In 2018, when powerful men are falling and every industry is rocked by allegations of sexual harassment, the use of women as decoration feels not only offensive but embarrassingly out-of-step. This week Formula One announced it would end decades of tradition by dispensing with “grid girls” – the young women ogled by spectators and sprayed with champagne by winning drivers.

“While the practice of employing grid girls has been a staple of Formula One grands prix for decades, we feel this custom does not resonate with our brand values and clearly is at odds with modern-day societal norms,” said Sean Bratches, Formula One’s managing director of commercial operations. “We don’t believe the practice is appropriate or relevant to Formula One and its fans, old and new, across the world.”

What struck the broadcaster Beverley Turner, who covered Formula One seasons from 2001-03 and wrote a book about it, was “the men drive the cars, they make the cars, they fix the cars, and the women handed out drinks, refreshed the buffet and were grid girls. I felt like [I was] the only person who could see how wrong that was. The grid girls would be led out, a bit like prize cattle, just before the race and stand on the grid where the cars are, with an umbrella or a number of which position the car was in. They would have their bottoms pinched by the mechanics, there would be photographers sat on the floor behind them, taking pictures of their bums, or up their skirts. They had to giggle and pretend that was OK.” She remembers one particularly cold and rainy weekend at the Australian Grand Prix, where the women were wearing tiny hotpants and crop tops – the organisers gave them see-through PVC ponchos “so that at least you could see their bottoms”.

She is, she says, delighted by the decision to end the use of grid girls. “It sends a really powerful message that women should be valued for what we do, what we think, what we say, rather than what we look like while men are the centre of the action. It’s a really old-fashioned dichotomy of passive and active roles in the world, it’s part of that same narrative.”

The decision comes days after the Professional Darts Corporation announced it would end the practice of “walk-on girls” – young women in high heels and tight dresses who accompany players to the stage. “We regularly review all aspects of our events and this move has been made following feedback from our host broadcasters,” it said. Its chairman, Barry Hearn, was not pleased. “We’re living in changing times – the PC brigade, the liberal brigade are out in strength and it’s causing changes in sport everywhere we look and it’s probably going to get worse,” he said this week.

Darts player Phil Taylor warms up on stage with two walk-on girls. Photograph: Mike French/Corbis via Getty Images

Hearn pioneered the use of walk-on girls as part of his reinvention of the sport in the 1990s. It is thought they originated much earlier. In the early 1980s British Darts Organisation founder Olly Croft used his daughters to accompany the players on stage, carrying flags. But Hearn did it bigger; he brought the girls, the loud music, the pizzazz to the sport.

Formula One’s use of young women goes back to the 1960s, with Rosa Ogawa thought to be the first “race queen” in Japan, advertising an oil company. Although promotional models were increasingly used in the 1970s and 1980s, it was, according to a Radio 5 Live documentary in 2016, team owner Eddie Jordan who popularised them in the 1990s.

“Commercially it was a huge thing at the time,” he told the programme. “I remember I was involved with Benson & Hedges and the idea there was it should be fun. Motor racing is a very serious business, very commercial, and it needs to have the very respectable return on the investment, but at the same time it also needed to show flair, excitement, all the other razzmatazz that goes along with racing.” The women – including famous glamour models of the time, such as Katie Price and Melinda Messenger – ensured lots of pictures and coverage for the team.

Melissa James has been a promotional model, and a grid girl, for eight years, working for Formula One, British Superbikes and British Touring Cars; she was also a walk-on girl for the darts once, and has appeared at some boxing matches. “The drivers, riders would rather not be dealing with the press, the fans, they want to be in their own little world. That’s kind of where we take over. We’ll stand and talk to the fans, we’re selling the experience. It’s not just standing on a bit of concrete.” She says she doesn’t find it demeaning, and says she has never been sexually harassed. “Not at the events. Occasionally there will be a couple of little things online. You’ll see a picture of you posted, and someone will post a comment like ‘she’s alright’.”

Promotional models are used for a huge variety of events, from exhibitions and conferences, to tech shows, where there are often calls to end the use of “booth babes”. Some sports still use women in this way – cycling and boxing now seem particularly out-of-date – but Formula One joins others who have ended the practice. The World Endurance Championship, which runs the Le Mans sportscar race, ended the tradition in 2015. In other sports, the use of glamorous young women never really caught on. In the early 1990s, Sky tried to introduce cheerleaders, the Sky Strikers, to football matches but it only lasted a season. Crystal Palace is the only Premier League team with a cheerleading squad. They are, of course, used in the NFL, while some motorsports (and most car shows) still seem very attached to the use of young women in little clothing.

“A significant number of western team sports were founded on making men hyper-masculine,” says Eric Anderson, professor of sport, masculinities and sexualities at the University of Winchester. “Part of that project was making men heterosexual as well. Today, we realise that putting boys into team sports doesn’t make them heterosexual, and boys are coming to the conclusion they don’t need to be hyper-masculine, so we’re seeing wholesale changes to sport across the board – more inclusive (of homosexuality) and less sexist.

“This is really just part and parcel of massive changes that are occurring in the culture more broadly, where we realise that this type of direct sexualisation of women in order to appeal to male sports consumers is both not necessary and, for many people, not tolerable. This is also a reflection of the #MeToo movement, and we’re starting to [think]: is it really appropriate that groups of men sexualise women in these ways, for these purposes?”

Potted profile

Born: in the 1960s for motor-racing and boxing, in the 1980s for darts.

They say: “[Walk-on girls are] wonderfully dated. In the PC world we live in, this is a sort of escapism back to wonderful ordinariness. It’s harmless, it’s entertaining to certain people.” Barry Hearn, chair of the Professional Darts Corporation

They say: “These changes are taking place because global businesses are making a considered choice about how women should be valued and portrayed in their sports in 2018. They deserve significant credit for doing so.” Women’s Sport Trust