haters make it seem but still a bit evil
GIRL OSCAR
vanity: 2/5 she tries she just doesn't really know how to go about it and can't be fucked to learn more
ugly duckling: 3/5 she used to be so acne prone and had a run of like 5 bad haircuts in a row, all from the same hairdresser
caring: 3.5/5 i think she cares sooooooo much. soooooo much more than people think she does
AHUP: 2.5/5 she's not blowing anyone's minds but she's not that hard to look at. cute in a very approachable way, which really just means that even more gross men feel the need to hit on her
evilness: 2.5/5 not too evil, but has a bit more evil hidden in her depths than lando
GIRL CARLOS
vanity: 4/5 she's vain but not willing to be totally uncomfortable for the sake of beauty. lucky for her (as you say anon) this doesn't matter because she's naturally hot
ugly duckling: 0/5 maybe went through a less polished phase but face card has been there since day 1
caring: 3.5/5 i don't think she's tooooo pressed about the media but, like max, she cares SOOOOO much about what her family and friends think of her. what charles thinks of her. what lando thinks of her. etc
AHUP: 5/5 i don't need to explain
evilness: 2/5 people think she's so much eviller than this because of a few on-track incidents but she's really the opposite of evil. like lando if only she WERE
GIRL CHARLES
vanity: 5/5 though it's so thoughtless. loves her rich bitch fashion. invitation for comments: what is the girl equivalent of the big fuckass jeans
ugly duckling: 1/5 and only because she has trauma associated with her skinny jeans phase
caring: 3.75/5 she does care!! she cares about being perceived the way that she sees herself and presents herself to the world. she is NICE and wants people to think that she is NICE
AHUP: 5/5 duh. hot enough that you wouldn't want to be her
evilness: 3.5/5 a higher rating than she deserves maybe but she's such a people pleaser that when her evilness comes out it really shocks people
GIRL ALEX
vanity: 3.5/5 like carlos alex cares about how she looks but she's not willing to be uncomfortable. really loves street wear i think
ugly duckling: 3.75/5 i could not IMAGINE the toll that being a young teenage girl when her family blew up would take on her. she's hot and cool now but i think that's a recent-ish development
caring: 3/5 idk i think she's got too much going on to care more than that
AHUP: 3.5/5 girl alex is objectively pretty and cute but i think that a lot of what makes her that way is her own curation. she's a girl engineered to attract bisexual women, i think
evilness: 4/5 underrated evilness.... in a sexy way though. i think she reads as a bit more approachable than she actually is
GIRL DANIEL
vanity: 5/5 she tries. oh god she tries
ugly duckling: 3.5/5 you could not IMAGINE the shit she got in her adult braces era. however the online lesbians love her so much that it soothes her soul. there is a niche but thriving community of people writing maxiel rpf in the girl max and girl daniel universe
caring: 5/5 lolz.
AHUP: 3.5/5 in her current era lower when she first joined the sport. she's so COOL but she's not necessarily seen as universally HOT. maybe kind of in a class-tinted trashy vaguely-alt kind of way
evilness: 3/5 is this controversial? idk. i think she could be a bit cunty lowkey. also people would see her leaving red bull as high-key evil so her score gets bumped up a bit from that
i love reading your meta analyses so here is my meager contribution:
i can’t think of another individual sport where results are so determined by things outside of the athlete’s performance (and strategy etc - in other words, things that are generally controllable on a personal level). as an ambitious, perfectionist, type-a person myself, i absolutely could not handle that. i’d completely flip out at the lack of control. so it’s crazy to me that these high performing athletes who started their careers in more even playing fields (karting, spec support series), are able to mentally tolerate the swings in performance that are completely out of their control.
i feel like there are some parallels here to some of your f1 gender writings, so would love to hear your take!
yes!! i think about this all the time. there are plenty of other sports where things that have nothing to do with the athletes themselves play a large role in the outcome -- f1 has this in common with things like cricket and baseball, where the multitude of minor variables that could or could not play a large role in determining sporting outcomes actually attracts the sport's most devoted fans -- but i can't think of another sport quite like f1 in the sheer extent that things which have nothing to do with the human body determine such a sheer amount of the outcome. the gulf in ability between the best and worst f1 drivers on the current grid is almost negligible compared the gulf in ability between like. the second and third ranked cars on the grid, yknow?
only we don't talk about f1 that way, at all. when we talk about motorsport the line between driver and car blurs; in popular discourse about outcome the car is discussed as a direct extension of the driver themselves. piastri did x, verstappen did y, z outcome resulted. not a single mention of the biggest determining factor in that outcome whatsoever.
motorsports discourse downplays the impact of machinery in order to create human narratives. drivers downplay the impact of machinery when it suits their own personal mythologizing mission. conversely: drivers and teams emphasize machinery when it creates a neater story. comparison from driver to driver across teams is almost useless, yet what is competition without comparison? outcomes can always be generalized. they can say everything or nothing about individual skill and ability.
as such narratives can take almost any form, if the media and team and drivers and public are all committed to creating one.
you're right that i think about this a lot with female drivers (and in my rule 63 universe). the reason for that is this: a field where performance is almost entirely based on off-track opportunity, and where women do not have access to the same off-track opportunities, and where the media often underplays or blatantly ignores this discrepancy because it doesn't make a neat, interesting narrative is a field able to hold women entirely responsible for any gap in performance between them and any single male rival. it creates the circumstances to blame women for shortcomings that have nothing to do with ability whatsoever.
it's this way by design; if the men in f1 were to acknowledge that institutional barriers kept women from their sport, and not talent alone, they'd have to confront questions that threaten their very identity. if f1 isn't a meritocracy, then what justifies my place in it? do i not deserve everything i have after all? if i don't deserve it, who does?
