But oiled-up muscle hunks in speedos are still OK, right?

[samhexum]

Mexico City bans use of attractive models at city events

They’ve long been an unmissable part of public events in Mexico, from soccer matches to trade fairs: attractive women hired to be greeters or simply as eye candy, sometimes scantily clad in short skirts and high heels or crop-tops and hot pants emblazoned with corporate logos.

Now Mexico City has prohibited the use of models known in local parlance as “edecanes” at events sponsored by the local government, breaking new ground for a country where deeply entrenched gender stereotypes often continue to relegate women to supporting roles in the workforce.

 

“This job should not exist,” the capital’s mayor, Jose Ramon Amieva, said in announcing the ban last week. “It goes against policies of gender equality.”

 

In 2014, a group of female politicians organized a forum on the topic that concluded the edecan industry sometimes is a cover for prostitution and that the models face precarious employment conditions. It estimated more than 1 million Mexicans work as hostesses or hosts, most of them in the informal sector.

 

Online job postings for hostesses offer salaries ranging anywhere from 5,000 pesos ($260) to 30,000 pesos ($1,560) per month, well above the current minimum wage of about $4.60 per day.

 

While edecanes’ presence at corporate and government events tends to be more demure than elsewhere — think blazers, high heels and slacks or knee-length skirts rather than skin-tight bodysuits — there have been some instances that attracted criticism.

 

In perhaps the most notorious one, the electoral institute hired a Playboy model to hand out envelopes at the first presidential debate ahead of the 2012 election. Julia Orayen emerged onstage in a tight white dress with a plunging neckline that revealed lots of cleavage, in sharp contrast to the button-up dress shirt and black suit donned by the lone female contender for the presidency, Josefina Vazquez.

 

Julia Orayen, second from right, carries a box to presidential candidates containing paper for them to take to assign their speaking order at the start of a presidential candidate debate in Mexico City, Sunday, May 6, 2012.

 

And in 2016, the New Alliance party held a campaign event featuring several women in tight white stretch pants and topless save for body paint in the party’s signature turquoise and white.

 

At Mexico City government events, models have generally been hired to greet guests, pass microphones around for questions or simply smile onstage alongside mostly male speakers.

 

Indra Rubio, who coordinates the gender justice program for Oxfam in Mexico, called the capital’s model ban a “small but very important step” for a country that’s “still macho.”

 

“We need to question as a society: Why is a woman’s body seen as an object?” Rubio said. “This places the woman always at a disadvantage, if her participation in the workforce is subject to her physical appearance.”

 

Rubio said she would like to see the model ban extend to other local governments and also be adopted at the federal level, arguing that taxpayers’ money should be spent to empower women, not objectify them.

 

“Women aren’t seen as having rights, as equals,” she said, “and I think this generates violence against women.”