Audi Finland’s sales manager: Women are like cars

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By Jarmo Aaltonen
     
      A special issue of the traditional women’s magazine Anna, intended on this occasion for media and marketing professionals, has been published by United Magazines (Yhtyneet Kuvalehdet).
      The special issue looks like the normal Anna, with the only difference being that this edition is focused on those influential media professionals of various interest groups with whom the publishers’ marketing staff associate.
      Editor-in-Chief Emma Koivula and Sales Director Tomi Takanen promise in their joint leading article that further ”fantastic special lifestyle issues” are to be expected, as the ”glamorous classic of women’s magazines is in full swing”.
     
Among those who present their lively spiritual landscape in the special issue is graduate engineer Esko Kiesi, the sales manager for Audi cars in Finland, who was interviewed concerning his relation to the opposite sex, in the series ”Man Talks About Woman”.
      Kiesi says that it is easy to speak about cars and women, as ”all car characteristics can be found in a woman”.
      ”The looks of a car are finished with the suspension and the wheel trims. When it comes to a woman, it is her ankles and shoes that are important. A woman often loses her shape if her heels are lower than seven centimetres”, Kiesi declares, saying that he looks at a woman in the same order as at a new car.
      When he casts an eye over the woman, he starts from her shoes, ankles, and legs, continuing up to the figure and clothes, and ending up in the eyes.
     
In the world according to Kiesi, a woman is ”a fairly cold creature: being manipulative and mean is much easier for women than men”.
      With the passing years, Kiesi has begun to regard femininity itself as the most important feature of a woman.
      ”I need a woman more and more often for her original purpose, namely to be caressing and seductive. These days it is very important for me that I and my woman have a lot in common, for example equal education and similar values. I also appreciate it very much if the woman irons my shirts, as this gesture involves a lot of symbolism. When a woman refuses to iron or clean, one could say in a caricatural sense that the relationship is coming to an end”, the Audi man argues.
     
Kiesi says that the perfect age of a woman is well defined in an old Finnish book Naisen opas (”A Guide for a Woman”) that was printed in 1948.
      It is the age of the man divided by two, plus seven. The suitable woman for Kiesi, who is 59, would thus be between 36 and 37 years.
      In Kiesi’s view, it is no real equality if all people are treated equally, as women are both physically, psychologically, and emotionally completely different from men.
      ”This is why women often are not as good in executive positions as men are. They use their emotions in the wrong situations, frequently putting their feelings ahead of reason. However, exceptions naturally do exist. In general, men are more able to master large entities”, Kiesi analyses.
     
According to Kiesi, in certain situations it is difficult for a man to understand a woman’s logic, and moreover, he does not appreciate women’s basic envy towards each other.
      Women are also poor in forming networks, the sales manager claims.
      Kiesi believes nevertheless that women have the ability to simplify and carry through routines in conventional matters.
      ”After all, it is often said that women are more like performers, while men are visionaries”, Kiesi adds.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 1.9.2009

More on this subject:
 Kiesi's comments get the thumbs-down
 News Analysis: Anna is moving in a sensitive area
 Those other Audi men

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Audi representative quits over furore sparked by comments seen as misogynist (4.9.2009)

JARMO AALTONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
jarmo.aaltonen@hs.fi