When you’re one of few women in an industry full of men, it’s easy to want to blend in—to not get the looks and comments that go with being the girl. But, in a world where dudes need more education on feminine heath, power to NASCAR driver Julia Landauer for wanting to slap a tampon ad on the side of her race car.
Landauer, if you recognize the name, was the NASCAR K&N Pro Series driver ignorantly and forcibly molded into the “next Danica Patrick” in a recent Forbes feature simply because she’s a woman. (It’s a common phrase for female drivers, since they’re rare and apparently no other women, ever, have raced cars.) That tagline was given even after Landauer repeatedly said the two are nothing alike, and the male author of the story failed to listen to her.
So, in a sport where Landauer and every other female hoping to make a career out of driving can be so easily stereotyped into the narrow mold of a popular racer just because people actually know her name, it sounds like this woman wants to show everyone that not only is she unique—she’s unapologetically a woman, who has monthly cycles that require lady products.
Landauer, a 25-year-old Stanford graduate, told Bloomberg the lack of female and unisex family brands in NASCAR “baffles her.” After all, we women fulfill our quota of Viagra commercials for about the next three decades in just one NASCAR race. It’s time we get some Playtex Sport up in here. From Bloomberg:
Women make up 40 percent of the fans and control nearly half of new vehicle purchases in America. “Why are cosmetic companies not into it?” she asks. “Why are pharmacy brands? Feminine hygiene! That’s what we’re working on. I’d love to have a tampon on the side of my car.”
Just imagine the field of men trying to catch the woman with the tampon on the side of her bright pink car. “It would be so great,” she says, smiling, and then not. “I’m just like, ‘Please just get me in a car, and I’ll make you guys money. Invest now to pay off a little bit.’ ”
And remember, you can’t have a field of men chasing a woman-driven tampon car if you convince people that they should each have their own separate racing series.
