Would you raise this issue? Unwittingly appropriating/laughing about a term for selling women

[RoderickRules]

Community event for a good cause, one of the stands is going to customise zimmer frames and is being promoted as ‘pimp my zimmer’
I have an opportunity to speak to the organiser so I could raise this and ask them to reconsider, would you?

If they were 10 or 20 years older than me I would be absolutely gobsmacked if they thought the main use of the word pimp was the one mainstreamed at the turn of the millennium. It would be as weird as them saying that 'sick means good, not ill'.

In slang words are always being abused to form new superlatives.

Eg- 'bad' of Michael Jackson era. I don't think people really use bad in that way any more - you'd show your age (people say baadaaass but that is slightly different), so it has long fallen out of favour, as will 'sick' in a couple of years.
Older people feel like twats taking on the lingo of teenagers. The idea of someone 50 saying "man that's sick" without any irony is ridiculous.
In the same way, the misuse of 'pimp' is very much 'of an era', and just like 'wicked' has gone back to being used for baddies in fairytales, pimp will go back to meaning nasty gangster who grooms into and exploits women and girls into prostitution.

I'd suggest 'bling up my zimmer' which I think is culturally similar without the prostitution aspect but agree that 'soup up my frame' might be more meaningful to the people involved.

Of course lots of older people will be familiar with the 'pimp my car' trope but, at the same time, their more instinctive association would be with prostitution.

'Pimp up' is plainly 'bling up as one might if a pimp, showing off one's wealth'. While as a phrase, it has a life of its own, it's a very straightforward derivation.

Of course lots of older people will be familiar with the 'pimp my car' trope but, at the same time, their more instinctive association would be with prostitution.

Exactly. You can be aware of a word being used differently in slang but the original meaning will stay with you.

As with faggots for firelighting - we now have electricity and piped utilities - so the meaning is completely lost with changing technology.

Unfortunately pimping doesn't look like it is going anywhere for the time being and the 'pimp my ride' use of the word is already looking a bit dated, so I am sure that in say 20 years time teenagers hearing a 50 year old say 'pimp it up' will snigger like they are old dinosaurs saying 'daddy o' or 'groovy' or being cluelessly inappropriate like saying 'poofter'.

It's interesting to me that Americans (of which I am one) have not taken up the cause of preventing falls with national campaigns referencing pimping. I did find a care home in the Midwest that has a "bling my walker" program. I think that elders and their advocates would resist pimp references in national wellness campaigns.

The original meaning is still very much alive (it's the first meaning in the Google definition). The "showy" meaning has certainly not displaced the prostitution meaning.

It's quite rare for a slang meaning to overtake the main meaning ("gay" being a notable exception). More typically the meanings run in parallel until the slang falls out of fashion.

In that Google definition it seems a very pro-prostitution explanation - almost as though a pimp is some sort of legitimate business person.

'Pimp' and 'pimping' also implies grooming and deception/manipulation, coercion, breaking down the sense of self in the person to prostitute. I once watched something I can't unsee called something like 'the art of pimping' and it was all about how to identify the right girl (young & vulnerable), how to groom her (gifts, promises, glamour, affection, getting her hooked on drugs), how to 'train' her (basically scare her, abuse her, guilt trip her so she 'knows you are the boss' and won't 'disobey' and you can get her to do things against her instincts and wellbeing) and how to keep her (make sure she is too scared to keep any money and gives you the lot). It isn't just 'arranging clients' for a cut. It can include orchestrating gang rapes, beatings, terrorising. Obviously not all pimps go for that, some do just get a 'girlfriend' hooked on drugs and guilt trip her into getting money to pay for both your habits, but the word has a lot more connotations than Google divulges.