Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.katylevinson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 227 posts

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

#161

Post by pacaro »

__--__ wrote: post #82
stcredzero wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like a hard problem to solve. How about: Highly visible conference badges that differentiate spokespersons from developers? There would be motivation for companies to game this, so that they could have spokespersons with "female geek cred." I think that this could be handled to within reason. Also, it might motivate companies to send their actual female employees, thus giving females more exposure at GDC.

This is a game developer conference, not a game programming conference. there are a dozen non-technical jobs between "spokesperson" and "developer." Game designer, level designer, UI artist, CGI artist, Producer, QA - these are just a few jobs that do not qualify as technical positions. I suppose you could have everybody wear a badge that lists their job title, except not everybody is there representing a company. La…

Or just have a Geek Code[1] block on the badge...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Code

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

#162

Post by jiggy2011 »

waps wrote: post #155
jiggy2011 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Talk to her. After the first sentence you will know the difference.

Depends if you start with a technical question.

Though that might be a good strategy to discourage "booth babes", just keep asking shit they can't answer.

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

#163

Post by martinced »

My partner in life used to be a booth babe, wearing sexy clothes etc. (for energy drink stuff and all) because she preferred that to earn money than flipping burgers (not that there's anything wrong with flipping burgers). Nobody forced her to do such jobs and I can tell you one thing: beautiful slim women typically know the power they have on men. I can also tell you that not a single customer of any of the product she demo'ed / promoted did ever manage to get her out for a drink (I wasn't with her yet and she told about her exs, so I don't see why she would lie on that). Seriously: how many of you did you ever pick up a booth babe? Or even saw someone getting a booth babe's phone number?

It's not as innocent as you think: they're not "food" or "dogs" or anything like that. They know they're good looking and they're using it as an advantage. It's not as if they were forced to have sex or something like that.

I can also tell you that some women just like to dress sexy: you can be classy and sexy. Slim dress, Louboutin high heels, etc.

Some women simply like to take time to put make-up on and dress well and do look beautiful and they know the power they have on men.

And the hard truth is: most men don't stand a single chance with these women.

So if you're a women and get mistaken for a booth babe, it's quite simple: simply tell gross guys coming at you that a) you're not a booth babe and they don't stand a chance and b) they don't stand a chance with the booth babes either ; )

Back to technical stuff instead of this crazy gender thing: what's next, women who want to dress sexy can't, like in some crazy countries applying the sharia!?

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

#164

Post by JulianMorrison »

reinhardt wrote: post #157
JulianMorrison wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

TIL finding a woman ugly is considered hardcore sexism. PC has moved beyond self-mockery at this point, it's surreal.

This is not art appreciation nor is it dating, it isn't even clothes modelling, it's product promotion. Have a little professionalism.

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

#165

Post by stephencanon »

lmm wrote: post #124
Killah911 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I prefer to be an engineer, so I don't have to F#@$ing dress up like anybody! "Dress up like an engineer", WTF is that supposed to be? Am I the only person who is dumbfounded by this? We're all about judging worth based on who someone is and what they've done... The only time I ever "dress up" is when I have to deal with certain business types who are perfectly comfortable with a monocle & a pocket watch.

It's a more efficient social protocol - rather than having to ask everyone what their interests are at the start, and abandon 80% of conversations, you dress in a way that indicates what you're interested in, and then can quickly identify the like-minded people you want to talk to. I thought engineers were all about efficiency.

The Knuth quote regarding premature optimization is rarely so apt.

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

#166

Post by derleth »

mtrimpe wrote: post #35
chc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are PR people really 90% attractive young women? I would be very surprised to find that out.

While trying to learn how to sell I once tried to sell charity on the street for a single day. Already in that first day one of the less attractive, but probably more skilled, co-workers told me that in most cases you're actually selling 'having an attractive person be very friendly to me for a while.'

> I once tried to sell charity on the street for a single day.

This sentence intrigues me. Were you working for a specific charitable organization or were you out there trying to sell one of the cardinal virtues as an abstract concept?

> in most cases you're actually selling 'having an attractive person be very friendly to me for a while.'

This is true, and it has been rediscovered over and over again in many industries in many ways. Some industries are really that and nothing else, and they have long, honored, and storied traditions in some cultures (so denigrating them means you're an ethnocentric swine, in case you missed my hint).

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

#167

Post by JulianMorrison »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #132
JulianMorrison wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're missing the point. Look up, horndog, the face, and the product pitch is up here.

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

#168

Post by ericssmith »

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…

I am not sick of gender issues. I have recently been enlightened (mostly by Bob Martin's recent blog post) about language that I use at work (eg military analogies) that could be alienating to anyone (eg females) who didn't grow up idealizing warfare. This is an incredibly important point in history, and you are at the epicenter. Thanks for sharing your experience.

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

#169

Post by jiggy2011 »

MartinCron wrote: post #160
jiggy2011 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post was much more thoughtful and therefor conductive to reasonable discussion than the shitstorm we had last week.

Talk about setting a low bar.

At least it's not reddit.

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

#170

Post by pyre »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #135
warfangle wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

  | literally pictures of vaginas?
Evony Online?
Post reply on HN