Sex In Cars
The Male Gaze and the auto industry. An interview with Cindy Gallop.
Cindy Gallop is the founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn, a platform that promotes “consensual and porn-cliche free content.” The company grew out of a TED talk Cindy gave in 2009 under the same name. Cindy’s perspective on optics has been shaped by her leadership roles in the advertising industry — including a role as the American boss of the conglomerate BBH. Her advertising career included plenty of automotive work, on which she delivers an arsenal of insights. Below are excerpts from our conversation on the auto industry’s biggest blind spots.
On her favorite cars
I've never gotten an American license because you have to in order to drive in America. When I did drive, I absolutely loved driving and I was passionate about cars, which really took shape early on in my advertising career. In 1987, I began working at an agency in London called GGT. I was hired to work as an account manager on the Mazda account. I got a company Mazda, which was a 323. I adored it. It was my first car ever. I was so proud to have it. The RX was a classic sports car shape. It was black; it was gorgeous. BBH had the Audi account. At that time, Audi didn’t have a sports car, so I didn’t want any of those cars. Then Audi introduced a cabriolet and I decided that I really wanted an Audi cabriolet. I managed to muster all my powers of persuasion and I talked BBH into letting me have the very first Audi cabriolet as a company car, which of course resulted in huge envy across the rest of the agency. My first Audi cabriolet was red with cream colored leather seats and it was the absolute joy of my life. I drove it all over the UK. I upgraded in due course for a bright yellow Audi cabriolet which I loved even more.
“I always get extremely annoyed when people trot out that hoary old cliché “sex sells” because when people talk about that, they are only ever talking about sex through the male lens.”
On the male gaze of car marketers
My industry has always been dominated by men. It's sexist as fuck. You know, when you watch Mad Men, the depressing thing is nothing's changed. I always get extremely annoyed when people trot out that hoary old cliché “sex sells” because when people talk about that, they are only ever talking about sex through the male lens. My industry basically created a model of aspirational culture through the male lens, which was that success was epitomized by a fast sexy car and access to all the sex you could possibly want to have with a beautiful woman. Now, if the advertising industry had been female led and female driven that would have categorically not been the case.
On How to Design a Car for Women, by Women
What would a sports car look like designed by a woman? It’s remarkably analogous to the world of sex toys. Sex toys have existed since the dawn of time, because patriarchy has existed since the dawn of time. The presumption has always been that a sex toy is penis shaped. The vibrator is penis shaped, which is why the proliferation of penis shaped vibrators on the market. There is now a new generation of sex toy founders and scientists who are female who are finding sex toys that do not in any way, shape or form resemble the penis. Dame product, Crave, Laura DiCarlo are all designing new world order sex toys that don't look like anything you've seen before. I also concur with Kate Darling, who is a robotics expert who gets equally fed up with endless discussions about sex robots, where her point is the future may well include some form of sex robotics. There is no reason on God's green earth, why they have to have to be remotely human in shape. If you think about something that is designed to deliver on sexual stimulation, arguably one should seize the technological advantage of having it not have to be grounded in humanity in any way whatsoever. Same thing for cars. Women designing cars untrammeled by any old world expectations of this is the way it's always been done would come up with sports cars and performance cars that look like nothing they've ever seen before. And I would adore women to be given a chance to show us what they're capable of.
The trouble with being the lone woman in the room
One-woman tokenism is like an alien organism that has to adapt to the culture around it. And that one woman, even if she is the lead designer, is totally subject to being overruled and talked over. Years ago I was consulting for a very big global beauty brand. They hired me to help them develop the future of marketing for their products. I worked with brilliant women. I remember having a meeting. This company by the way, was headquartered in France, which made mashing the patriarchal scenario even worse. I was doing a meeting in my apartment in New York sitting around the table with all of the brilliant women I was working with. On a conference call with the senior leadership in Paris, all of whom were men, the most senior guy, the CEO, an old white guy literally said to us, no, no, no, that's not what women want. That's what's going on with that one female lead designer.
