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Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

blog.katylevinson.com

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Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#131

Post by jiggy2011 »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #120
jiggy2011 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how such a boycott would even work, insist that all advertising uses ugly women?

When orchestras started doing tryouts behind an opaque screen, they found that their previous insistence that women couldn't play as well as men was bogus, because the interviewees that got the job were 50/50 male and female. You could get a third party to white out the gender cues on resumes before you sort them into the shortlist, and then conduct interviews over text skype. But honestly, someone who uses the conce…

We're talking about advertising where visual appeal is a key part.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#132

Post by jiggy2011 »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #125
jiggy2011 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you could say "women with body types that men are more likely to pay attention to" or as they are commonly known "models". Trying to get people to deprogram their own biology at a very deep level is probably going to be a losing battle.

The idea that men pay attention to supermodel shaped women is (1) sexist (2) very mistaken. Sexist men pay horny attention to them. Horniness is a distraction from a product pitch. "I'm sorry, what did you say again? I was staring at your chest."

Men don't pay attention to supermodels, are you sure?

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#133

Post by mnicole »

bluehat wrote: post #80

Hey guys, Katy here, just wanted to thank everybody for the support and super insightful feedback. I will continue to edit the post and post here with clarifications, mostly after work hours :) And yes, I know everybody's probably sick of gender issues, and that's why I almost didn't bring it up, but I hoped it would be a chance for a good civil discussion, and I'm really glad to see it turning into that. Hopefully s…

Never stop blogging about it, please. Did you see the post the other day from the woman who works at Game Informer (http://meagan-marie.tumblr.com/post/46396481491/what-would-y...)? Her experience at PAX East was one thing, but her work stories were even worse. I'd recommend it to everyone here.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#134

Post by jiggy2011 »

JPKab wrote: post #103
onemorepassword wrote: post #6

Seems like a hard problem to solve. Sending people to do product promotional is perfectly legitimate depending on the type of event. Even if you weren't deliberately targeting a male audience with attractive females (although I'm sure that was the case), odds are that if you were recruiting for that kind of work 90% would be outgoing and attractive young women. Just like recruiting programmers will get you 90% geeky…

As a 31 year old male, here is my message to tech companies with products to sell: If you have "booth babes" (I think she did a great job in the article of defining what that term means), I'm not going to buy your product. I hate it and always have. Its trashy and demeaning, and I resent being grouped into the lowest common denominator when I go to view a product I actually care about. As demeaning as it is to women,…

Problem is, you see an attractive woman at a booth, assuming she is wearing regular business or casual attire.

How do you know if she was hired because she was attractive or because of other skills/attributes or a mixture of both?

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#135

Post by jiggy2011 »

warfangle wrote: post #122
jiggy2011 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how such a boycott would even work, insist that all advertising uses ugly women?

How about advertising that focuses on the product instead of a set of reproductive organs?

Sometimes you need to show people using the product etc. Unless you mean advertising that is literally pictures of vaginas?

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#136

Post by mattmaroon »

mtoddh wrote: post #93
mattmaroon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that assumption is safe of the women who aren't in costume. I think they're just female employees in non-technical roles. They're not eye candy. That's what I find so strange about the original post. She's assuming they're there as eye candy and they sure don't seem to be. It's odd to hear a woman assume that other women (especially since they're pretty average) are there for their looks. The few I've t…

The few I've talked to were far too knowledgeable to be some sort of incognito booth babes. Perhaps it's because of the negative stereotype that the more attractive a women is, the less intelligent she is, or at least less likely that she's a technical person. And perhaps it's not just men that make this assumption.

I didn't say they were dumb, just that they aren't very knowledgeable about their product. They don't work for the companies they promote and don't get much training. They work for an agency that is hired by the company. They're given some talking points and then told who to point anyone to who needs to know more.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#137

Post by mattmaroon »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #98
mattmaroon wrote: post #7

Wait, I don't get it. I'm at GDC. A very large portion (maybe even a majority) of either gender is non-technical. It's an industry event so there are lots of salespeople, hr, biz-dev, etc. I wouldn't assume a man I met here was a developer. There are some pretty obvious booth babes (the energy drink girls, ones with swords, etc.) There are women who, while perhaps non-technical, legitimately work for the companies th…

I think the issue is what it takes to convince a person you are technical. As a man, if I join a conversation while other people are talking technical, I will generally be assumed to be technical. I can easily imagine women not having the "technical" bit default to true. You highlight a real issue, though. Given the percentages, if a technical conference has a large percentage of non-technical attendees, it is likely…

GDC badges have your job title on them and the size isn't tiny so it is readable. You can generally tell if someone is technical or not that way, though it's not 100%.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#138

Post by jblz »

lmm wrote: post #115
jblz wrote: post #23

If I'm understanding correctly, the author would prefer it if non-technical female expo floor workers were scantily-clad so she would be less likely to be assumed by other conference-goers to be non-technical herself..? I'm sorry, but I find that pretty offensive. I don't claim to know what it's like to be a woman in a heavily male-dominated field (or just your de facto patriarchy, for that matter), but I also don't…

>More importantly, I assume anyone representing a product or service at a show is knowledgeable about its inner-workings until they give me some reason to believe otherwise regardless of their gender or attire. That must get pretty tiring at a conference like this (assuming the description in the post is accurate). People don't stereotype for fun, they do it because it's effective.

In general, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt that they're knowledgeable about things they purport to be knowledgeable about. I don't think that's so different from the instant situation here.

Walking a crowded expo floor is a chore in and of itself (maybe more-so for introverts like myself :) ), but the '10 GDC I attended wasn't particularly challenging in this regard.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#139

Post by WiseWeasel »

onemorepassword wrote: post #6

Seems like a hard problem to solve. Sending people to do product promotional is perfectly legitimate depending on the type of event. Even if you weren't deliberately targeting a male audience with attractive females (although I'm sure that was the case), odds are that if you were recruiting for that kind of work 90% would be outgoing and attractive young women. Just like recruiting programmers will get you 90% geeky…

I think the problem is her T-shirt/hoodie wasn't geeky enough.

I could see male booth attendants having similar issues.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#140

Post by [deleted] »

calibraxis wrote: post #76
redthrowaway wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1. Do not hire eye candy as eye candy. Of either sex. Dressed up or dressed down. Eye candy is extremely effective in marketing. That's like saying "don't hire smart programmers". Why would companies handicap their marketing efforts?

Sure, that's why you retaliate against such advertisers. Boycotts, public campaigns, etc. Through such efforts, corporations have become noticeably less overt about using people of color and women as inferior objects for the amusement of the dominating classes.

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