On what the car industry is missing out on
For the past 10 years more women in the US have held driver's licenses than men. For the past several years, the majority of first time millennial new car buyers are women, and this is enormously important because that is the stage of which car market preferences are set. And so you absolutely want to get those first time buyers because they will stick with, you know, that first marque they buy into. And yet, who is automotive design, marketing dealerships and CRM targeted at? All men. Literally the entire automotive industry is years behind the times because the entire industry is predicated on the idea they're selling to men, and they’re not anymore. If they only were willing to accept reality then you would have current advertising campaigns overseen by women, directed by women, cast by women, created by women, produced by women. But you don't.
In my industry the automotive brand client is a man, because again, women are very few and far between at those brands. Working with an agency, men automatically get given and staff up the car accounts. And I know, because I love cars so much that at BBH the man who was running the Audi account left to go to another agency and I went to Nigel Bogle and I asked for the account. I asked to be given the account to run. It went to a man. The male creatives get the briefs, the middle creatives want to work with marketing directors who are all white and male or marquee photographers who are all white and male. So the total clichés advertising are perpetuated.
On Sex in Cars
It's a huge, pragmatic business opportunity. The point is people have sex in cars, especially in markets where premarital sex is frowned upon, in markets where for social and cultural reasons, young people live at home with their parents till they get married. In markets where it's common for whole households to live together, commonly, and therefore, even the husbands and wives cannot find privacy to be intimate. All around the world, a huge number of people are having a huge amount of sex in a huge number of cars. And yet the automotive industry is spectacularly failing to factor this into product design and marketing. The car company that accepts that fact and requires that a car is designed specifically to be great for having sex in and then markets it on that premise cleans up.
When does diversity become real?
As with gender equality, in diversity inclusion as a whole, the data doesn't matter a rat’s ass. Rational arguments do nothing. Facts and figures do nothing. There are millions of studies out there and have been for decades about how gender equality and diversity drives better business. They didn't work because the decision making on all of this is emotional. And that's where you have to activate the emotional lever to make the men who are running the industry be willing to think differently. That's the problem basically.
And so how do you do that?
At the top of the automotive industry, as in every industry, is a close group of white guys talking to white guys about other white guys. Those white guys are sitting very pretty, less pretty right now, but generally speaking, they've got the enormous centers and gigantic bonuses, their big pools of stock options, their lavish expense accounts. Why on earth would they ever want to rock the boat? They have to have to talk about honesty. They have to appoint diversity officers. They have to have diversity initiatives. They have to wheel out the odd female lead designer, the loan female designer. They have to say the word diversity a lot, especially in public. Secretly deep down inside, they don't want to change a thing because the system is working just fine for them as it currently is. For years reporters have been asking me, “so Cindy, do you see change happening the way you want it to in gender equality, diversity inclusion?” And I go, “no.” And I get, “Oh, why is that? What do you think will make a change that you want to see happen?” And I have been responding for years, “Only one thing, complete total utter fucking disaster.” And now we have it.
The pandemic is going to make all this change. In that context, there are two key dynamics: The first is what a pandemic is already making change, the breakdown of everything. The second one is, all those of us who are “other” need to make change happen ourselves by leveraging the fucking shit out of a pandemic breakdown, and that's what needs to happen in the automotive industry. Every single woman, person of color, LGBTQ disabled person, who has a different vision needs to seize this moment now and make what they want to see happen.
I am dying to see women do it and there is absolutely not a role model anywhere at all. I want to see women do what Elon Musk has done. Where are the women who will start the mobility company of the future? The opportunity is wide open now, because of the pandemic. Now is the time when the women behind the mobility company of the future can get funding. VCs and investors are desperate to fund the future. And the white guy future has broken down. The pandemic has ensured the world will never be the same again. And that was a very good thing for those of us who were never the status quo to begin with.
Editor’s Note: We interviewed Cindy Gallop in the early months of the pandemic. Cindy offers perspective on sex positivity that challenges taboos around women and talking about sex in cars. She stresses the importance of having diverse design teams who will consider women’s needs in holistic ways. Some women’s publications have published articles with tips on how to have hot sex in cars, and challenged the notion that only teenagers think about escapist escapades. As the pandemic winds down, what Cindy says about sexism resonates as we reimagine spaces and connections in our changed world. We are curious to see if car company design departments will take her advice, and explore inclusive mobility and all its potential.